Dear Dave, Dennis and Emily -

As Dave may have told you, I am a Maryland filmmaker working on a half-hour PBS-style documentary about one of your relatives, Nathan Howard "Jack" Thorp. In 1908, Jack published in Estancia New Mexico a little paperbound book that would be America's first collection of cowboy ballads -and many believe it was the first published collection of American folk music of any kind.

I've been working with a bunch of very interesting people over the last year & was fortunate to finally be able to find some of Jack's relatives! The first part of my film deals with his early life in Newport and the little I know about his parents. Dave has forwarded me some wonderful photographs of Albert and Mary Leland Thorp, their daughter Mary, and other great pictures. I don't know if you have others that might include Jack and his siblings as children, or the older Thorps, or images of various family
homes (I sent Dave one of the mansion in Newport & tried to find the Thorp home in Manhattan but I think it must have been torn down at some point - 31 west 22nd Street from census records.)

Any information you can share, particularly what happened to Albert & Mary after Albert's money problems in 1882 (and any info about what caused those problems) would also be very appreciated. After 1894 Jack never went East again; he had been working for several years with his cousin Frank
Underhill to find and sell polo ponies, & for several years played on the Oyster Bay polo team with Underhill and Teddy Roosevelt. Anything you know about Frank Underhill - who helped train the ponies Jack brought from the West on a farm near Newport - would also be appreciated. I did find
something about him at the DAR library down in D.C... gain, ANY family pictures of any of these folks, Jack and/or his siblings as children or teenagers, are of great interest to me.

2008 is the centennial of the publication of Jack's book "Songs of the Cowboys." The Museum of New Mexico Press in Santa Fe will be issuing a special new edition of the book, and would like to show my film at a reception in Santa Fe in October. It will also be shown in Estancia, New Mexico in August - where Jack's little book was published - and I will also be offering to New Mexico PBS.

Although I'm in the latter stages of my project (will be recording narration his weekend with the great-granddaughter of silent film cowboy movie star Tom Mix as narrator) I could still include additional photographs & information.

Please e-mail or call me at 301-474-7680 anytime - I would love to learn more!

best wishes

Susan Gervasi
Lazy G Films, Inc.
Greenbelt, Maryland