Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article

Historic Treasure of the Week - July 13, 1986
By Deborah Curtis
Vigo County Historical Society

Teddy Bears - 1907 book follows B&G through town

True teddy bear lovers would no doubt love their little bears no matter what name they carried. Would not a teddy bear, by any other name, be just a adorable? Likely so. Yet the bears might not be so numerous or as infinite in variety were it not for an event that took place in America over 80 years ago.

On November 15, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot at an exhausted, captured bear on a hunting trip. The next day, the president’s refusal to shoot the bear was used in a political cartoon to symbolize a dispute between Mississippi and Louisiana. The cartoon drew immediate public attention, and the cartoonist, Clifford Berryman, included the newly famous bear in many subsequent cartoons. The bear seemed to get younger and cuter with each new rendering.

So how did all this lead to the cuddly little critters we now call teddy bears? Toy animals, including bears, were not new. But when a shopkeeper in Brooklyn, aware of the publicity created by the presidential bear incident and cartoon, displayed two stuffed bears in his shop window, calling them "Teddy’s Bears" (with the permission of the president himself), he started a sensation. By 1907, the little shop had become the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co., which thrives yet today.

The teddy bear craze quickly created a marketing bonanza in the form of teddy bear-related postcards, books, bear clothes and every other imaginable teddy bear novelty. The most poplar teddy bear books were in the Teddy B and Teddy G series written by Seymour Eton.

This week’s historical treasure, a 1907 souvenir edition of "Teddy B and Teddy G Visit Yellow Springs," appears to be a blatant borrowing of the Eton bears. The book was written by Rosa Lee Stoddard.

The story, which is told in rhymed couplets, follows the travels of Teddy B and Teddy G on a week-long visit to Yellow Springs, Ohio. The bears wear suits and ties, walk upright and talk with the human characters they meet.

While the story is entertaining, the author’s obvious motive is to promote the town of Yellow Springs. The bears enjoy the town’s fine cuisine, receive excellent medical care, are treated courteously by the local banker and are impressed by the town’s fine educational system. They even become major town benefactors, endowing the local college with a large sum of money and financing the building of a city park and a public library. Throughout the book are photographs of the town’s major points of interest, along with sketches of the bears involved in community activities.

The copy of "Teddy B and Teddy G Visit Yellow Springs" was a gift from Betty Codding in 1981. It is on display in the General Store in the basement of the museum.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday through Friday.