Annie3

(above) This ad published in May 1874 is the first time we see the showname "Annie Jones" in print.
(right) There were indeed other hairy children who were exhibited as this portrait of an unidentified girl testifies.
(below) Earliest photographic portrait of a teenage Annie Jones, clearly prior to the "look" she would eventually develop. My guess this is Annie at age 14 or 15 shortly before her first marriage.

In Annie's travels with Barnum's show she came to know Billy Donovan. Billy was the son of the wardrobe mistress connected with Barnum's show. A wardrobe mistress' job was to make sure the various circus costumes were clean and kept in good repair and stored in an orderly fashion so the shows could go off smoothly.
    Billy and Annie as children became fast friends. But over the course of the twelve seasons they worked together their fondness for each other became stronger. As the circus season would end the two were parted. Annie would continue to earn money in various dime museums through the winter until the springtime when she would once again join up with Barnum's show as it prepared for its new season. The partings became more and more difficult, the reunions more and more joyful. Annie and Billy had became lovers.
     Wary and watchful of this relationship was Billy's mother Anna. An unwritten rule, but strictly enforced nevertheless, was that circus personnel did not mix with the "freaks". As odd, barbaric or primitive as it may sound to us now, at the time within the circus, that was a social strata that one did not cross.
     Anna was apparently OK with the friendship as all was done discreetly. But in 1882 when the couple announced their intentions to marry Anna was fit to be tied! She hadn't a clue the relationship had advanced that far. Annie was then fourteen years old and American law allowed a girl to be legally married withoiut parental consent at 15. For the entire season that year Billy, who was now 22, and his mother went back and forth, each pleading and imploring with the other. Long story short, Mom put the kibosh on the impending nuptials, threatening to blacklist her own son.
     Billy relented.
     Annie, as strong and resolute as her intended mother-in-law, declared that if she wasn't worthy to have the Donovan name she would take another.
      The ticket-taker and talking-man for the side show, Richard Jacob Elliott, had his eye on Annie for a long time. His propositions toward her, though, were always rebuffed as Annie's eyes were set on the young Donovan.
With this new turn of events, saddened and frustrated and feeling that her lover had chosen his mother over herself Annie now turned to Richard and accepted his overtures.
     Jacob married "Esau" in New York at the start of the circus season in 1883.