Elephant statue at Colquitt County cemetery is an unexpected sight

MOULTRIE – Watching over a grave at a country church in Colquitt County, a life-sized marble baby elephant stands silent and eternally keeping its eyes on a former circus owner who had a connection to Colquitt County.

The elephant, Nancy, is said to based on a baby pachyderm who was part of an animal exhibit that circus owner William F. Duggan Sr. purchased in the 1940s. 

The 5-foot-10-inch statue stands on top of Duggan’s gravestone at the Pleasant Grove Primitive Baptist Church about 4 miles outside the city of Moultrie, at the grave next to Duggan’s father, George Duggan. The circus owner’s connection to Moultrie came from his father, who married a woman from the area and settled in Colquitt County.

The lore about Duggan’s life is that he left home at the age of 12 to join the Sparks Circus and gained a lifelong love of elephants when he was tasked with caring for them. The reality may be somewhat different, but the Florida native’s love of circuses and animals is not in doubt. 

Perhaps referring to the famous quote from the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Duggan’s nephew, Stancel L. May Jr., when writing about his uncle at the request of his mother in the 1960s said that “Frequently, legend, if repeated enough, becomes fact.” 

The article is among the archives of the Museum of Colquitt County History.  

May, who joined Duggan’s Pan American World-Wide Animal Exhibit in 1948, wrote that his uncle’s father died when Duggan was 3 and that as a child he went on tour with the Howard Taft Comedians. Later, Duggan did join the Sparks Circus before forming the Duggan Brothers Circus in 1934.

There were no brothers, and the use of the term in names seems to have been a big top convention

“With very few exceptions, there are no brothers,” May said in his article. “It’s just a term that showmen use as most other businesses use the term company. And they do not ‘form’ circuses … they ‘frame’ it.” 

Duggan sold the circus later in the same year, according to Circus World, a museum dedicated to circuses in Baraboo, Wisc. His next stab at ownership came in 1947, when he bought the World-Wide Animal Exhibit, which he renamed Pan American.

Duggan purchased Nancy to be part of the exhibit, according to Circus World archives. She later toured as part of the Hagan-Wallace Circus during the 1950s.

In between the Duggan Brothers Circus and purchasing the animal exhibit, Duggan operated the Duggan Music Co., a chain of coin-operated music outlets that stretched from Key West, Fla., to Atlanta.

The Pan American World-Wide Animal Exhibit toured the eastern half of the country, according to May’s account.

As he was reforming the attraction as the Hagan-Wallace Circus, Duggan fell ill during the summer of 1950 and they both left the exhibit while it was in Virginia. 

“Many shows use names that have been around for years and are recognizable to the public,” Mays wrote. “In this case, the name Hagen-Wallace was chosen as a take-off on the name of another famous old show, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. That way we didn’t have to pay to buy the name.”

After dropping off May, who had been drafted for the Korean Conflict, in Moultrie in 1950, Duggan, who was feeling ill, continued on to Florida. After the animal exhibit wrapped up the season, it returned to DeLand, Fla., the summer quarters for the show. During that summer, Duggan went to a doctor’s office where he died of a heart attack before the new circus had been “framed.” 

His death came before the circus made a single performance.

While pondering on an appropriate memorial, Duggan’s son and others in the circus hit on the idea of Nancy. William F. “Dub” Duggan Jr. took a photo of Nancy to the Georgia Marble Co. in Tate, according to May, where the image was transformed in Cherokee marble from an 8.5-ton block. The resulting statue was 7 feet-2 inches long and 2 feet-4 inches thick, with a cost of about $10,000.

“Moultrie funeral director Jack Gregory had a six-foot deep foundation poured around the grave site to support the weight of the elephant, and it was put in place on a pink Etowah marble slab along with a matching marble slab for Mr. Duggan’s father,” May wrote. 

Nancy’s story was just beginning, however. Touted locally as the only known elephant grave marker, it turned out she was not alone.

At the Showmen’s Rest, a cemetery section in Forest Park, Ill., five elephant statues stand in positions of mourning at the graves of about 60 members of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus who died in a 1918 train wreck.

And while there is no statue, Pope Leo X commissioned a fresco from the artist Raphael of his favorite animal gift, Hanno the elephant, who died in 1516 and whose skeletal remains are buried beneath the Vatican courtyard.

Nancy’s fame in the wider world came largely through the efforts of former Mayor Willie B. Withers, who served in that position from 1947-1983.

Withers wrote letters to leaders all over the world, perhaps even to Queen Elizabeth II, Colquitt County museum volunteer Faye Bridwell said.

“I think the mayor was the biggest promoter,” she said. “You open his files, he wrote letters promoting the area. There’s letters to every country, to royalty.”

Among the museum’s files are a photo of what Bridwell believes is a royal delegation visiting the elephant grave site, including women in long white gloves and furs.

A large brass medal presented to Withers that contains what appears to be Latin writing may be related to that delegation’s visit, she said. The museum’s archives do not contain the identity of the delegation in the photo or information about the medal.

“Whenever he brought people to town, he carried them out to see Nancy,” Bridwell said.

Wherever those encountering the elephant for the first time hailed from, her presence was one that brought a reaction from them.

“The life-size statue of a young elephant, a memorial to a past circus owner who loved animals, can be seen from Georgia Highway Route 37 (Adel Road) several miles east of Moultrie,” a 1976  “The Moultrie Observer and Weekly Moultrie Observer” article noted. “In fact, many motorists who are strangers to the area risk wrecking their cars while craning their necks to get a second look – the first is normally an unbelieving one.”

One museum volunteer remembered her father taking her to the cemetery as a child and helping her climb onto the statue.

These days Nancy is not the attraction she once was, but she does hold fond memories to some in the community.

When Bridwell mentioned to a friend that she was doing research on the elephant to assist an Albany Herald reporter, it produced a wave of nostalgia, she said..

“Nancy is a sweet memory,” Bridwell said. “When I brought it up, it brought on a flood of memories for her remembering that as a youngster.”