(Excerpt taken from "Highbrows, Hillbillies and Hellfire" by Steve Goodson. The book looks at public entertainment in Atlanta from 1880-1930. The book was awarded a 2003 Publication and Servcie Award by the Georgia Historical Society in its on going efforts to "Ensure a Future for Georgia's Past". Goodson is a professor of History at the State University at West Georgia in Carrollton, GA.)
In 1886, a man named J.A. St. John, "Professor Leon", toured through Atlanta with a bird exhibition, but he was also a tightrope walker. He drew a large crowd when he walked rooftop to rooftop across Peachtree Street, and even more when he later walked a wire across Tallulah Gorge. On to a good thing, he moved his bird exhibition to a tent in Grant Park and regularly walked a wire across Lake Abana. His performances maxed out the capacity of the streetcar system.
The Singer Sewing Machine Company of Atlanta decided to capitalize on his celebrity and sponsored a joint appearance of Leon and his wife. A parade of wagons, each hauling a sewing machine, wound through the city to Grant Park where "the greatest crowd ever to gather there awaited them". Mrs. Leon seated herself before a sewing machine on a small platform, which was hoisted to 90 feet above the lake. There she put on an aerial sewing exhibition that, according to the "Journal" had "never before been attempted by any living lady in the world". Mrs. Leon made a beautiful picture suspended between earth and sky with the last rays of the afternoon sun falling full upon her, and tingling her face, hair and garments with red gold". Leon then walked a wire over his wife "his feet encased in brand-new street shoes, with heavy soles."
(references from the Atlanta Journal, August 7 and 14, 1886.)
(This story was brought to our attention by Ms. Carol Fisk. As she read "Highbrows, Hillbillies and Hellfire" she found this reference to Grant Park.)
