I sent the article below, about the Franklin Reading Room, several months ago, and now I’m updating and correcting it. As many of you are aware, I’m a stickler for accuracy of historical data. I couldn’t tolerate not correcting some errors that I sent in this email. While I'll be talking about Franklin's Reading Room, the main reason for relaying this information is because one of the members of the list is related to Dr. Fassitt. It was the doctor's contribution to the Reading Room that caught my attention. The Reading Room was active and a part of the cultural scene by at least 1848, and probably long before that. It was a privately owned library, and was owned by the Planters' Banner, and Robert Wilson, proprietor and editor of that newspaper. Wilson is one of several “local” adventurous individuals who left in late 1848, for the gold rush in California. I wonder if any Vermilion Parish residents were struck by the gold fever and traveled to California. For the use of the Reading Room, there was a fee involved. By subscription it cost $5 a year, or one could pay fifty cents a month. For “strangers,” use of the library was free, for one week. Use of the Reading Room was also free for subscribers to the Banner who lived “10 miles and over” from Franklin, La. Like a regular library, it contained the usual volumes upon volumes of books, recent papers and, in 1848, it housed 12 years worth of bound issues of the Planters' Banner. There was also the latest Atlas of North America, “nearly all of the leading journals and periodicals of the Union,” Chess tables, numerous reference works, etc. In addition to these and other items, there was a sort of museum of natural history. It is in this regard that this email is being sent. Below is the item, copied mostly verbatim from the Planters' Banner about the Reading Room. On 5-18-1848, in an article titled "More Curiosities" We are indebted to Mr. Robert B. Royster, of the Centreville Academy, for a very beautiful Ocelot skin from Texas, and to Dr. Fassitt of Centreville, for minerals from Ohio, and shells from Mississippi. Also, to Dr. Hawkins, for some shells collected by him in Texas. Messrs. Orien Carlin and A. Mortimer Salles have sent us a very splendid living rattlesnake. We beg friends to remember us when you visit the sea shore [the Gulf of Mexico was then referred to as the sea. For example, the steamships or boats that went to New Orleans by way of the gulf were said to take the "sea route."] We are promised some valuable fossils from Tennessee in exchange for shells from Louisiana." About this time, May 1848, a mounted Bald Eagle was placed in the Reading Room. It had been shot by a Mr. Fenn "on the shores of Grand Lake." This body of water is to the east of Franklin and Bayou Teche. In late May 1848, that huge rattlesnake that had been on exhibit in the Reading Room escaped. Naturally, much excitement and concern were stirred up, especially in the vicinity of the Reading Room. On June 1, 1848, a news item appeared about the capture of this runaway snake. It was returned to the Reading Room. It seems to me that those who made use of the Franklin Reading Room certainly got their money’s worth. Ken Dupuy