Alligators and Ostriches: The Story of Sara Emma Tolmie and Alligator Joe

By Elizabeth Fulford

Every once in a while, the Wing Family tree adds an exotic leaf. This happened in December 1900 when a Sarah Emma Tolmie married Ian Hubert Campbell. Sarah, also known as Sadie, was Mary Thankful Wing’s granddaughter and she found her soul mate in Ian who was also known as Alligator Joe. 

in 1872, Ian was born in Berhampur, India, to a decorated British military family. Ian came to the US as a young man and the story goes that he rode with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and there learned about gators and ostrich training. Sadie, who was born in Quebec but lived in Saratoga Springs, NY, met Ian when he exhibited his traveling show there.

Sadie’s father, John Tolmie was a prosperous businessman who owned a store which sat across the Canadian - U.S. border. It had doors on both sides so if something was cheaper in one country, no one took much notice of where it was being sold…and there was maybe some smuggling going on too. Sadie’s aunt, Alexina Tolmie, was one of the first women to break the trail to the gold fields at the beginning of the Klondike gold rush, so Sadie had adventure in her genes.

Sadie and Ian Hubert Campbell settled in Arkansas where Ian adopted the name Alligator Joe and set up the Hot Springs Alligator Farm. From there they migrated, with their menagerie, to Jacksonville, Florida, and Joe opened the Florida Alligator Farm which he merged with an existing ostrich farm. He and Sadie lived on a houseboat on the St. Johns River. In the photo on the left we see Joe showing the terrible teeth and jaws of a big gator for a newspaper story.

Campbell trained his gators to race and to carry riders. The alligators' education extended to climbing and to waltzing. 

In 1907, the Dixieland Park exposition and resort opened at the ferry landing in South Jacksonville, where Alligator Joe, some ostriches and alligators, together with electric fountains, burros, bands and theater productions, were major attractions. 

The gators climbed ladders, slid down chutes and carted children on their broad, rough backs. Campbell was becoming famous in the movies and newsreels for his alligator shenanigans and study of the creatures. 

At this time Florida alligators were being shot by the thousands and Campbell, who was an ardent conservationist, was intent on keeping them from extinction while still entertaining the public with his extravagant showmanship. His goal, often forgotten, was the preservation of the alligator species, which was being destroyed much like the buffalo. River boat cruises were offered solely for the sport of shooting gators.

While Campbell wrestled the reptiles and delivered lectures, Sadie managed the store at the Alligator Farm, which sold anything imaginable made from alligator parts, including ashtrays and purse latches (made from the smaller heads), etc. In addition to meat and hides, every part was utilized, creating products from alligator oil to claw purses, from embryos for study to eggshells for souvenirs. In addition, filling orders from across the country, together with instructions for care, the Campbell's shipped thousands of baby gators in light, cypress boxes filled with Spanish moss.

Sadie was a small woman who enjoyed touring with her husband to exhibit the collection.  She also liked tracking the swamps with him. She learned how to trap the snakes dangling from the trees overhanging the river and could mimic a gator’s call so well that they would come up out of the water to see her. In the photo (right) she’s holding a boa constrictor around her neck.

She even drove racing ostriches. Her first ostrich race was held before a large Canadian audience.  A small sulky was hitched to the ostrich and the plan was to race around the track against a horse, but there was a problem at the start: a balloon was floating over the track; the bird saw it, became frightened and sat down. They finally had to put a hood over its head and coax it up. Sadie said, “Finally we got it up and going, and then we really did go.” Sadie was wearing a big corduroy skirt which blew up in the wind and made it hard for her to steer the bird. She careened past the grandstand but held on and eventually beat the horse. Joe watched in panic, but she persevered and continued to do this stunt many times.

Sadie and her mother, Georgiana Robbins, were mentioned in the June,1923 OWL with a photo of the birthday cake that Sadie made when her mother visited them in Florida. The article was titled “Wing History Sweetly Prepared.” The cake is described as “large and artistically planned, made to represent an anciently bound book purporting to be the Wing Family history.” Sadie’s mother Georgianna was a WFA member, and a photo of the Tolmie family was featured in the 1923 OWL.

Alligator Joe died March 10, 1926, at age 53.  He did not die a spectacular death, but from pneumonia caused by typhoid fever. 

Sadie designed a show stopping 5-foot-tall headstone for him. It had a cheerful looking alligator across the top, and in the ground, at the foot of the stone, was a plaque with his name and dates. Sadie’s small marker is right beside it. After Joe’s death, she remarried to a man named W.D. Godfrey who had worked on the farm helping Joe. She died in 1974.

Lineage: Sarah Emma Tolmie; Georgianna Robbins; Mary Thankful Wing; Charles Wing; Benjamin; Jabez; John II; John; Daniel: Rev. John

Much of the information for this article came from: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~leestrees/genealogy/hicampbell.html