Owen Pomery, creator of the brilliant The Megatherium Club, recently received some fan mail. Obviously this in itself is far from an unusual event (maybe), but the writer of said email was of particular interest to Owen and the rest of us at AHP Towers, for it was Lorin Ottlinger, Assistant Director at The Grove National Historic Landmark. As I’m sure you all know, this was the boyhood home of none other than Megatherium Club member Robert Kennicott!
Robert Kennicott
1835 – 1866
Bloody loved a field mission, so much so that he
died on one. He has a glacier, a river and
a valley named in his honour.
Still resides at the Smithsonian, in skeletal form.
Lorin has kindly allowed us to print truncated excerpts from a couple of her emails below. This is all genuinely exciting to us, but then we’re basically geeks.
Hello Owen,
I work at The Grove National Historic Landmark, the boyhood home of naturalist Robert Kennicott. Our Archivist recently stumbled upon your “Megatherium Club” comic online. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it. I have created many exhibits and interpretive pieces about Kennicott and the other Megatheria and I was surprised at the accuracy of your depiction—right down to their drunken shenanigans.
Robert Kennicott was indeed a fascinating man—both in his life and beyond. Not sure how much you read, but he died mysteriously on the banks of the Yukon River in what is now Alaska, at the ripe old age of 30. There was a lot of speculation as to the cause of his death—everything from murder to suicide to accidental poisoning. It took nearly a year to bring his body back to The Grove for burial and, by all accounts, it was in a remarkable state of preservation. A few years back we had the opportunity to exhume the remains for forensic autopsy. A team from the Smithsonian (of course) headed by Dr. Doug Owsley came out to open the coffin and do a complete anthropological and pathological study. Their conclusion was that poor Robert died from a heart condition. Anticlimactic, yes, but at least the mystery is solved. I’ve attached a couple of photos—one of the Smithsonian team and one of the lucky girl (me) who got to clean Kennicott’s skull. We put together an amazing exhibit about Kennicott, his accomplishments, his untimely death and all of the interesting information gleaned from the autopsy. It was definitely the coolest project I’ve ever been involved with.
Thanks for the laughs!
Lorin Ottlinger
Assistant Director
The Grove National Historic Landmark
Here are those photos Lorin mentioned. Do check out their website as well, fascinating stuff! If you’re ever in the Chicago area and pop in be sure to mention The Megatherium Club. If you show them a copy I’m sure they’ll give you a discount on their entry prices (Disclaimer: I’m not at all sure).
The first issue of The Megatherium Club is available in our shop and the sequel is currently appearing in instalments in Reads.