Even Museums can make mistakes

[barrysloate]

I once went to a museum in Florida that had an exhibit on the history of photography. There was one case that displayed what they called a group of daguerreotypes, but there were clearly ambrotypes mixed in. They are actually pretty easy to differentiate: dags will reflect like mirrors if you shift your angle, and that won't happen with ambros. I wanted to point out the mistake but I figured they wouldn't really care.

Went to the small, Roslyn Museum in Roslyn, Washington (better known as the set of the TV's Northern Exposure). Roslyn was the hometown of Jimmy Claxton's father William Edward Claxton (1862-1943). There, they had a couple photos of Jimmy Claxton, and a short biography which explained how he went by the name "Chief Yellowhorse" and pitched for the Cleveland Indians organization. Too many errors to count, it was quite comical.

I made a note of it and gathered some articles the next time I went. A couple of articles which referred to Claxton as "Dark Horse", and of course pointed out that Moses "Chief" Yellowhorse was a "real ballplayer", not Claxton. That took some doing. Also pointed out he only made it as far up as the PCL's Oakland Oaks, yes he played for the Indians, but the Nebraska Indians, etc..

Asked them where they got the information, "out of a book called "Roslyn", by Jaimi Trimble". I checked out the book and sure enough, Cleveland Indians, Chief Yellowhorse, and they only missed the year he passed by 30 years. How do these things get published?