Archive Note
Augustus "Gus" Wagner was born in 1872 in Marietta, Ohio, and shipped out as a young man. His world voyage of 1898 to 1902 took him through Borneo, Java, Australia, Japan, and Europe, where he acquired hand poke tattoos from indigenous and overseas practitioners. He returned thoroughly tattooed and promoted himself in the circus sideshow circuit as "the most artistically marked up man in America." At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (the St. Louis World's Fair) in 1904, Gus met Maud Stevens, an aerialist and contortionist. She agreed to a tattooing lesson in exchange for a date; the exchange initiated a working and personal partnership. The couple married on 3 October 1904, and Maud became the first documented professional female tattooist in the United States, working in the same hand poke method Gus had learned abroad. Their daughter Lotteva Wagner Davis began tattooing at age nine. Gus Wagner is documented to 1941. He is distinct from Charlie Wagner (Karl Eduard Wagner, born 1875), the New York Chatham Square Bowery tattooist at 11 Chatham Square who patented an electric machine in 1904; the two men shared a surname and an era but neither a lineage nor a working method. Gus carried hand poke practice inland from coastal port cities into the small town American interior via fairs and carnivals.