|
FRANKLIN OF DETROIT
CLUB HISTORY
The Franklin Club of Detroit was founded in 1857 and its
adoption of the Knickerbocker Rules made it one of the first, if not the first
club west of the Alleghenies to do so. The existence of the new club was
announced in a letter to the New York-based Porter’s Spirit of the Times
that fall. In the letter, club president Walter H. Foster wrote, “Dear Spirit –
Having organized a Base Ball Club in this city, we would be pleased to have you
place the fact on record in the SPIRIT as we claim to be the pioneer Club of the
West. We have twenty-seven good members, and think we could give a good account
of ourselves even in a match with some of the other old clubs of the East. The
following are the officers. Franklin Base Ball Club, organized August 18,
1857. President Walter H. Foster; Vice-President, Theodore Robinson; Secretary,
Marsh Robinson. By publishing the above, you will much oblige numerous admirers
of the SPIRIT. Truly yours, W.H. Foster.” (Porter’s Spirit of the Times,
October 3, 1857, letter from Walter H. Foster dated September 21 in its
entirety)
While Foster’s letter suggests that the new baseball club
recognized its status as pioneers, other accounts reveal a less serious side.
In particular, Henry Starkey, a leading member of the Franklins, described in
1884 how he “organized the first base ball club in Detroit, or assisted to do
so.” Starkey explained that the only game previously played in Detroit “the
old-fashioned game of round ball. There were no ‘balls’ or ‘strikes’ to that.
The batter waited until a ball came along that suited him, banged it and ran.
If it was a fly and somebody caught it, he was out and couldn’t play any more in
the game. If the ball was not caught on the fly, the only way to put a batter
out was to hit him with the ball as he ran. There were no basemen then;
everybody stood around to catch flies and throw the ball at base runners.”
According to Starkey, that changed when an “old fiddler
here in the city named Page” showed him a copy of the New York Clipper
that included “quite a lengthy description of the new game of base ball.” Soon
several Detroiters reached “the conclusion that the new way must be an
improvement over the old … so I wrote to the Clipper for a copy of the
new rules, and paid $1 for it. After we got the rules we organized a club – the
first in Detroit.”
But the rest of Starkey’s comments show the
light-heartedness of the endeavor. In the course of explaining that most of the
club members were local printers and that games were played on a pasture on the
Beaubien farm, he threw in one silly joke and several asides. And when asked
what became of the Franklins, Starkey replied, “Oh, Bob Anderson and others soon
formed the Detroit Club, got fine grounds out on Woodward avenue and so far
eclipsed us that we died a natural death. Bob once knocked the ball four miles
out into the country; took them three weeks to find it. I heard him telling
about it the other day. It’s a fact!” (Detroit Free Press, April 4,
1884)
The activities of the Franklin Club received considerable
attention in the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit Advertiser in
the summer of 1857, no doubt at least in part because so many of the club’s
members worked for the two papers. Local historian George Catlin later gave the
date of the club’s formation as August 1, 1857, but contemporaneous accounts
suggest this to be an error. (Letter to Clarence Burton dated October 17, 1927,
in the Burton Collection of the Detroit Public Library) On August 15, the
Detroit Free Press reported that “a Base Ball Club is about being organized
in this city, by the admirers of the ‘good old Yankee sport.’” This was
followed by accounts of the club’s formation and its election of officers in the
Detroit Advertiser on August 25, 1857, and in the Detroit Free Press
of the following day. So it appears that Foster was correct in giving August
18, 1857, as the date of the club’s birth.
The historic meeting took place at the Congress Hall Saloon
at 3 Congress Street, a saloon frequented by printers and other employees of the
two newspapers and run by Jere Calnon. It appears that the meeting was not a
long or very formal one, as the surviving accounts provide almost no details
other than the names of the three officers who were elected. Twenty-seven men
joined the club, no fewer than sixteen of whom were closely associated with
either the Free Press or the Advertiser. (Letter to Clarence
Burton dated October 17, 1927, in the Burton Collection of the Detroit Public
Library)
The club’s members had already played together several
times, and they celebrated their formal organization with two intrasquad games
on Saturday, August 22, followed by a meal at the home of vice president
Theodore Robinson. Another practice session was announced for the following
Saturday, to be played at the grounds of the Detroit Cricket Club on August 29,
but there is no record of whether it took place and that ends the recorded
history of the Franklin Club in 1857. Indeed, it is not even clear that the
club had yet chosen that name for themselves, as that name was not used in any
accounts that year and the Free Press referred to the new organization as
the Detroit Base Ball Club.
The spring of 1858 brought more structure. Detroit’s first
baseball club held its annual meeting at the Congress Hall Saloon on April 9 and
became formally known as the Franklin Base Ball Club of Detroit. President
Foster and Vice President Theodore Robinson were re-elected, while Henry Starkey
became secretary and treasurer and Eugene Robinson and George Atkins were
elected captains. The club was described as being in a “very prosperous
condition,” with twenty-four active members and a “large number” of additional
applicants “in the hands of the committee.” (Detroit Advertiser, April
12, 1858)
The new season also brought the first inklings that
baseball might come to play a major role in the life of the city. The start of
the new season was accompanied by an article in the Advertiser that
offered this endorsement, “The game of base ball is an American game, and that
it is one of healthy and manly exercise as well as one of many excitements, no
one who ever played it will deny. Last year, for the first time, we believe was
there a regular organized club formed and conducted upon regular rules, and
by-laws, in this city, and as far as we know in the State. It has had one
preliminary meeting this season, and we understand will have regular meetings
throughout the season. When governed by strict rules, it is a beautiful game.
It has become very popular about New York City, and the highest classes of
professional gentlemen – Doctors, lawyers, and clergymen – engage in it. There
was recently a large convention held, composed of delegates from the various
clubs on Manhattan Island, to revise and adopt rules governing the game. The
rules and constitution, &c., may be found in Porter’s Spirit of the Times
of April 3, (for sale by Ross,) which will be useful to those contemplating the
formation of clubs.” (Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 7, 1858)
Those comments were followed a few days later by a hint
that it was time to establish appropriate grounds for baseball in Detroit (“so
that this club, and others which are soon to be formed, may have a suitable
place for their field exercise”). (Detroit Daily Advertiser, April 12,
1858) Later that month, the Advertiser again suggested that “There
should be a rival base ball club here.” (Detroit Daily Advertiser, April
27, 1858) But nothing came of these hints and newspaper coverage of the
Franklins stopped at that point.
It is of course possible that the Franklins continued their
practice and intrasquad games in 1858 and 1859. On June 14, 1859, after the
formation of the Detroit Base Ball Club, the Free Press reported that
there were two baseball clubs in Detroit, which could mean that the Franklin
Club was still in existence. But there was no mention of the club between April
1858 and 1860, suggesting that, as the Free Press later put it, the
pioneer Franklin Club had arrived “unheralded and departed unwept.” (Detroit
Free Press, December 26, 1884)
By 1860, Detroit boasted several baseball clubs and this
development inspired the Franklins to reorganize. The club also reformed in
1861, holding an annual meeting on May 21 and electing a slate of officers. (Detroit
Daily Advertiser, May 24, 1861) But by then the Civil War was under way,
which spelled the end of the Franklin Club. Quite a few club members enlisted
in the Union Army, while the ones who remained in Detroit formed a “Ben Franklin
Guard” to support the war effort. (Detroit Advertiser, September 23,
1861)
One later account concluded that the Franklin Club
“succumbed to the war, a large portion of its members going into the service” (Detroit
Daily Advertiser and Tribune, May 2, 1867) There is no question that the
outbreak of war was a major factor in the demise of the Franklin Base Ball Club,
but it is a mistake to think of it as the only one. For one thing, the members
of the club were assuming new business and family responsibilities that left
them with little time for sport. That was a problem common to all baseball
clubs of the era, but the Franklins faced an additional challenge that was
unique to them.
In 1861, Detroit Free Press publisher Wilbur Storey
bought the Chicago Times and took many of his employees with him to Chicago,
including several prominent members of the Franklin Club. Several other club
members left Detroit for Chicago in the next few years, making it inevitable
that the Franklins would not reorganize at the end of the war. There was thus
the sad irony that the club that put Detroit on the baseball map ended in part
because a significant percent of its members left for brighter prospects in
Chicago.
NOTE: In 1874, another baseball club calling itself the
Franklins was organized in Detroit. None of its members were holdovers from the
pioneer club by that name, but it did have several parallels with its namesake.
To begin with, the club’s organization came after a prolonged dry spell for
baseball in Detroit and its proved a harbinger of renewed interest. (Detroit
Daily Post, May 5, 1874) In addition, the club was made up entirely of printers
from the city’s newspapers – the city directory listed Patrick O’Grady as a
Tribune printer, James Murtagh as a News printer, and six others, Bernard
and Henry McAndrews, Albert Stewart, Converse Cook, Marcus Heaslip and John
Walker, as printers for the Post. The ninth player, J. Dougherty, could
not be located in the city directories under that occupation, but the Jackson
Daily Citizen said he was also a printer for the Post. Finally, like the
original Franklins, the 1874 incarnation had little pretension to expertise at
baseball, being described as small and clumsy, and being outfitted in assorted
garb – the only thing that was uniform about their attire was a white cap with a
blue star. (Jackson Daily Citizen, June 27, 1874)
CLUB MEMBERS
Edward Atkins: Edward Atkins was the youngest of three
brothers who were members of the Franklin Club. He was born in Vermont around
1839 and the family was still living in Burlington, Vermont, in 1850. They all
moved to Detroit soon after where Edward worked as a printer. But he left
Detroit along with his brother George in 1861 and moved to Chicago.
George E. Atkins: George Atkins was the oldest of the three
Atkins brothers, being born around 1832. He too became a printer and worked as
foreman of the news room of the Free Press. But he became one of many Free
Press employees to follow publisher Wilbur Storey to the Chicago Times in 1861.
George Atkins fought in the Civil War and then returned to work at the Times.
Franc Wilkie recalled that Atkins was on duty as foreman of the printing
department on the night that the Chicago Fire destroyed the Times building. He
died in Chicago on January 24, 1894.
John H. Atkins: John Atkins was a third brother who was
born in Vermont around 1837. Unlike his brothers, he became a brick mason and
was still living in Detroit in 1890.
William H. Baxter: W. H. Baxter was the vice president of
the Franklin Club when it reorganized in 1860. He was born in Hull, England, in
February of 1836, but the family crossed the Atlantic when he was an infant and
eventually settled in Chatham, Ontario. According to a profile in Landmarks of
Detroit by Robert Budd Ross, George Byron Catlin, and Clarence Monroe Burton,
Baxter was “of a roving disposition” and at the age of nine, he went to sea with
his uncle. Upon returning to Chatham, he was apprenticed as a printer and in
the late 1850s he moved to Michigan to work as a compositor and the foreman of
the newsroom of the Detroit Tribune. Despite his recent arrival and a young
family, Baxter served in the Union Navy as a seaman from 1862 to 1864. After
the war, he joined the editorial staff of the newspaper, first as its court and
municipal reporter and later as city editor. He also remained involved in
baseball as secretary of the Detroit Base Ball Club. He served two terms as a
Detroit alderman in the 1870s, and also helped organize the city’s first health
board, serving as health officer from 1876 to 1880. In 1880, he became the
city’s fire marshal and remained in that position for twenty-six years. He died
in Detroit on June 25, 1913.
Jerome Calnon: Jere Calnon was the proprietor of the
Congress Hall Saloon, where the Franklin Club was organized. He was born in
Ireland around 1832 and was still single at the time. He got married in 1860
and by the time of the 1870 census he was listed with considerable wealth and he
and his wife were the parents of four children. But by the end of the decade he
was a widower with only one surviving daughter, and Calnon himself died on
September 13, 1882.
Ad Cowan: Ad Cowan was a Free Press printer.
Thomas Crane: Thomas Crane was the club’s vice president in
1861. He was born in New York State around 1833, was a printer and a member of
the board of directors of the Detroit Typographical Union.
Michael Dempsey: Michael Dempsey was born in New York State
around 1833 and became a printer. Along with fellow printer Malachi O’Donnell,
he enlisted in the 24th Michigan Infantry in 1862. He earned
promotion from sergeant to lieutenant and, according to an official report,
“Lieut. Dempsey was conspicuous for his gallantry in the charge across
Willoughby’s Run.” Dempsey was wounded at Gettysburg and again at Spottsylvania.
When recovering at Annapolis Hospital in July of 1864 he “left without leave”
and was eventually dismissed. He returned to Detroit, where he died in March of
1890.
Benjamin French Duncklee: Ben Duncklee was born in Newport,
New Hampshire, on October 12, 1835. The family moved to Buffalo three years
later and then to Detroit around 1850. Ben became a printer and was still
living in Detroit in 1890. Need to check Detroit Society for Genealogical
Research Magazine, 2004, p. 184.
Henry R. Durney: Henry Durney was born around 1830 and
after moving to Detroit found work as a printer for the Free Press. He remained
in Detroit for many years and may have died around 1904.
John Jacob Duryea: John Duryea was born on Long Island in
November of 1840 and his family moved to Michigan when he was young. He became
a printer for the Tribune and served as a director of the Franklin Club when it
was reorganized in 1860. In 1862, he enlisted in the 24th Michigan
Infantry. On June 18, 1864, Duryea suffered a severe head wound at the Battle
of Petersburg. After many months in hospital, he was discharged. He
subsequently moved to Ann Arbor and Chicago. After the death of his wife, he
resided in the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers near Milwaukee,
where he died on March 1, 1912.
Clarence E. Eddie: Clarence Eddie was an attorney. He left
Detroit around 1862 and moved to Houghton in the Upper Peninsula to practice
law. In 1865, he was elected as a circuit judge but he died in early 1869
without completing his term.
Frank Folsom: see Detroit Base Ball Club.
Walter H. Foster: Walter H. Foster, the club’s first
president and the man who wrote to Spirit of the Times to announce the club’s
existence, was born in New York State around 1826. He worked as a printer for
the Free Press while in Detroit, but like so many club members left for Detroit
around the start of the Civil War. He died there on January 23, 1881.
Thomas S. Gillett: Thomas Gillett was the son of Shadrach
Gillett, a pioneer settler of Detroit who arrived in the city in 1815 and ran a
general store. Thomas was born around 1824 and became a partner in his father’s
business, which became known as Gillett and Son. But he left Detroit around
1865 and moved to St. Joseph, Missouri.
Julius P. Gilmore: J. P. Gilmore was secretary of the
Franklin Club in 1860 and 1861 after it reorganized. He was born in Weymouth,
Massachusetts, around 1839. He worked as a bookkeeper for the Preston National
Bank and after the death of his first wife he married a daughter of the
proprietor, David Pearson. In the 1880s, Gilmore became a Detroit alderman.
Milo Dwight Hamilton: Milo D. Hamilton was born in
Blandford, Massachusetts, on October 5, 1828. When he was seven, his family
moved to Michigan and Milo grew up on a farm near Homer. He began an
apprenticeship at the Marshall Statesman in 1846 and began a long career in
newspapers. He worked as foreman of the Liberty Press until the plant of the
Battle Creek newspaper was destroyed by fire. He went to work for the Detroit
Free Press in 1850, then became the commercial editor of the Detroit Advertiser
the next year. He remained in that position for seven years and helped organize
the Detroit Board of Trade in 1856. Hamilton moved to Cincinnati in 1858 and
spent two years working for the Enquirer. In 1860, he returned to Michigan to
become editor of the Monroe Commercial. He soon became the owner of the
newspaper as well and continued to publish it until 1888, also serving as city
postmaster from 1870 to 1874. He sold the newspaper in 1888 and moved to
Washington, D.C.
John H. Hudson: The only man in Detroit by this name was a
ship carpenter who was born in England around 1822 and died in Detroit on April
9, 1867.
J. J. Maledon: J. J. Maledon was the circulating agent for
the Daily Advertiser. It appears that his full name was Johannes Jacobus
Maledon and that he was born on April 24, 1830.
Jordan P. McMillan: J. P. McMillan, who was born in Canada
around 1835, was the club president in 1861. He was a printer for the Free
Press and continued to work as a printer in Detroit for many years. It appears
that he was still living in Detroit in 1910 but the census listing is confusing
enough to raise some doubts.
William F. Moore: William F. Moore, who was a director when
the club was reorganized in 1860, was yet another printer. He was born around
1835 in England and was very active in the Typographical Union. In 1865, after
a strike of Detroit printers, he was one of six men who started a new paper
called the Detroit Union, which survived until 1874.
Malachi J. O’Donnell: Malachi J. O’Donnell was born in
Ireland around 1839 and became foreman of the Free Press composing rooms. When
the Civil War broke out, O’Donnell enthusiastically volunteered for the
Twenty-Fourth Michigan Infantry, giving a patriotic speech that was recorded in
the Free Press on August 23, 1862. O’Donnell began his service as a second
lieutenant and earned promotion to captain. After being wounded, he left the
army hospital over the protests of nurses and was killed at Gettysburg on July
1, 1863.
John Philips: John Philips appears to have been a lumber
dealer who lived in Detroit until at least 1871.
Earl F. Plantz: Earl F. Plantz was born in New York State
around 1831 and worked as a collector and grocer. He got married in 1859 but
died three years later, on December 13, 1862, at the age of 32.
Charles C. Robinson: Charles C. Robinson was a coppersmith
who lived in Detroit until at least 1890.
Eugene Robinson: Eugene Robinson was born in Binghamton,
New York, on May 15, 1837. His father died in 1840, one year after the family
moved to Detroit. Eugene joined the Detroit Light Guard in 1857. He enlisted
in the First Michigan Infantry as a Sergeant at the start of the war and was
promoted to sergeant-major after fighting at Bull Run. After the war, he became
a civil engineer and the city surveyor. He was awarded a contract to pave
Jefferson Avenue, but had repeated problems with the job and ending up repaving
it several times at his own expense. He also was elected lieutenant colonel of
the Michigan Guard and eventually promoted to brigadier general on October 1,
1890. Robinson’s continued interest in baseball was shown when he served as a
director of Cass Club in 1876. He died in Detroit on October 28, 1897.
Marshall D. Robinson: Marsh Robinson was born on April 14,
1832, Union, New York. He worked for the Free Press for more than four decades,
beginning as a printer and later working in the newspaper office in a variety of
functions. He died in Detroit on December 17, 1903.
Theodore Pearson Robinson: Theodore P. Robinson was the
vice president of Franklin Club in 1857 and the man who hosted a meal after
their intrasquad games on August 23, 1857. He was born on July 27, 1830, in
Nanticoke, New York, and worked as an accountant until his premature death in
Detroit on September 22, 1865.
Franklin D. Ross: Franklin D. Ross was born in Canada
around 1833. He moved to Detroit in the mid-1850s and worked for the Free Press
as a printer and circulating agent. Around 1865, he moved to Chicago and
continued to work as a printer. He died in Chicago on November 23, 1914.
Henry Mason Scovell: Harry Scovell was born around 1830 in
New York State, the son of a doctor who had moved the family to Detroit by the
mid-1840s. At the age of fourteen, Harry went to work at the Detroit Advertiser
as a “printer’s devil.” After becoming an expert compositor, he joined the Free
Press in 1852 and soon became its exchange editor. As a colleague explained in
Scovell’s obituary, the role of the exchange editor was a crucial one in those
days. Telegraphs were still “new, expensive, and uncertain,” so the exchange
editor went through out-of-town newspapers manually to determine what items to
reprint. Scovell acquired such “a reputation for speed, judgment, and accuracy
in getting the news out of other papers into his own” that publisher Wilbur F.
Storey took him along when he took over the Chicago Times in 1861. With the
Times, Scovell continued to prove himself invaluable. Fellow newsman Franc B.
Wilkie recalled that the New York papers did not arrive until 11 p.m. each
evening, giving the exchange editor only an hour before the paper went to
press. “It was not enough,” Wilkie explained, “to cut them out and prepare
their headings. Each article must be treated according to its value; one must
be cut down one-half or more; others must be condensed by rewriting; and only
here and there were there instances in which an article could be used in its
entirety. It may readily be seen that the news editor who could well perform
this task must be one capable of the exercise of infinite swiftness in action
and judgment. The man who performed this work for the Times was Harry Scovel
[sic], who justly merited the reputation of being the very best of his kind on
the continent. He would go through a hundred newspaper ‘exchanges,’ apparently
only glancing at them, and yet would never miss an item of the smallest
consequence.” Then in 1865, Charles A. Dana started a new paper called the
Chicago Republican (which later became the Inter-Ocean). Dana’s first step was
to offer better salaries to the best talent of the Times and, as Wilkie put it,
“Several of the old employes were thus seduced, among others the famous news
editor, Harry Scovel.” Scovell eventually moved on to become news editor of the
Tribune before his failing eyesight forced him to retire. He died in Chicago on
April 9, 1912.
Beecher Skinner: Beecher Skinner, the treasurer of the
Franklin Club in 1861, was a printer who was born in Ireland around 1838. In
1865, he joined fellow Franklin Club member William F. Moore and four other men
by responding to a strike by starting a new paper called the Detroit Union. He
seems to have either left the city or died during the 1870s.
Henry Mitchell Starkey: Henry Starkey was born in
Binghamton, New York, on May 11, 1828. His father moved the family to Michigan
in 1833, eventually settling in Kalamazoo and serving in the Senate of the
second state legislature. After being trained in the printer’s trade, Henry
volunteered and fought in Mexican War. Upon his return he followed his brother
to Detroit to work for the Free Press. He helped organize the Detroit
Typographical Union and represented it at the National Convention of
Typographers in Buffalo in 1854. Later in the decade he succeeded his brother
as city editor of the Free Press. Starkey named his first son Henry Scovell
Starkey in honor of Free Press coworker and fellow Franklin Club member Harry
Scovell. By the end of the decade, Starkey had drifted into civic affairs and
in the next few years he served as county clerk, clerk of the first Recorder’s
Court, and a member of volunteer fire department. When the Civil War began,
Starkey enlisted and was appointed a lieutenant in the Fifth Michigan Cavalry,
Company H, until an injury at the Battle of Gettysburg led to his discharge. In
1865, Starkey was elected to a two-year term as City Clerk, and was twice
reelected. Then in 1872 he was named secretary of the Water Commission, a
position he fulfilled until his death, coming to be known as “the encyclopedia
for all information relating to the proper methods by which the city and its
inhabitants are supplied with water; the appliances, cost and dispensing were as
familiar to him as the letters of the alphabet.” He also found time for a wide
variety of other civic activities, including being credited with having
“devised the present system of house numbering in Detroit, giving each twenty
feet a number, whether occupied or not.” Baseball too remained a part of his
life, as he served as treasurer of the Aetna Club, umpired games from time to
time, and in 1884 gave the Free Press an enchanting account of the origins of
the Franklin Club. Starkey died in Detroit on October 28, 1888.
George Thurston: George Thurston was another printer but he
soon disappeared from the Detroit city directories.
Jonas H. Titus, Jr.: Jonas H. Titus, Jr., was born in New
York State around 1832. He worked as a printer before enlisting in the war and
serving in Brady’s Sharpshooters. He later moved to Saginaw and then to
Chicago, where he died on April 2, 1895.
Charles H. Vernor: See Detroit Base Ball Club.
James H. Walker: James H. Walker, who was born around 1836
in New York, was the president when the Franklin Club reorganized in 1860. He
was a Free Press printer, but unlike most of the club members he remained in
Detroit and was still living there in 1914.
Others: A. McMillan (director in 1861), L. Boismuir
(director in 1861), Grieve, Knapp, McLogan, Patten, E. Rousseau, George Starring
or Staring, Taylor
Sources: The main source for this piece is my book
Baseball Fever, which in turn relied heavily on contemporaneous newspapers
and on Henry Starkey’s reminiscences in the Detroit Free Press on April
4, 1884. Franc B. Wilkie’s Thirty-five Years of Journalism was also very
valuable, as was Justin Walsh’s fascinating biography of Free Press editor
Wilbur F. Storey (To Print the News and Raise Hell! A Biography of Wilbur F.
Storey, University of North Carolina Press, 1968). Orson Blair Curtis’s
History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade, Known as the Detroit
and Wayne County Regiment provided details on the military service of
Dempsey and O’Donnell. Also helpful were obituaries of many players, especially
one of Scovell entitled “Dana’s Old Partner Dead” that appeared in the
Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1912, p. 10.
|
