So I've started, hound after hare, to find another mysterious public statue.

Public sculptures are my passion and for years I've sought them out like a pilgrim. Their stories, their sculptors and the way they relate to the world around them fascinate me. And now I've begun another quest and it energizes me, promising great adventures all year long as I make a documentary about it.

It began this way. I'd been doing research for a documentary history of war memorials in Rhode Island and it led me one quiet rainy morning to the library of the Newport Historical Society. As I pored over the photo files, I examined one of Washington Square facing toward the old Brick Works from the famous courthouse. Over the shoulder of Oliver Hazard Perry's Elvis-like image, I saw what could be a statue (or was it only a smudge?) just below it. I asked for a magnifying glass. No clear answer. I decided I was too obsessed. There was just an empty fountain there now, I knew. The picture was just blurry. I have a tendency to see what I want to sometimes.

A few layers down, I found a picture of a burlap wrapped package in the bottom of a basin. "The statue," it read "ready to be put away for the winter." Then another, distant, of a classical female fountain figure in that very same spot.

Eureka! I was off and running. I found a few articles that referred to the piece. The Providence Journal reported that the sculpture was a summer fixture in the fountain from the 1870's. Her name, charmingly enough, was the Queen of Aquidneck. More hunting led to an 1874 magazine article on the history of Newport that referred to her. An etching of her illustrated the piece. She wasn't the most popular queen in Rhode Island, it turned out. She was even removed for fifty years and put in storage.

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I found a snippet of poem about her that was written by Gov. Charles Van Zandt who wasn't a great fan of hers.

So now I'm intrigued by the missing piece, and, especially, by the fact that no one I've talked to remembers her in spite of the fact that she was apparently around until the 1960's. Where is she? Is she in someone's private garden as Boston's "Venus Rising from the Mist" was? Why doesn't anyone recall her? I'm looking for people with memories about her, leads to her present whereabouts, etc.

I have a feeling this will be a thrilling search.

About the author, Patti Cassidy: Patti Cassidy is a writer/photographer/videomaker who lives on an island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. She moved there after spending half of her life in the desert of Arizona. She revels in contrast.

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