After so many years focusing on one historical person, with all I’ve learned about this one man, who is still known to many as simply, “Rope Walker,” I know so much about him that I can probably find at least one event related to him I can commemorate for every day in the year. Let’s take today, for example: March 27. I don’t have a master chronology made up, but if I search a few documents I’ve created, a few chronologies I’ve assembled about certain aspects of his life, I can come up with this (as I type this, I don’t know what comes next…):
On March 27, 1809, his maternal grandfather, David, together with David’s father and David’s brother, officially had their name changes registered to comply with laws instituted under Napoleonic rule.
Mazel Tov to David, Moses, and Jacob!
Not what I thought I would find, and actually not listed in either of the two chronologies I had already put together. I thought Rope Walker was probably doing his tightrope act somewhere on March 27 of some year, but no. In fact, while reviewing his performances in March, I learned that he seldom performed in that month, even if he was “on the road.” He was performing in Texas, one year, and in New Orleans, another year, on some earlier day in March, but after those performances there were noticeable gaps in his tour calendar (there is no “tour calendar,” except what I’ve assembled). In one instance, he perfomed in Mississippi on March 28. All of this will be laid out in some manner in the next two volumes of the Rope Walker trilogy, I promise, so I’m not going to get into detail.
Only to say that this man without a name had quite a history!
