Description
The American Museum of Natural History certificate acknowledging that John B. Stetson, Jr., eldest son of Stetson Company founder John B. Stetson, has donated a petrified hat to the museum's collections, January 20, 1937. Signed by the museum's Secretary, Clarence L. Hay. Includes a hand-written envelope initially addressed to Mr. Stetson in New York, and crossed out to reach him at the family's estate in Pennsylvania, Elkins Park. See SHC 2024.7.20 through SHC 2024.7.23 for accompanying set of four photographs. According to an August 26, 1946 report in Time Magazine, on a trip to Arizona in 1901, John B. Stetson, Jr. tossed his Stetson hat in Fossil Creek, near the great Natural Bridge. Twenty years later, the hat had turned into a forty-pound chunk of limestone, still in the recognizable shape of a Stetson hat, and it was this which was donated to the museum.
Repository
University Archives, duPont-Ball Library, Stetson University, DeLand, Florida
