And the hits just keep on coming

More news from my newly-involved friends. Bob Wilhelm sent me the link to a souvenir booklet from Narragansett that had a picture of Roger taking his first swim! It also ponied up with quite a bit of info on the Roger Williams Park Zoo menagerie at the time of the young prince's reign. This is too good. Who knows how much more stuff is out there?

Focusing on just one of the stories to begin with has been really helpful. I'm tweaking that chapter of Elephants In Rhode Island; the Book as I go along. But since I'm coming up with more graphics, I may be able to move out sooner than I expected with the movie.

Speaking of which- I got the LOC disc of A Unique Race that my kickstarter supporters bought for me. Unfortunately, the shots were taken from the front, which automatically slows down the action, so it looks more like A Unique Stroll, but what the hey. It is, in fact, unique, and connected with the project at hand.

More as things progress...

New finds

Today has been a bonanza, Baby Roger-wise.

First I ran across a reference in a jeweler's catalogue to a "Baby Roger Commemorative Spoons" that were being sold in 1893. I'm on the hunt for one of these dandies and could use all the help I could get. Tried ebay, and then emailed Robert M. Wilhelm, the head of a spoon collector's organization (you knew there had to be one!) to see if he could help me track one down.

Mr. Wilhelm is a very helpful man, and wrote back quickly to say he was on the hunt. He also asked if I'd seen a recent blog post at
http://chrisperridas.blogspot.com/2010/02/did-young-howard-meet-baby-roger-1893.html
Blimey! Blogger Chris Perridas found an ebayer who is selling an original picture of the beloved pachyderm! I had run across the Park Commission reports that refer to paying for this picture and selling copies of it. But there references to other pix I didn't know about either. For some reason, I can't find the seller on ebay (perhaps poor ebay safari skills...) but wrote to Chris asking for more info.

As if this weren't overwhelming enough, I also ran across old records of the Park Commission referring to their selling Roger (though they didn't give details. I suspect that I'll be able to track that down later). It seems that he was actually sold in 1903, not, as myth had it, in 1915. So I'm one step closer to getting his post-Providence story.

Life is sweet. More as things progress...