Unfortunately, details are sketchy, but some stories claim their stepfather may have ran off with a large portion of the money. Meanwhile, their mother found a young, white lawyer and filed a lawsuit against the Greatest Show on Earth for back wages for her two sons, and won. She is not dead.” THE RETURN HOMEĪfter being missing for decades, the Muse Brothers were finally able to go home with their mother however the conditions in Virginia were said to be worse than they were on the road with the circus. According to some accounts, she made her way to the front of the audience and in an interview with NPR, writer Beth Macy states, “scene that’s been recounted for four generations now, Willie, the older brother, sees her, elbows George and says, look, there’s our dear old mother. Either way, she went to go get her boys who would have been in their 30s during this time. Some accounts say she dreamed her boys were in the circus, some say she was told they were a part of the circus.

At the time, their mother could not read, but had heard the circus had come to town. The Greatest Show on Earth, Barnum and Bailey came to Roanoke Virginia in 1927. Harriet Muse was able to get her boys back because she never gave up looking for them. It turned out that even though the brothers could not read, they could play their banjos by ear, and would play these instruments during their circus features. At one point, they were given instruments as some sort of prop in their performances the instruments were meant to be used as a joke. The brothers were not paid for their appearances in the circus, even though they were one of the more popular acts being featured. Other show names included, “Eastman’s Monkey Men” and “Darwin’s Missing Links”. They were also described as brothers who “ descended from monkeys in the dark continent with Neanderthal heads, caveman bodies and tremendous shocks of hair that stand out on their heads like the wigs on Raggedy Ann dolls”. Some of the show names the brothers were called are: “Eko and Iko, The Sheep-headed Cannibals”, “Two Ecuadorean White Savages”, and “Ambassadors from Mars”. The descendants of the Muse brothers have never accepted or confirmed that their mother made the boys work with the Circus as children. When she sent for them, they were traveling the world with the Circus and she spent decades trying to get them back. Another version stated that their mother, Harriet Muse, had put them to work in the circus with the expectation that they would be returned to her. The brothers have confirmed that they had been informed their mother was dead, but that they never believed it and knew they would see her again one day.

One version stated they were simply abducted and told their mother had died. There are two versions of the story on how the boys were taken from their homes. In 1899, the boys were about 6 and 9 years old when they never returned home. Here are some fascinatingly disturbing facts about the life story of George and Willie Muse: In another heartbreaking American tale of blacks living in the era of Jim Crow, the Muse Brothers are a testament to strength and overcoming adversity during a time when all hope seemed lost. The lives of George and Willie Muse remain one of the thousands of disturbing tales hidden deep within American Black History however Paramount is vying to get their hands on the life story of these two brothers.

George and willie muse