2015.2.1 Back
Mark Twain Frog Jump Button Pin
Button, Pin-back
June 10 1978 (Date manufactured/created)
Button, Pin-back
Aluminum, Metal, Ink
, 3 inches Diameter
Metal pin-back button with a white face featuring green text and a yellow and green frog in the act of jumping. The frog has a tag tied around its abdomen with the number 8 on it. The green typed text reads: "Mark Twain June 10, 1978 Frog Jump". The frog spans the diameter of the front at center with the text above and below. Back is concave aluminum with a pin clasp. The first press reference to a jumping frog contest in Hartford –commemorating “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” Clemens’s breakthrough work of 1865 – is from 1944, when a tourney was held in Colt Park. Ten teams represented city boys’ clubs and the Hartford Junior Police Legion of Honor. In the 1950s the Mark Twain Memorial Commission and the Hartford Children’s Museum organized an annual contest, which was wildly popular. In 1966, winners began being recorded on these boards, displayed at each event. The winner of the final jump, in 1978, probably wore a button like the one displayed. Though her name is not recorded on the board, the winner was Carroll Cummings, a 14-year-old “bespectacled female frog jockey” from Vermont, with her frog “Canasta.”But in 1979 sentiment against the use of animals in this way led to the Memorial’s discontinuing the event. In 2019, however, the museum hit on a new idea: reviving the event with robotic frogs, for the annual Tom Sawyer Day on June 8.
The Mark Twain House & Museum, Gift of Ken Dubay and Family
2015.2.1