It was the Summer of 1896 when the American Secretary of the Navy, General Benjamin Tracey, arrived in Fredericton for a vacation.
The General was a man with serious gravitas. He was a decorated Civil War veteran who had personally rode into battle to rally a routed Union line. When he was nominated for Secretary of the Navy, the Senate confirmed him in only 10 minutes. In that role, he was building the American Navy into a globe-spanning force.
While on vacation in Fredericton, he wanted to stay at the finest accommodations in the city: Barker House, a sprawling 72-room hotel with all the most modern high-end accoutrements.
It was owned by Fred B. Coleman who was described by Forest & Stream magazine as “a man of imposing appearance and unique personality” who owned a giant frog.
That magazine’s reporter observed just how well-known the frog was when a young man got off the train in Fredericton and announced “I don’t know one hotel from another: take me to the man that has the big frog!”
Fred Coleman told his new guests, including the General, that he’d discovered the giant frog in Killarney Lake.
(There was another, more scandalous, claim back then that the Coleman Frog had actually been frog-napped! Miramichi newspapers vehemently maintained that a rare type of unusually large frog lived in Bartibog. The Miramichi Advance newspaper outright accused Coleman — who had earlier run a lumbering business in the Miramichi — of having stolen a frog from Bartibog and brought it to Killarney Lake, “thereby depriving [the Miramichi] the kudos of [the frog’s] paternity!”)
General Tracey listened to Fred Coleman’s frog tale without comment.
The hotel proprietor continued, recounting that he, along with a visiting American scientist, developed a diet of blood and cornmeal for the big frog. This dinner was fed to it on a shovel every Wednesday and Saturday.
According to an 1899 article in Inter-Ocean Magazine, Coleman’s story was interrupted by visiting American actor Joseph Jefferson, who exclaimed that he’d heard that the frog weighed over 50 lbs.
“This is not correct and no one has ever had any authority from me for saying so,” Fred Coleman sternly declared, before pausing and adding with a smile: “The weight of the frog has never exceeded forty-two pounds!”
Coleman told his guests that he trained the frog to come to the sound of his voice. This was, however, not always effective because his voice didn’t carry well in rainy weather.
So he trained the frog to come to the sound of a gunshot.
“This scheme,” recounted Coleman, “worked to perfection until the partridge season arrived, when there was so much firing around the lake that the frog received several false alarms. He then became sulky.”
Coleman’s solution was to blast a trumpet three times with one hand while shooting his rifle three times with the other. He claimed the giant frog was successfully trained to come to that.
General Benjamin Tracey, Secretary of the United States Navy, sat in silence as he took all this in. He had only one question.
“He was capable of absorbing all the facts in regard to the frog except that Mr. Coleman was in the habit of feeding him with a shovel,” explained Inter-Ocean Magazine.
The General couldn’t wrap his head around the shovel detail. Coleman gave him a photo, but it wasn’t enough. The General needed to see this giant frog eating off a shovel.
He extended his stay in Fredericton until the next feeding day just to see this for himself.
On feeding day, the General was driven by Coleman to Killarney Lake. There, a verandah had been built a short distance from the shore. The General stood on the verandah as Coleman went to the shore with a trumpet and a rifle.
He tooted his horn three times while firing his rifle three times.
“Then the air filled with a strange, tremulous, murmuring sound, which could be heard for nearly a mile around. A dark-green object suddenly appeared swimming up the lake and ashore at the landing,” wrote Inter-Ocean Magazine. “Mr. Coleman went down, stroked the frog on the head pleasantly, and gave him his semi-weekly meal.”
One year later, General Benjamin Tracey found himself at a boring New York dinner party hosted by Senator Chauncey Depew, a notorious exaggerator famously described by President Taft as a “windbag.” According to Inter-Ocean Magazine, Depew was in typical form that night, “relating several narratives” of distinctly questionable veracity.
“Well Mr. Depew,” The General suddenly interrupted “I have a story which shows that the truth is stranger than fiction. When I was down in New Brunswick last year I met at Fredericton Mr. Fred B. Coleman, proprietor of the Barker House, who is adept at raising frogs, and he showed me one of his pets that weighed upwards of forty pounds.”
The crowd scoffed as the General continued: “He fed them with a shovel from a pail, and he was the most intelligent frog I ever saw…”
By this point, the crowd was openly laughing.
“…even responding to his master’s voice and allowing himself to be caressed like a pet lamb.”
“Why,” the General continued, “Mr. Coleman would sit for hours on the bank conversing with him and —”
He was drowned out by everyone laughing at him.
After waiting for the crowd to quiet down, the General declared:
“Gentlemen, I am not like Mr. Depew. I always carry proof of my story with me.”
He pulled out a photo of Fred Coleman with the Coleman Frog and showed it to the crowd. The impressed group of Americans burst into applause, and Senator Depew shook his hand to acknowledge he'd been bested.
