1867 image of a tightrope walker performing in Austin, Texas. From the website Retronaut.com.
This may be my favorite thing that I have ever found in The Wellington Enterprise. On August 2, 1882 the newspaper casually reported: “An itinerant tight rope walker gave an exhibition of skill, Tuesday evening on a rope stretched over the street from the tops of the buildings on Liberty St [now West Herrick Avenue]. He had a large audience and took a good collection” (pg. 3).
And it wasn’t the first time such a feat of derring-do occurred in the village. More than two decades earlier, The Lorain County News noted in its Wellington section, “On Tuesday of last week, our town was visited by a disciple of Blondin, who performed some very notable feats. A rope was stretched from the roof of the Wellington House, to the roof of the tin shop of O. Sage [i.e. across Mechanics Street, today known as East Herrick Avenue], upon which the performer walked with perfect ease, passing from the top of the shop across the street to the Hotel and back, a distance of over one hundred feet, in less time than is required to write it. The name of the performer, we did not get, but the same degree of skill exerted in some useful calling, might render him a benefactor of his race” (12-5-1860, pg. 3).
19th-Century Wellington 