Engage Blog

The History Detectives are hunting for Texas Jack and his ladyfriend, the Can Can dancer Giuseppina Morlacchi. And they've turned to the audience for help.

In the popular History Detectives PBS series, an eclectic team of professional investigators works to verify the authenticity of--and learn the back stories behind--various historical artifacts.

Now the show's producers, Oregon Public Broadcasting and Lion Entertainment, have launched Web versions of the investigations. They've invited the public to join the hunt for history.

In the current Web investigation, viewer David Gindy from Coral Gables, Fla., wrote about a scrapbook he acquired 15 years ago. He thinks it's over 100 years old and belonged to a man named Texas Jack Omohundro and a woman called Giuseppina Morlacchi. He thinks she put the scrapbook together.

"What I want to know," he wrote, "is if it really was her book - and how she came to know all these Wild West characters.”

The producers posted 20 online images of the scrapbook's pages, and the site's visitors were off and running.

Four weeks into the adventure, about 80 contributions have come in from users.

L. Michelle visited the Web site of a Massachusetts library and reports that Morlacchi "moved to the U.S. to pursue her dancing career and in about two years time she invented the can-can, toured the country, saved her money, bought a farm in Lowell, MA and sent for her family (sister and father) to come live with her in the U.S."

Others found photos, made observations about the appearance of the scrapbook's paper and provided background on Texas Jack.

Since week one, contributions have kept coming, though from a smaller cluster of Web visitors. But craig m jones has made important contributions all along, most recently providing context for an 1876 telegram sent by Wild Bill Cody to Texas Jack. It announces the death of Cody's son, Kit Carson: "My only darling boy is dead. died six o'clock this evening."

The technique used here is what technology people call "crowdsourcing." It's a way of tapping collective knowledge for a common purpose. The premise is that many people working together can produce more than any one of them could working alone.

The professional investigators are assembling the evidence--provided by Web users along with their own research--to assemble the story. Like the TV series, it's fascinating to watch. Unlike the series, you can contribute information in real time to help the investigation along.

So check it out.

Especially if you happen to be an expert on the history of the Can Can.