Mollie Bailey

During the war Gus Bailey wrote the words of "The Old Gray Mare," about a horse that nearly died after eating green corn. In Texas the circus flew the United States, Lone Star and Confederate flags, and Mollie gave free tickets to veterans of either army and to poor children. At its height the one-ring show had thirty-one wagons and about 200 animals, adding elephants and camels in 1902. To avoid the occupation taxes towns levied on shows, she bought lots where the circus played and let them be used for ball games and camp meetings.

What the plaque says

Mollie Bailey A native of Alabama, Mollie Arline Kirkland was married to James Augustus (Gus) Bailey in 1858. The son of a circus owner, Gus Bailey formed the Bailey Family Troupe with Mollie, his brother Alfred, and Mollie's sister Fanny. They traveled throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas with their show until the beginning of the Civil War. Gus and Alfred Bailey joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and became members of Hood's Texas Brigade. While Gus led the regimental band, Mollie traveled with them as a nurse and as a member of Hood's minstrels, entertaining the troops. Gus and Mollie Bailey and their children continued to travel as entertainers after the war. In 1879 they bought a small circus and moved to Texas. Billed as "A Texas Show for Texas People," it became the Mollie A. Bailey Show following Gus' retirement. After his death in 1896 Mollie continued to operate the circus, a popular annual event in many towns. She was known as the "Circus Queen of the Southwest." In 1906 Mollie married A. H. "Blackie" Hardesty, a circus employee. she continued to be known as Mollie bailey, however, and ran the show until 1917. She died at St. Joseph's Infirmary in Houston on October 2, 1918. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 2.2 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 3.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 3.9 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 4.1 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Houston Heights — 1.8 mi
• Heights Church of Christ — 1.9 mi
• Allen's Landing — 1.9 mi
• Daniel Denton Cooley — 2.0 mi