CIRCUS SIDESHOW MIDGETS MAJOR LITTLEFINGER & WIFE C. This is a rare cabinet card of a famous Circus sideshow performer. Wonderful cabinet card of Major Littlefinger and Wife. It is signed on the back by the Major. Condition as shown- slight scuff marks on Mrs. Photo taken by Goldsmith of St. Dwarf, circus, vaudeville, sideshow. Please see pictures for details and thanks for looking. Description : Antique Cabinet Card Photo Photographer – Goldsmith Photography, 1012 Olive Street, St. Major Littlefinger & Wife, (Possibly his second Wife, because of his age in the photo) Performer for circus freak, sideshow, carnival, vaudeville Midgets (Dwarf) Image #4 enhanced Size: approx. 4 ¼ x 6 ½ inches Good Condition -light smudges around some edges and some marks on the photo. Please use the scans to form your own opinion of the condition. I make every effort to carefully describe the condition of the item, please see pictures for your opinion. Background Info: In the entertainment world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, few achondroplasic dwarfs achieved the same popularity as true “midgets” (pituitary dwarfs). A rare exception was Major Littlefinger, born Robert H. Huzza in Boston in 1864. As early as age seven, Huzza was performing, and his impressive circus and museum resume would come to include Sheldenburger & Co. Circus, Great Eastern Circus, Van Armburgh & Co. Circus, John Robinson Circus, Signor Sautelle’s Circus, Huber’s Museum, Sanger’s Greater Combined European Shows and the Midget City at Coney Island’s Dreamland Circus Sideshow. Often he was dressed in a policeman’s uniform, earning him the nickname “The Little Cop”. Around 1880, Huzza met Mollie McDougal, “The Lilliputian Queen”, of Osceola, Iowa. Also an achondroplasic dwarf, Mollie had recently divorced her first husband, General Frank “Shorty” Shade. Shade remarried to a female dwarf named Sarah, twenty years younger than he, around 1890, and changed his billing from military to royalty, becoming Chief Debro and Wife, the Eskimo Midgets. The so-called Eskimos settled in Frank’s hometown of Kendalville, Indiana. Littlefinger on June 5, 1881 in a circus ring in her hometown, and several months later became pregnant with the Major’s baby. She died giving birth to their daughter, Dollie, in Kendalville on June 24, 1882. Huzza had achondroplasia like her parents. Evidently the Shades and the Littlefingers remained close, as census records from around 1900 show that she lived in Kendalville with Frank and Sarah. She died in 1901 of unknown causes. Less than a year later, while visiting Hartford, Connecticut on circus tour, Robert Huzza met Ida Hosmer. Born in 1855, Ida was the only little person in a family of thirteen children. A public wedding soon followed at Bunnell’s Museum in Brooklyn, New York, on March 7, 1883. The couple established a permanent home in Jersey City, where Robert worked as a messenger during the off-season, dressed in his policeman’s costume. In 1891 he was elected master of Brooklyn’s Zeredatha Lodge. After Ida died in 1910, the Major married yet again. His third wife, Anna K. Littlefinger, gave birth to their son Edmond “Buster” Providence Littlefinger in 1913. The Littlefingers moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1920 so that Buster could attend school there. Buster was said to enjoy playing marbles and aspired to be a Singer midget after seeing the famous troupe on the Orpheum circuit. Robert Huzza died in Jacksonville, Florida in 1929 and Anna in 1942.
