In the spring of 1861 – at the start of the American Civil War in Camp Wayne in West Chester, PA, a civilian gifted the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry with a four week old puppy. The soldiers named her Sallie Ann Jarrett after their commanding officer, Colonel Phaon Jarrett and a young townswoman they were fond of.
The attached press photo appeared in a side story by an American media company – ACME Newspictures, dated November 2, 1933. In Archive #7, we will discuss this unexpected interspecies relationship between a Boston Bulldog named Peaches and a wild rabbit.
For nearly a century, generations of children grew up watching some version of a pit bull dog named Pete the Pup. In Archive #6, we take a look at the real life dog who played the character of Pete in the Our Gang comedy series.
Given that today is Memorial Day, it provides us with an opportunity to showcase a pit bull terrier representing the U.S. and its values for the next installment of The Archives. There’s plenty to choose from, too, but for Archive #5 we settled on this well known 1915 WWI propaganda poster by artist – Wallace Robinson.
Two of the first three blog entries of this series have been cabinet card photographs. How about we go three out of the first four? Because this early 1900s pit bull and baby on a cabinet card is simply put – adorable.
We’ve already seen one white pit bull dog on a cabinet card from the 1890s in this blog series – The Archives. In Archive #3 we have yet another! But, this time it’s a white pit bull with his children taken in 1893. Yes, that exact year.
In the first entry of this special blog series – The Archives, I chose to start it off with a white pit bull dog on a Cabinet Card photograph from the 1890s. That timeframe would have been when the American Pit Bull Terrier breed name was born. This entry – Archive #2, of a pit bull dog laying at the feet of a gentleman smoking a pipe dates even further back to the 1870s!
In this blog series – The Archives, we are going to explore the pit bull dog debate through vintage items of yesteryear. There’s a story in these artifacts that will help paint a more accurate picture of the complicated history of pit bull terriers, and how we got here.
In this third episode – titled “The Fight Against Dogfighting“, of this inaugural season of the “I Am Human. This Is My Dog.” podcast, we pivot back to the topic of dogfighting in the direct aftermath of the Michael Vick.
