Tom Thumb was born Charles S. Stratton in 1838. He was only five years old, stood 25 inches tall and weighed 16 lbs. when discovered by P. T. Barnum in 1842. Barnum taught the child to sing, dance and carry himself onstage, all the while, billing him as a European General.
 
Tom Thumb was on of Barnum's most successful sideshow performers and traveled all over the United States and Europe, meeting many heads of state, including: Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
 
In 1863 Tom Thumb married Lavinia Warren Bump, a perfectly proportioned woman who stood 31 inches tall. Their wedding was one of the most important social events of that season in New York, with over 2,000 guest attending the reception.
 
The baby seen in this photograph by Eisenmann was not the child of Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb, they were unable to have children. The child was an orphan acquired by Barnum, billed as Tom and Lavinia's child. But the child quickly outgrew the parents. So in each town in which they appeared, Barnum would rent a local child to pose as the baby of the couple.