This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Curator Jason Schubert of the J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum in Oklahoma discusses unique artifacts from the Museum's collection in this Museum Minute series. Students at Northeast Technology Center in Claremore, Oklahoma, collaborated with the Museum to explore both the job of curating at a museum and the background stories of museum objects.
Jason Schubert (00:13): Everybody wants to know someone famous. Everybody wants to have a connection to somebody that they've seen TV or read about. And this isn't a new phenomenon. Everybody wants to have some kind of connection to fame that we all hope will come about as our own fame.
Jason Schubert (00:39): Here we have a pistol that the story we have says that it came from Jesse James. It was obtained from Perry Samuel, whose mother was a slave in the service of the mother of Frank and Jesse James. And there's more stories that goes in on it. Well, that first part may be true. However, you have to know the history.
Jason Schubert (01:08): You have to know the provenance, and you also have to know that Jesse James's mother, she made a fairly decent living off of selling mementos of her son's life. For a few dollars, you could take a pebble from Jesse's grave, which after things got kind of worn out and all the pebbles were gone, she'd just go down to the creek, get scoop up some more creek stones.
Jason Schubert (01:38): Mrs. James also bought a lot of secondhand guns. And if the visitor was buying enough of what she was telling, excuse the pun, well, she might offer them one of Jesse's guns, one that he used in such and such place, why, she'd even write out a bill of sale. Well, she had a box full of them. She was just making money off of the tourist trade. And so be careful when you go looking for famous guns, is it really Jesse James's gun? Is it really Bill Raidler's gun? Another outlaw.
Jason Schubert (02:32): So enjoy our history, but do a little research on you own. Learn history and keep studying, while you're at it, come visit us here at the J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum, and check out some of our outlaw and law man guns. I'm Jason Schubert for the J.M. Davis museum, and this is Museum Minute.
Asset ID: 2022.01.02
