Jane Barnell

Early life Barnell was born as Martha Jane Barnhill in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1876, to George W. Barnhill, a Russian Jewish itinerant wagon maker, and Nancy Shaw, a woman of Irish and Catawban ancestry. When she applied for her social security card in May 1939, she gave her parents as George Barnell and Nancy Shaw. Her mother's name is not mentioned in the interviews she gave. She was their second child, and she had three sisters and two brothers. She was named after her maternal grandmother. Her mother was from York County, South Carolina. By two years of age, she was capable of growing a beard. Her mother thought she was cursed Career Barnell's mother sold the 3-year-old Jane to the Great Orient Family Circus and Menagerie while her father was away on business Barnell toured for a time with a number of circuses, including the Ringling Brothers circus, and later joined Hubert's Museum in Times Square, New York City. She appeared in a Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) which, according to the DVD documentary, left her unhappy with the overall portrayal of the sideshow performers in the film. In April 1935, she was working at the Ringling Brothers' sideshow at Madison Square Garden. Barnell died on July 21, 1945, in Manhattan, New York Her remains were cremated by the New York and New Jersey Cremation Company. Manhatton == Personal life ==

Barnell was married four times. Her first marriage was to a German musician who played in the band for John Robinson's Circus. She had two children with him. Her husband and their two children died within several years. Her second husband was a balloonist who was killed months after their marriage. Her third marriage was to an alcoholic whom she divorced. Her last marriage, in 1931, was to her manager Thomas O'Boyle, an orphan ex-circus clown and a sideshow talker for Hubert's Dime Museum. She had little contact with her family after she became a performer. She believed they thought she was a disgrace. By 1940, she claimed to have not seen her siblings in 22 years and believed them to be dead. One of her sisters worked as a nurse helping blind Chinese children. In April 1935, she gave a slightly different account of her personal life when interviewed by Ruth McKenney. She claimed that she had been married three times: the first time when she was fourteen, the second time when she was nineteen, and then to her husband of four years Thomas O'Boyle. ==References==