(The following article was originally published in "The White Tops" Sept./Oct. 1992. I have slightly revised it):

by Steve Willis
assisted by Charles Fattig

Somewhere between all the circus hype and local legends there existed a unique little person who left only a faint trail of his life.

This article does not pretend to present a complete picture of Major Mite; it is rather like an unfinished puzzle. For now, it's all we have.

Clarence Chesterfield Howerton was born in Oregon, Feb. 9, 1913, the third child of Frank and Helen (Crawford) Howerton. His family moved to McCleary, Washington shortly after Clarence's birth.

McCleary was a one-man principality run by timber baron Henry McCleary. Old Man McCleary owned most of the homes, the utilities, the stores and the bank. Workers were paid in script. He hated unions and imported a large number of Creeks and Italians to work for nonunion wages.

Clyde Haney, who arrived in McCleary from Hoquiam, Wash., in 1913, described the town at that time as "a typical Western town. The Marshall Dillon type. And many a poker game I saw altho I didn't play--there were some wild ones. Altho there were no saloons, it being prohibition times--there seemed to be several bootleggers--altho I never heard of one being arrested."

Angelo Pellegrini, who arrived in McCleary as a child from Italy in 1913 and went on to become a noted author and scholar, described his first impressions:

"The town had a primitive and inhuman quality, even the appearance of instability, as if it had been hurriedly put together by some wandering tribe for temporary shelter. It appeared at once very old and very young."

Genoffa Tincani, who arrived from Italy in 1919, didn't put too fine a point on her first impressions: "It was a dump then. You weren't safe to walk."

Frank Howerton appears in a group photograph taken about 1913 of the McCleary Timber Company Cutting Dept. He appears as an intense thin man with a beard.

The Howerton family expanded, until five sons were born. All grew to normal height, except for Clarence. He stopped growing at 28 inches, if all the unofficial documents can be believed, and weighing just 19 pounds, according to a claim in The Billboard. A specialist declared his lack of growth was due to a "deranged ductless gland," but he might have inherited his height from his mother. She stood at just over four feet tall.

Clarence was highly protected as a child and did not attend public school. Very few local people can recall him as a child, although Ivan Anderson remembered that Howerton "liked to sit on his younger brother's shoulder and that way he could go along with the other fellows on rambles afield."

The "origin" of Major Mite was later described in a Collier's article: ". .. his father took him to a lodge entertainment. He was the hit of the evening, and was immediately signed up by the fraternal order to accompany its vaudeville show, then about to start a tour of the West. This led to an engagement with a circus."

Another version has Clarence being shown by California showman H.W. McGeary, who signed up his "discovery" to appear at his San Francisco amusement area known as The Chutes, because it was built around a Shoot the Chutes ride.

But Clarence soon found himself with a circus. Not just any circus, mind you, but the big one, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The year was 1923. Although Major Mite in reality was a mere 10 years of age, the hype had him at 18. This could have been "embellishing" the truth for advertising purposes, or an effort to avoid child labor laws.

He was an instant sideshow hit. He visited President Harding at the White House in 1922. Major Mite became the Tom Thumb of the Jazz Age. But other than being extremely little, Major Mite did not have the acting talent or presentation of Charles Stratton. His mere size, however, made him one of the stars of the Ringling show for almost 20 continuous years.

Howerton was always accompanied by his mother during his circus tours. And rather than spending the winters in Florida, son and mother returned to McCleary every time the big top was put into hibernation. During one such McCleary stay, tragedy hit the Howerton family. In January 1926, Frank Howerton shot himself. He had been scheduled for an operation, but "had been in hopelessly poor health."

Shortly before leaving on his next tour with his mother and brother, Roy, in March 1926, Major Mite was sworn in as an honorary veteran by the McCleary VFW, proclaiming him "our diminutive claim to publicity."

The Major's years with Ringling Bros. - Barnum & Bailey started in 1923 and continued off and on until 1946. In 1936 and 1948 he worked with Cole Bros. Circus. He was frequently paired with the giant Jacob Erlich, who was billed as both Jack Earl and Jack Earle.

Whenever Major Mite returned to McCleary, he instantly became a source of fascination. Dud Nelson recalled, "He had a wrinkled little face and a moustache, was a real curiosity to the town kids." As he grew older he developed a devilish sense of humor. "Major Mite liked to smoke cigars and drink beer," Russ McMillan said, "startling people who at first would think he was a small child."

Major Mite liked to wear his top hat and spats around McCleary, quite a contrast to his muddy fellow townsmen. He was also noted for his incredibly foul language and demanding nature.

A piano player for the silent movie theater in McCleary wrote: "The roof leaked and you just kept moving from a wet seat to a dry one. Sitting in the dampness didn't do the action any good and it was rough going. So many keys stuck it was like using a board but the people didn't seem to mind. They cheered the good guys and booed the villain and wolf whistled at the pretty girls of the old silent screen. Rats had free run of the place and often slid round my feet and the old kitchen chair that served as my piano stool."

The piano player might have added one more detail to this rustic scene--a little man with a top hat and spats using his cane to bat the head of the poor unfortunate sitting in front of him, demanding to know what the captions said (remember, Clarence Howerton never went to school) by yelling, "Read that to me, you son of a bitch!"

When Prohibition ended, the Major would march into a tavern in full top hat regalia, kick the shins of the nearest person, and order, "Set me up on the bar, you bastard!" If he felt really mean, he would run the length of the bar, drop-kicking anything in his path.

This was the Major Mite of legend, of word of mouth. But even the local newspaper, The McCleary Stimulator, knew the Major was good copy, even if facts could not be confirmed. The Aug. 12, 1927, edition reported Major Mite had been married (he would have been 14 years old at the time): "Confirmation of his marriage could not be obtained at this late hour, but we are assured that his bride is another small person with whom he became acquainted while on tour." The report was pure fiction, as near as we can ascertain today.

From Nov. 11. 1938, to Dec. 28, 1938, Major Mite, along with almost 125 other little people, enjoyed a brief feature film career as a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz motion picture. He played the last of the three trumpeteers who herald the arrival of the Mayor of Munchkinland. Fellow Munchkin trumpeter Karl Slover recalled, "We were about the shortest of the bunch." The Major went on to appear in several Our Gang comedies.

The Howerton family appears to have left McCleary some time in the 1930s, shortly before Oz. Major Mite left MGM and returned to the big top for a few more years, but apparently his health was not good. After 1941, he went on only three more tours--with Ringling in 1943 and 1946, and Cole Bros. in 1948. At the ripe old age of 35, he retired.

Bruce Hawkins, who currently lives in McCleary, worked odd jobs with the Clyde Beatty Circus in the early 1950s. He recalls Major Mite, still accompanied by his unwelcome mother, making a brief public appearance when the circus went through Portland, Ore., in 1952-1953. He had the impression the Howertons were living in Portland.

While Major Mite may or may not have been residing in Portland, back in McCleary another figure of note raised eyebrows. Around 1943 Cecil "Primo" Boling stopped growing, reaching a height of 7 feet, 10 inches. To have two such extremes from such a tiny outpost gained national attention for McCleary, evoking a number of theories about the water. Primo had a brief career with the circus, but elected not to pursue the circus lifestyle.

Throughout the remainder of the 1950s and 1960s, Major Mite vanishes from the record. He turns up again in 1970, living with a niece in the small town of Dayton, Ore. He died of pneumonia on Nov. 18, 1975, in a hospital in McMinnville, Ore. Clarence was buried in Mountainview Cemetery in Oregon City, Ore. He had outlived all of his family except for one brother.

Special thanks to Fred Dahlinger, Jr., director of the Robert L. Parkinson Library and
Research Center at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.