The "Cedros Meteorite" with Provenance, a Gift to Shirley Temple from Clair Omar Musser

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4" (10 cm.) meteorite. 9" x 4" box. The three-pound meteorite landed on November 27, 1885 in the vicinity of Cedros, Mexico, according to notarized documents that accompany the meteorite. The meteorite was obtained in 1924 by Clair Omar Musser from the original family who had found the specimen, according to Musser's included signed affidavit. Writing in the third person he says, "It became a treasured specimen among his wide collection of meteorites which now numbers eighty-eight fragments from seventeen falls". Musser then went on in this affidavit, "As a token of friendship to Miss Shirley Temple, Musser consented to bestow the Cedros meteorite in appreciation of her interest in astronomy and meteoric phenomena". As part of the gift, Musser had a special cross necklace made for Shirley of the meteorite so "every time she sees a falling star (meteor) she can clutch her cross and dream over the millions of years that Biela's Comet may have been traversing space, and the millions of billions of miles it travelled". A special custom wooden box to hold the meteorite and cross were constructed, in which the gift was posted to Shirley Temple. Also included are notarized 1939 photographs of the meteorite and the cross, as well as a detailed chemical analysis. The meteorite remains well-preserved, the cross necklace no longer exists. Clair Omar Musser, an almost forgotten inventor and scientist, was as obsessed with the study of astronomy as with percussion. His two fascinations melded at one point into his creation of the one-of-a-kind Celestaphone which was made of 670 pounds of meteors from his collection. The background of his acquaintance with Shirley Temple, beginning about 1937, is discussed in #121.