by Mim E. Rivas
On the other hand, even without the drive and innovation of Albert Rogers, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals flourished and more than honored its founder throughout the decades to come. In 1912, the Angell Memorial Fountain was dedicated in Boston’s Post Office Square, followed soon by the opening of the George T. Angell School (in service over five decades), and the establishment in 1915 of the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital. That same year, the first national “Be Kind to Animals Day” celebration took place, proposed by the MSPCA. No credit was given to Albert Rogers, even though he might have taken some comfort in its passage. Angell’s followers went further, opening animal shelters and veterinary teaching hospitals across the state. In 1944, the S.S. George T. Angell, a ten-thousand-ton liberty ship, was christened, and fourteen years after, Angell Memorial Plaza was dedicated at Post Office Square.
Another one of Albert’s ideas was pursued in 1956 when the MSPCA formed an alliance with Britain’s RSPCA to create an international humane alliance, the ISPCA, later to be renamed WSPCA. In 1968, after celebrating the 100th anniversary of what George Angell had started and estimating that thirty-nine million animals had been helped over its first century, the MSPCA continued to grow—rescuing animals in disaster zones, campaigning against animal overpopulation and the exploitation of animal performers, and even, in 1991, sponsoring a literacy outreach program through the AHES to provide free books on humane subject matter to classrooms. In 2003, the organization changed its name to become MSPCA-Angell in recognition of its seven animal shelters and three veterinary centers. Two years earlier, the first Annual Animal Hall of Fame dinner had been held, 102 years since Beautiful Jim Key had become the first brute animal they had ever honored.
Rogers felt that he had been cast out of Eden. But with classic American entrepreneurial gumption, A. R. Rogers soon reinvented himself. In the midst of his gloom it occurred to him that the job of promoting others was far riskier and far more thankless than the job of promoting oneself and one’s own ideas. Almost the moment he hung out his shingle as a marketing consultant, he was hired by planning committees of fairs and exhibitions from across the country, and in 1912 he stepped into a distinguished position as manager of New York’s Grand Central Palace, where he was responsible for overseeing every aspect of the special exhibits and touring expositions it housed. On January 26, 1935, seventy-one-year-old Albert made it into the newspaper for the first time in two and a half decades when the New York Times ran a brief article under the headline “Gets Tercentenary Post”:
Hartford, Conn. Jan. 25—Albert R. Rogers, director of the Massachusetts tercentenary and Georgia Bicentennial celebrations, and organizer and director of many exhibitions and celebrations elsewhere, has become associated with the Connecticut Tercentenary Commission as director of celebration, the State commission announced today. Mr. Rogers, whose home is now in West Newton, Mass., is a native of Ohio and connected with the Rogers family associated with the early settlement of Connecticut.
No mention was made of Beautiful Jim Key or Albert’s previous incarnation as his promoter and alleged owner. That didn’t mean, however, that Rogers hadn’t tried in different ways to resurrect that part of his former life. In the 1920s, he corresponded with breeders of educated horses, and in 1927, he clipped out an article in the New York Times entitled “Tell of Mind Link to Horses and Dogs” by a German doctor named Karl Krall, who trained nonhumans with telepathy and hypnosis. It had to have brought into question everything that Dr. Key and Jim had convinced A. R. Rogers was true. Was Jim a hoax? Was telepathy at work? Had Dr. Key hypnotized his audience? Was Rogers himself a hoax? Or was it all true, that it was simply education with a little trickery and real hocus-pocus thrown in?
Rogers had at various points attempted to write a book about his adventures promoting the Celebrated Educated Arabian-Hambletonian, but each of the myriad drafts fell short of capturing what it had been like to be along for that ride. After he retired and moved in with Archibald and his family in Brockton, Albert returned to the project, poring often over his scrapbooks and his memories.
After the last letter he had received from Dr. Key at the end of 1907, Rogers had corresponded with Stanley for news of his former partners and to compare notes about the two known offspring of Jim Key. Old Jim had sired a pretty filly named Queen Key who went up North to live at Glenmere, where she was trained by Clarence Rogers—Albert’s firstborn, and on his way to becoming a college graduate—and there was also a colt, Jim Key Jr. Dr. Davis wrote that he was “a very smart little horse” and that he hoped to train him. Unfortunately, Dr. Stanley Davis wrote early in their correspondence, Jim Jr.’s eyes bothered him quite a deal. “He has a case of periodic ophthalmia. I hope that he will get all right.” Davis had been impressed that Queen Key already had her own letterhead with Clarence’s name on it, promoting her education by kindness and patience. Young Doc Davis signed off that letter by cheerily saying, “I hope Clarence will have success with her as you had with Jim Key.”
Inevitably, Dr. Davis had occasion to report less cheerful news. By 1909, he was already much in demand in his growing veterinary practice, which he had built after taking over Dr. Key’s offices on North Main Street. This was a career that would span fifty years and earn him the love and admiration of Bedford County, black and white. But no matter how busy he was, he still stopped by daily to check on Doc Key, Jim, Monk, and Maggie. Sometimes he’d arrive on a sunny afternoon to find a little group of visitors watching the Doctor and Jim in impromptu performances. Dressed in his fine suit and boots, though hatless in the warm weather, Dr. Key obviously enjoyed the attention as much as Jim.
As beautiful and regal as ever, somewhat slimmed down at age twenty, Jim Key no longer seemed to mind the smaller audiences, as if in his equine sense memory he could conjure the old roar of the crowds and was, as ever, making sure to give them a show they would never forget. Jim was frequently draped in one of his many expensive, monogrammed blankets, like any aging star comfortably lounging in a smoking jacket and cravat, but who just happened to be a horse.
Monk was less ornery to people stopping by, not because he had succumbed to the rules of Southern hospitality, but more because he was getting up in years. When the Doc and Jim had no audience, Monk made himself available as a lifelong fan and friend by springing onto a sole chair set up in the yard just for him. Otherwise, Dr. Davis would find him on the front porch, resting in the shade next to Maggie, who was content in her reading chair, the two keeping cool under the overhang of the charming white frame house on Bethany Lane.
Stanley was one who knew that William Key’s death on October 18, 1909, had been expected. The Doctor had been on the decline since the end of that summer. Even as he grew weaker, Bill Key read his newspapers and books, keeping up with the daily news as he peered into the future he would soon be leaving behind. One of the last pages he took out from the newspaper had been from the Sunday edition of the Chattanooga Times, an Ochs-owned paper, which had a column from Harvard’s president, Charles Eliot, that had captured Dr. Key’s interest. It was a list of Eliot’s recommended reading for giving any man a liberal education, even if read for only fifteen minutes a day, something the Doc optimistically planned to do. Among the recommended authors were Plato, Bacon, Milton, Emerson, Browning, Marlowe, Dryden, Shelley, Plutarch, Epictetus, Tennyson, and Goethe, and specific titles included Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Fruits of Solitude by William Penn, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Middleton’s The Changeling, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Pilgrim’s Progress, Canterbury Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and Arabian Nights.
An obituary in the Shelbyville Gazette referred to a few but not all of the many chapters in Dr. William Key’s life, noting his enormous success with Keystone Liniment and Beautiful Jim Key, as well as his service as a veterinarian and prominent member of the community. The obituary author expressed surprise at the large numbers of individuals, both white an
d of color, who attended the funeral services and flocked up the hill at the Willow Mount Cemetery to witness his burial. The article stated that his comfortable estate was thought to be worth around $15,000.
William Key’s comfortable estate was worth many times that estimate, but it was convenient for his heirs that outsiders didn’t know the particulars. Ever the poker player, even in death, he kept those cards close to the vest. He did swear at the time he made out his last will and testament in 1904, “I am not the father of any living child and have never been.” Dr. Key had been frugal but never stingy, and he had divested himself of property, trust accounts, and cash to friends and loved ones over the years, not in loans but in gifts to support individual education, to pay for funerals and the creation of businesses, and to fund charities in the areas of humane education and African-American concerns. The property and money he had at the time of his death he left mainly to Maggie and Stanley, with miscellaneous smaller gifts to various relatives on the Key, Davis, and Davidson sides, and to friends. The large acreage on Tullahoma Highway—also called Dixie Highway—later passed from Maggie to Stanley and Sam. Dr. Key left no instructions for the care of Jim in his will, perhaps because he knew that Stanley would be in charge. William Key did have one request for himself—he wished that a monument of some significance be placed at his grave.
Maggie did just that. The impressive tombstone she selected was appropriately unusual. Made of marble that was half rough-hewn and half-smooth, it appeared to be of two worlds, fitting of course because Bill was always of two worlds. With the name KEY prominent on its base and the word PEACE on its top, it bore the simple inscription: “Dr. Wm. Key, Trainer of Jim Key, 1833–1909.”
Maggie, Monk, Stanley, and Sam could think of little they could do to mend Jim Key’s heart. In mourning the loss of his best friend, he went into a steep decline, his rheumatism becoming more acute, now with pain, swelling, and fever. These episodes grew more frequent, when Jim could be moving about and suddenly lie down wherever he happened to be and not be able to get up without the special pulley device Dr. Davis had developed for him. But the most worrisome symptom was his apparently unstable mental state.
Then, after Monk died around this same time, Jim developed a kind of amnesia, as if he couldn’t recall anything Dr. Key had ever taught him, barely recognizing Stanley or Maggie or any of those around him trying to do whatever they could muster to make him feel a little better. Jim responded to everything with a faraway, fearful look that asked: Who are you? And worse: Who am I?
Albert Rogers later wrote in one of his versions of Jim’s biography that when Dr. Key died at the age of seventy-six, “it was feared that Jim Key would die also for they had never been separated, and the affection between the two was marvelous. Fortunately, for a number of years previous, Dr. Stanley Davis, a brother-in-law of Dr. Key’s, had been the groom while studying to be a veterinary, and was constantly in attendance on Jim Key.”
Over the next year, thanks to “everything that love, kindness and money could do to end Jim’s life with every comfort,” he improved noticeably. With around-the-clock supervision, he was not allowed to languish, and Dr. Davis, or “Uncle Pet” as his family members called him, put him on a diet and exercise regime that the dramatic horse soon started complaining about. A hired groom responsible for getting Jim up to his feet and taking him for his daily walk had gotten badly on Jim’s nerves one afternoon when Sam and Essie Davis stopped by to check up on him and Maggie.
Essie gave Jim a rub along his neck, asking, “Well, Jim, they treatin’ you all right?”
Jim glanced over at the groom to make sure he wasn’t watching, then turned back to Essie and shook his head from side to side, very pointedly indicating no. On other days, he was himself again, an entertainer, able to demonstrate when cajoled into practicing, that he could yet be considered a scholar and model office boy.
Beautiful Jim Key turned twenty-three in early 1912, not ancient in equine years, but slowing down even more. Jim had managed to have some better days here and there, although Stanley anticipated it wouldn’t be long before he was completely lame. As a last resort, Albert Rogers, back in the money at that point, offered to pay for Jim to receive treatment again at the San Antonio sulfur baths.
At least four or more versions emerged about what happened next.
In Albert’s own recollection, Jim was taken to Texas, helped, and returned to Tennessee much improved, but not entirely.
In a second version that was published in the Shelbyville Gazette, dated September 18, 1912, with the headline “Jim Key Dies,” he didn’t survive the trip home from Texas and died en route, according to a dispatch from Potosi, Missouri, where the news broke. The Shelbyville paper noted:
Jim was raised and educated here by the late Dr. Wm. Key. Pretty nearly every one here who went to the World’s Fair seven years ago saw Jim. He was the educated horse that was shown in a pavilion on the Pike and was known as the smartest horse ever, which all who saw him will admit…. Jim was about 16 years old and his training began with his colthood. So much education was not good for him, however, and he went crazy before his death.
A third version, which appeared decades later, was that Beautiful Jim Key died of diabetes caused by an overconsumption of sugar. That was to be a warning against giving too much candy to future generations of children growing up in Bedford County, who were told the supposedly true story of the horse who could almost talk.
The other, most credible, and documented version was that Dr. Stanley Davis did not send Jim to Texas, fearing the physical and emotional stress of the journey would be worse than any benefit to be gained from the sulfur baths. He let God and nature guide Jim’s course and hoped that the Celebrated Educated Arabian-Hambletonian might enjoy the passing of his last few seasons in Bedford County.
In the fall, on September 18, on one of those perfect picture postcard autumn days—that participants in the annual Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration later started coming from around the world to see—Jim Key got up on his own and came out from his stable to mosey around the front yard. He was able to hear the wind whispering down from the hills, feel the shaded sun on his flanks, and maybe have a last taste of grass or a nibble on some of the turning leaves. Then Jim lay down in the front yard and didn’t get up again.
“He just passed out with all ease,” wrote Dr. Stanley Davis to Albert Rogers. There was no struggle, rather a surrender. He was buried where he lay, in the front yard, in a grave raised about a foot high, over which Maggie Davis Key planted a bed of flowers.
This was the first but not the last burial place of the good bay horse who would have gone to heaven no matter his color or his goodness because, as William Key had told Jim, all horses go to heaven.
History happened. The world advanced and it regressed. Progressive movements lurched forward, the map of the planet changed, wars of unprecedented magnitude raged. Life went on.
Toward the end of World War II, with few momentous events happening in Shelbyville, a small delegation of citizens gathered at the train station to welcome a newsworthy arrival. On October 18, 1945, Mr. Archibald A. Rogers, Albert’s youngest son, had made the trip on behalf of his ailing father to pay his respects at the graves of Dr. Key and Jim.
Dr. Davis would not have recognized the tall, outgoing forty-nine-year-old Archibald if not for his broad smile and fast gait. That was A-R-C-H-E all right, the same child who had toddled after his brothers Clarence and Newell when they took Stanley around Glenmere, and the same fun-loving boy of ten last seen in 1906. Their reunion, witnessed by reporters from the Shelbyville Gazette, was an emotional one. The two approached tentatively, shook hands, and then embraced with gusto as they might have forty years earlier. Archie could have sworn that sixty-six-year-old Stanley had barely aged a day.
After reminiscing at length about some of their shared experiences, Mr. A. A. Rogers and Dr. S. W. Davis were asked some questions by the journalists present. One reporter just had to k
now exactly how rich Albert Rogers had become, what with buying the horse at the Tennessee Centennial and all, plus with the expenditures of traveling over the United States, and often. What he meant to say was, “Did he make any profit?”
Archie laughed. “Yes,” he said, “quite a bit. Expenses were heavy, that’s true, but my father made lots of money.”
Someone had to ask. “How much?”
Dr. Davis knew that line of questioning. For many years, everybody was always trying to get the lowdown on the value of Dr. Key’s estate, and nobody ever seemed to have a clue. Archie Rogers didn’t know how much his father ultimately made, but he did say, “The pennies from the show receipts were given to me and I had over $40,000 in my name by the time it was over.” His older brothers, Clarence and Newell, received the larger coins, he said, and accumulated over $100,000 each. “Of course, my father had the major share.”
The reporter noted that Albert’s earnings were so profitable that Archibald Rogers was later inspired to try his hand at show business, producing “some wonderful shows in Boston and elsewhere,” which were well received but not always profitable. He and his brothers went through their savings eventually and turned to other pursuits. When World War I came, his older brothers enlisted, and Newell, an aviator, was killed in action.
Archie went on to recall that after a time he left show business for the shoe business, hinting that his leather company, A&B Tanning of Brockton, Massachusetts, had been enormously lucrative. He obviously came by his entrepreneurial talents honestly.
Dr. Davis drove Archibald out to see Sam and his wife, Essie, at their home on the old Tullahoma Highway, also known as Dixie Highway. This was the large property Dr. Key had bought not long after meeting Albert Rogers at the Tennessee Centennial and striking up their partnership. Essie, the “Queen of the County” as the petite dynamo was known, later named it the Jim Key Farm. The Davis brothers, Archie, and Essie spoke sadly of the death, ten years earlier in 1935, of Maggie Davis Key, almost eighty years old at the time. Aside from the property and financial assets she passed on to Stanley and Sam and their families, Maggie bequeathed her late husband’s scrapbook to Essie. When Archie mentioned that he was in possession of his father’s scrapbook and files, the two made a pact to see that Jim Key’s story be written down for posterity one day.