It must have been a surprise for Luke and Lydia Rhinehart when their son was born smaller than a normal baby. Did Lydia think she didn’t eat enough during her pregnancy? Did she think she did something wrong? Did Luke wonder if he’d be able to help around the house and the farm? What will he do when he grows up? Will he be able to get a job?
They named him Ellis. There is nothing written about him during his childhood, other than being listed in the census records. He would grow up in a brand new town, Goldsborough, founded only about 8 years before his birth. Families in the area would have likely known about him, but Ellis was probably kept pretty close to home. Ellis was just a young kid when the Civil War was raging, about 5 or 6 when Goldsboro was incorporated as a borough in 1864, and he would have been 8 or 9 when the American Lightweight Boxing championship was fought just up the road near Henry Etter’s Tavern in 1867. And then just 5 years later when he was a teen, his mom died, and was buried in York Haven.
It wasn’t until he was becoming an adult that Ellis first started to make a splash in the newspapers. In 1878 he had his photo taken at a studio in York. He was 21 years old, 48 pounds and under 3 feet tall.
He may have been trying to get his name out there. One of the ways that little people could make a living at the time was by becoming a performer, or by being in the circus sideshow. Ellis had something going for him – he was shorter than the world famous Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton) of P.T. Barnum’s Circus, who was reportedly 40 inches.
Ellis was first reported as the shortest man in York County, and began to perform in a number of ways.
Living as a show
In 1879, he was ringing the bell on a fire carriage in a parade in Harrisburg with the Paxton Fire Company. It was a great novelty to see in the parade, and the newspapers said he was the shortest fireman in the world.
In 1880, when he was 22, he was on exhibit at the Opera House in Columbia for 3 days.
In the 1880 census he is listed as living in Marietta in Lancaster county, and was “32 inches, lives as a show.”
During the next few years you could find Ellis visiting a number of other towns, and making appearances for crowds to feed their curiosity.
By 1886, it was reported in newspapers all over the country that Ellis Rhinehart was the smallest man in Pennsylvania. These papers all say virtually the same thing, as one paper after another repeated the same couple of sentences.
He was living in Philadelphia at the time he was nationally recognized, and specifically he was living at Harry Roop’s Concert Saloon. He met someone also living there and married her. Lydia Thorpe, who was 18 years old and normal sized. News of their marriage even made it over to London, in the theatrical news.
Major Rhinehart
Around this time Ellis started going by a stage name, Major Rhinehart. It was pretty standard for little people who were performing at the time to go by some kind of title, like General Tom Thumb, or Admiral Dot, two of the most famous at the time.
In 1887, Major Rhinehart toured the country with J.H. Rice’s Metropolitan Circus as a part of the side show. He was billed as “the smallest man alive.”
Later that same year in the fall, Ellis was in Canada, featured at Ureck’s Museum in Montreal.
By the next year, in the spring of 1888 he had joined Baird’s Dramatic Company, singing and dancing for a number of shows at Martin’s Opera House in Kingston, Ontario. He received good reviews in the paper, and was said to have an excellent voice.
Ups and Downs
It’s hard to know how many shows, circuses and concert halls Ellis had performed in over the years, but by 1890 the last show that he was with was broke, and all his clothes and costumes belonged to them. So he became broke as well, and he was looking for aid to try and buy some clothes for himself.
The last few years probably hadn’t been the greatest for him. In 1887 his older brother, who was a foreman on the Northern Central Railroad, had died in a railway accident.
He did find work again, and travelled as part of an advertisement.
Apparently he had a number of offers that he turned down, but eventually did travel with another circus again. Maybe he had bad experiences in the past, or the offers were low in pay.
It didn’t last that much longer. In 1892, Ellis Rhinehart passed away. He died in a hotel room in Connecticut while travelling with the circus.
His body was returned to Central Pennsylvania. His father and family had moved a little ways north to West Fairview Township by then. They buried Ellis in the Red Brick Church cemetery in Enola. He was only 33 years old. It’s not known what happened to his wife, or if he ever had any children.
*On a side note, I stumbled upon Ellis Rhinehart completely by accident, as I was searching for something else in the newspapers about Goldsboro. He is not mentioned in any of the standard histories of York County, or in the Goldsboro “blue book.” In fact he is really hard to find any info about, and even on circus history websites he only gets a mention that maybe includes one of his photos. But maybe as more and more newspapers become digitized, it’ll become easier to find out some more and fill in some of the gaps in his life, including the name of the final circus he was a part of.