tpipes
  •  tpipes
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004 9:30:55 AM
To whom it may concern:

First of all, let me thank you for your time. I have quite an interesting story to tell and hope to turn my find into some interesting subject matter, but first wanted to ask you a few things.

First of all, I grew up in Elkhorn, Wisconsin and have always been fascinated, since an early age, in the carnival industry. The idea of traveling cities, people, rides, games and food booths and lights and action; setting up for a few days at a time in a myriad of towns across large swaths of the country is truly interesting. Exciting kids and families for just a few days only to have that fleeting moment pass, all until the carnival comes back again next year.

Elkhorn is home to the Walworth County Fair and since I moved there in the third grade (around 1990), the carnival that came to the county fair was Farrow shows. I used to anticipate them coming for most of the summer and wanted to learn more about their movements and the different units that encompass their traveling show. Flash forward to 2002, when I was, by chance, hunting around an Antique store in Milton, Wisconsin (near Janesville, also another stop for Farrow at the Rock County Fair) and came across an entire photo collection encompassing two large boxes completely full of hundreds and hundreds of photographs, almost completely and entirely covering the Farrow Carnival.

I passed on purchasing them, but a year later happened to return to the store and was amazed that the collection was there. The guy wanted to sell individual photos to people, but the collection was available as a whole and I bought it. I have gone through and poured through them finding it interesting to note that the man who took them liked to travel with the carnival from stop to stop and took pictures of all aspects of the carnival from travel, set-up, shots of people on the rides, and those of disassembling the rides at the end of a stop. He also used a complex, and detailed system of filing these photos and has systems of numbers and letters that I assume, correlate to certain Farrow stops and shows. I have yet to break this code, but I have been lucky to piece together a series of photos that were from the Walworth County fair, primarily on locating landmarks in certain photos that I know exist at the fairgrounds.

I have a few ideas of things I would like to do with these photos, but first I wanted to see if (maybe by chance there is a guy who was known to follow the shows and photograph everything), or if there is a databse of past shows Farrow has done, or even better, if there is a historian or someone with interest who might be able to offer me some advice.

I would like to use these photos in a book about carnival life, and travel.

I would love to hear back from anyone on anything I have mentioned.

Have a great day, and again, thanks for your time!

Taylor Pipes

gruelurks
Wednesday, April 21, 2004 10:06:43 AM
Paging Chris Hurley: Are you missing any photos? [:D]

Taylor, sounds like quite the find. Any plans on scanning some of them and posting them somewhere to share?
Sue
  •  Sue
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004 11:34:35 AM
You might want to contact Bob Goldsack of Nashua NH. He is the author of many books on the history of various carnivals and amusement parks. I'll PM his phone number to you.
You can do a search on google under his name and a lot of books will come up. Sounds like a fantastic find.
Sue
Pinetar
  •  Pinetar
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004 11:48:42 AM
What is the time frame for the picture sequences? If the pics are from the 60's and beyond, it could be interesting but the 80"s and 90's are too today. Create a web page of some interesting pics and post the link here.
UserPostedImage
shuper
Thursday, April 22, 2004 1:59:56 PM
tpipes,

[:D]Very intersting!! can you E-mail at djevey@direcway.com
or at djevey@starband.net ?[8)]I would really like to see and maybe buy.

Thank you,

Justchrs
Tuesday, March 23, 2021 4:22:32 PM
Hi tpipes,
I was just directed to this old post where I have quoted part of it.
"I passed on purchasing them, but a year later happened to return to the store and was amazed that the collection was there. The guy wanted to sell individual photos to people, but the collection was available as a whole and I bought it. I have gone through and poured through them finding it interesting to note that the man who took them liked to travel with the carnival from stop to stop and took pictures of all aspects of the carnival from travel, set-up, shots of people on the rides, and those of disassembling the rides at the end of a stop. He also used a complex, and detailed system of filing these photos and has systems of numbers and letters that I assume, correlate to certain Farrow stops and shows. I have yet to break this code, but I have been lucky to piece together a series of photos that were from the Walworth County fair, primarily on locating landmarks in certain photos that I know exist at the fairgrounds.

I have a few ideas of things I would like to do with these photos, but first I wanted to see if (maybe by chance there is a guy who was known to follow the shows and photograph everything), or if there is a database of past shows Farrow has done, or even better, if there is a historian or someone with interest who might be able to offer me some advice."

I was married to a man who photoed many spots while he and I traveled with Farrow shows, before we were married and a few years after. At the time he cataloged each roll of film. When we divorced he had most of his stuff in storage, fell on hard times and lost everything to an auction.
You may have run across a goodly portion of his pictures.

If you still access this, I would be interested in being contacted. My ex is deceased but I would know his work.

Justchrs