Sometime between 1859 and 1860, James ran away from Catherine's home and found a job and a place to stay on a farm about 10 miles outside the city of Pontiac, Michigan.

Finding life on the farm unrewarding, 13-year old James wandered into Pontiac where he found work at the Hodges House Hotel.

[4] In his diary, James' brother-in-law Joe McCaddon writes that Bailey recounted stories of how he left the circus world at age 16 and went to work as clerk to a sutler during the Civil War.

With her husband dead, Agnes Lake became the first woman in the United States to own a circus[2] (Agnes Lake would later marry famous gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok, who worked for a short time with Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West Show James A. Bailey would one day manage).

[4] Barnum was the face of the circus, but James Bailey was the hard worker who insisted on staying behind the scenes.

[7] His widow subsequently sold the circus to the Ringling brothers in 1907, who eventually merged the rival operations in 1919.

[8] In his book about the circus, Earl Chapin May wrote, “Probably...no circus owner and manager left more sincere mourners than the thin little magnate known to millions as James A. Bailey.”[2] Taped beneath a photo of James Bailey in the scrapbook of employee Harrison Gunning is a small scrap of paper that reads, “P.T.