History of Manny

The documents and information on these pages offer a deep dive into the true story of Manny the Mastodon, whose history inspired the picture book My Friend Manny.

You will find a collection of primary and secondary source materials, including personal manuscripts, original correspondence, and historical newspaper clippings, that illuminate the mastodon’s real-life journey. These texts highlight the contributions of key figures involved in the discovery and preservation of the skeleton, such as Joseph R. Hackett, the farm owner who unearthed the skull and bones in 1868, and William Valiant, the assistant curator at the Rutgers Geology Museum who was central to organizing and maintaining the collection.

 The source texts are organized into sections that trace Manny’s timeline from the initial uncovering in a Mannington, New Jersey, marl pit to his display at the museum. The links detail the difficult excavation work and early exhibition of the skeleton for a 10-cent fee, documented in a 1931 newspaper article. You can read a 1870 letter from Hackett to George H. Cook negotiating the skeleton’s purchase price, as well as documents detailing the restoration process that began in 1895. The collection includes Valiant’s personal ledger and manuscripts, which record his painstaking two-week repair of a badly damaged tusk in 1898 and news coverage from 1899 about the mastodon’s display on the second floor of the Geological Hall.