Marvels of History | Sideshow Profiles
Who Was The Man Known As “Oofty Goofty”?
The peculiar life of a German-Jewish sideshow performer based in America.
His name was “Oofty Goofty,” or at least, that was the nickname he came to adopt.
In 1900, a reporter for the Houston Daily post was contacted by a peculiar man with an even more strange name. Going by “Oofty Goofty,” the man told his story.
Born Leonard Borchardt in Berlin on April 26, 1862, after which his story really took off when, in 1876, Borchardt, at the age of 14, tried coming to the United States as a stowaway on the S.S. Fresia, only for the ship’s captain to catch him. After getting caught, Borchardt was made to work three crossings to earn his passage, finally succeeding in immigrating in 1878.
As Oofty recounted, after arriving in the United States, he drifted from city to city until he found himself penniless in Detriot, Michigan, as a snowstorm raged on January 27, 1883. At that point, he enlisted in the United States Army for five years¹. He was placed in Company K of the First Cavalry and stationed at the Jefferson Barracks Military Post. According to Borchardt, he was teased by his fellow soldiers for being Jewish.
