Ward Postcards

The Flying Wards were an aerial act playing circuses, parks, fairs, and vaudeville stages across America from about 1903 into the 1930s. They began as the humble double trapeze duo of brother and sister, Eddie and Jennie Ward from Bloomington, Illinois. They were skilled enough, early in their career, to be featured on Ringling Bros. Circus for several seasons. The Wards eventually left Bloomington for a few years to headquarter in Center Point, Iowa at a farmstead with a barn that they turned into a practice/performance space in the early 19teens. It was there in Iowa, after Eddie had married Mayme Kimball and Jennie married Alec Todd, that The Flying Wards expanded into a flying return trapeze act. The Flying Wards moved back to Bloomington by 1915 to construct their iconic practice barn (now razed) at 1201 E. Emerson Street. The Ward Barn, as it was often called, became crucial to the legacy of Bloomington being known as the “Trapeze Capital of the World” throughout the 1920s through the early 1950s. So many people were trained as aerialists with the Flying Wards, that those same people sometimes became stars in their own right, making new aerial acts like The Flying Thrillers, The Flying Arbaughs, The Flying Harolds, and The Flying Concellos.

The Ward postcards in this collection offer a peek into Eddie and Jennie’s world as they were gaining fame from their frighteningly nimble and extremely dangerous double trapeze feats and their reinvention as a flying return act. All the while, throughout their travels, they wrote home to their beloved mother, Fannie and their brother Elza.

These postcards are yet another fascinating piece of the Bloomington-Normal trapeze legacy.