Consists of the working papers of the Barnum and Bailey partnership prior to its merger with Ringling Bros. in 1907. In addition to correspondence, scrapbooks, posters, couriers, parade, costume and wagon designs, music, and memorabilia collected by Joseph T. McCaddon, who was the business manager of the circus at the turn of the century, there are hundreds of photographs documenting the American circus of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The McCaddon Collection of the Barnum and Bailey Circus contains harmful and offensive descriptions of people that includes racist, colonialist, ableist, and otherwise dehumanizing language. Some of the description is original to the donor and/or the creator, and in these instances of creator- and donor-supplied titles, description may be retained to convey contextual/historical information of the materials. However, the collection is a candidate for ongoing reparative description work that can address cases in which a librarian or archivist may have supplied harmful descriptive language. We hope that researchers will engage in a dialogue with staff about issues in the collection and changes that could help.