O'Brien's Circus usually wintered in Frankford in the northern side of that town after the Civil War. The main circus people there being mainly with John "Pogey" O'Brien's annual shows. Pogey nickname a corruption of Porgy, a fish that as a young man John O'Brien sold in the streets.
https://phillyandstuff.blogspot.com/2018/10/atlantic-house-philadelphia-circus.html
Seven Stars Hotel the center of the Circus Crowd. O'Brien once having owned it. The brick buildings north of in 1917 photo for storage of hay and stable for Circus animals, elephants etc. A line of row houses on Griscom street where circus people lived in a cluster in olden days.
1895 map
Even P.T.Barnum's favorite freak show fat lady Hannah Battersby lived in Frankford. She was buried in a maple coffin 7 feet long by 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep and carried on a specially reinforced wagon on her way to her final rest in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
John O'Brien is also in Cedar Hill I believe, his career on the wane from his various very rich partnerships and franchise use of name over the years with the Forepaugh and Barnum circuses and offshoots, succumbing finally in his fifties to a lifelong case of asthma.
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