Researching Early British Baseball: A Personal Perspective

It’s a New Day

The UK sporting press treated early British baseball the same way that the UK music press would later treat British rock and roll: with a silence born of secondhand embarrassment. Given the dearth of period sources, it is a testament to the dedication and hard work of historians of the early British game that we have as many works telling its story as we do. At the same time, anyone—like me—who finds themselves needing to go beyond those works in their research, has to find some way to work around the lack of primary sources.

Fortunately, as I have discovered, the explosion in publically accessible online resources in recent decades has opened up new opportunities for expanding our knowledge of at least one aspect of the early British game: the identities and histories of the men and women who played it. In this article, I will briefly summarize the resources available and then illustrate how these can be used to provide plausible theories as to the identities of early players by presenting two, interconnected, case studies, those of ‘Ruggles’ and ‘Carey’, the formidable battery of the 1895 Fullers Baseball Team. These case studies will also serve to illustrate the remaining challenges and the role that social media can play in addressing them.

Riving Running Free

Family history research is a booming business, and, although most of these services are generally hidden behind paywalls, fortunately for researchers, many of those same services are available for free to any UK resident with a library card in the form of “library editions”. There are also many resources that are open-access from anywhere. Below, is a list of the resources that I have found most useful in my research on early British baseball, highlighting how each can be accessed for free by UK residents.

Resource: projectcobb.org.uk

Description: Project Cobb: The Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball is a growing archive of materials relating to British baseball, including vintage programmes, fan magazines, and team photographs. It also has links to books and research papers on British baseball history, some of which can be downloaded directly from the site.

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

Resource: sabr.org in general and https://sabr.org/research/article/online-index-to-historical-baseball-guides/ in particular

Description: The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) website is an essential resource for the study of baseball not just in the US but also all over the world. Of particular interest in the context of this list, is the index of early baseball guidebooks available online.

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

Resource: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ (BNA)

Description: British newspapers from the 18th Century to the modern day held by the British Library; full-page scans can be saved or downloaded as PDFs.

UK Library Edition? Yes—usually in-library and using a desktop link, not via a browser. Users should create a free BNA account first.

Resource: Gale British Library Newspapers

Description: Like the BNA, but restricted to local newspapers; however, access tends to be easier.

UK Library Edition? Yes—often possible from anywhere via login to library website.

Resource: Gales Times Digital Archive

Description: Like the BNA, but restricted to The [London] Times newspaper; however, access tends to be easier.

UK Library Edition? Yes—often possible from anywhere via login to library website.

Resource: newspapers.com

Description: Like the BNA, but includes US newspapers, too, and, therefore, much more extensive.

UK Library Edition? A library edition exists, but only a limited number of UK libraries subscribe.

Resource: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Description: An ongoing project to give the public free access to digitised US newspapers. More limited in scope than newspapers.com.

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere. Search engine is in beta, so very clunky.

Resource: Historic Australian Newspaper Archive and Historic New Zealand Newspaper Archive

Description: Australian and New Zealand equivalents of the Chronicling America project. Very useful for tracing players who played for US Navy teams and those who moved between the UK and Australasia (as well as researching the history of baseball in Australasia, of course).

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

Resource: ancestry.co.uk

Description: Vast collection of genealogical records with a UK/North America bias, including, critically, census records, military records, and immigration and emigration (passenger lists/naturalisation). Now includes the 1921 England Census.

UK Library Edition? Yes—usually in-library and using a desktop link, not via a browser.

Resource: Findmypast

Description: Essentially the same as ancestry.co.uk; used to be the only place to access the 1921 England Census, but no longer.

UK Library Edition? Yes—usually in-library and using a desktop link, not via a browser.

Resource: https://www.freebmd.org.uk/

Description: Database of births, marriages, and deaths registered in the UK. Very good for connecting the dots, and provides all the information a researcher needs to order a certificate from the General Registry Office (GRO).

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

Resource: accesstoresearch.org.uk

Description: Access to academic research papers not already open access (i.e., free to read and download)

UK Library Edition? Yes. Articles can be searched for via library websites, but full articles are usually only available in-library and using a desktop link, not via a browser.

Resource: archive.org

Description: Vast collection of out-of-copyright, books, magazines, and other media. Also home to the ‘wayback machine’ , an archive of web pages—very useful for accessing the information contained in websites that are no longer ‘live’.

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

Resource: Digital Public Library of America

Description: Collection of public domain resources held by US public libraries, including texts, images, audio, and video.

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

Resource: Jstor Digital Image Archive

Description: Collection of copyright-free (for use for research purposes) images including, critically, images from US university archives such as team photographs with players’ names given in the captions.

UK Library Edition? Open access from anywhere.

The basic workflow that I have adopted is as follows:

1. Glean as many facts and figures as possible from the extant baseball literature—books, articles, period newspaper accounts, surviving game programmes, etc.

2. Use these facts to carry out a targeted search of genealogical databases for possible candidates (people with the right name, in the right place, at the right time).

3. Search the wider internet for confirmatory evidence, for example, something linking the identified candidates to baseball at the necessary [high] level.

I have used this workflow in writing all of my articles on expatriate contributions to early British baseball; it has allowed me to identify and/or build biographies for, amongst others, Hidezo ‘H’ Nishikawa, the members of the 1934 Edinburgh University Baseball Club who played alongside Joseph L Washington, and the “Eddie” Lynch who trained the Kodak Hawk-Eye women’s baseball team [1]. In the next section, I will use two related case studies to show the workflow in action.

Oh, Freedom is Mine

The only reference to ‘Ruggles’ in Knowles and Morton’s 1896 book ‘Baseball’

In his 1896 book designed to introduce baseball to English readers—available to download for free at archive.org [2]—R G Knowles, founder of the London Baseball Association (LBA), writes that ‘Ruggles, the pitcher for the Fullers, was the star pitcher of 1895’. Knowles tells his readers that the ‘Fullers’ team was named after its founder, the London-based American confectioner W B Fuller, a vice president of the LBA; however, frustratingly, despite giving potted biographies of many of the players of the 1895 season, this one reference is as much as Knowles has to say about this player.

Turning to the British Newspaper Archive, searching for ‘Ruggles baseball’ (without the quotes), and filtering the results to focus on 1895, provides numerous accounts to back up Knowles’s contention that Ruggles was not just an outstanding pitcher but also as good with a bat as a ball. An advert for the 1895 English Baseball Cup Final between Fullers and Derby even goes so far as to describe him as ‘the finest pitcher in England’ [3]. However, again, frustratingly, he is only ever identified by his surname—no initial. Interestingly, his name is often paired with that of his battery partner, ‘Carey’—again, only the surname is ever given; they were evidently, a formidable combination.

This is of particular interest because, in one account, Carey is described as ‘a “coloured” player of exceptional strength and judgment’ [5].

This reference, suggesting that Carey was a man of colour, we cannot take at face value as the Fullers team was known as the ‘chocolate team’, because of their founder’s background in the confectionary trade, and it is possible that this description of Carey simply reflects the heavy hand of an overzealous copy editor. However, at the same time, then as now, colour was no bar to participation in UK professional sport, and we know of at least one baseball team active in England in this period that definitively featured players of colour [6]; so, the suggested reading cannot be dismissed out of hand. Relaxing the BNA search filter to encompass the years immediately before and after 1895 reveals that, while this was the one year that Ruggles played in the English game (which may explain why Knowles has so little to say about him), Carey remained active in the game for at least two more seasons, playing for several different London teams [7]—so a player of some significance.

In short, in ‘Ruggles’, we have the ‘finest pitcher in England’ in 1895, and in ‘Carey’, we may have a player of colour who made a major and prolonged contribution to the early English game. What evidence do we have to help us identify them? This is the information gleaned from the extant baseball literature—step 1 in the workflow.

Information Gleaned from the Extant Baseball Literature on ‘Ruggles’ and ‘Carey’

London Baseball League: Many of the league’s players were stage performers, and many of its backers were London-based American businessmen

Fullers Team: Described in at least one newspaper as ‘All American’ [8]

Ruggles: Played for only one season (1895); described in one newspaper account as the ‘Regent-street Twirler’ [9]

Carey: Played for several seasons (1895—1897); described by one newspaper account as ‘a “coloured” player of exceptional strength and judgment’ [10]

It seems safe, based on the above, to at least start with the supposition that both men were American and either connected to the stage or business. It is worth pointing out in this context that the players of colour that we know were active in this period were African American music hall artists, of whom there were a number in the UK in this period due to the popularity of so-called ‘minstrel shows’ (although more commonly associated these days with the racist phenomenon of white performers in ‘blackface’, some minstrel troops of the mid and late 19th century also featured artists of colour—see below).

If we suppose that both men were American, it suggests that, at least in the case of Ruggles, we would have better luck searching for possible candidates in lists of incoming and outgoing passengers than in censuses. Both of these resources are to be found on genealogy sites such as ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk, both of which are free to access on public computers in UK libraries; so a general search for, for example, ‘Ruggles’, would return results for both. However, experience shows that narrowing the search to one or the other dramatically reduces the number of ‘hits’ to have to check, particularly in combination with a filter to limit the search to records created in a given year or small range of years. However, this comes with the caveat that passenger lists held by these services are incomplete—the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence—and widening the search to include census and other records may be required.

Below, I present the workflow that I followed for identifying—albeit tentatively—Ruggles, followed by the workflow for Carey.

Step 1: Search britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and archive.org for extant accounts

Key Results:

Information presented above on Ruggles

Step 2: Search Ancestry and Findmypast, filter for incoming and outgoing passengers UK, “Ruggles”, 1890s

Key Results:

“H P Ruggles”, outgoing, October 1895; aged 20, occupation: ‘publisher’

“Mr. and Mrs. Howard P Ruggles” incoming, August 1899; Howard P Ruggles aged 24, occupation: ‘publisher’

‘H P Ruggles”, outgoing, December 1899

Step 3: Ancestry search, “Howard P Ruggles”, born 1875, USA

Key Results:

1900 US Federal Census, Howard P Ruggles, Chicago, Illinois, occupation: ‘publisher’; father Oliver, mother Rebecca, brother Ennis

1880 US Federal Census, Howard Ruggles and family in St Louis, Missouri

1920 US Federal Census: Ruggles and wife, Cornelia, living in New York; Ruggles is now in advertising.

Step 4: Google search “Howard Ruggles” “baseball” “Illinois”

Key Results:

Lake View High School Baseball Team photos 1892 and 1893, featuring Howard and Ennis Ruggles (see below). Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America [11].

Howard Ruggles, champion in the baseball throw, Illinois High School Association, 1892. Retrieved from https://www.ihsa.org/data/trb/records/ybych4.htm

Step 5: Google search “Howard Ruggles” “advertising”

Key Results:

Ruggles was the Eastern advertising manager for magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Lester’s Weekly, and the Smart Set (Fourth Estate, 24 May 1913)

Ruggles put together a New York Advertising Giants baseball team in 1919 for a charity game (Editor and Publisher, 5 June 1919)

The rest of Ruggles’ story I fleshed out using more ancestry and Google searches; the results I detail below, but the table above contains the key results that tie Howard Palmer Ruggles of St Louis and Chicago, to the ‘Ruggles’ who played baseball in the LBA in 1895. In addition to results putting baseball player Howard P Ruggles in England in the right year, it is worth mentioning the connection between Howard P Ruggles’ occupation in 1895—that of ‘publisher’—and the reference to Ruggles, the player, being a ‘Regent-street twirler’: although more famous in the popular imagination for clothing stores, Regent Street was in the Victorian era, and still is to some extent today, the centre of the publishing trade in London.

Howard Palmer Ruggles (18 July 1875—January 1959) [12]

• 15 July 1875: born, St Louis, Missouri, to father Oliver Wilson Ruggles and mother Rebecca Mary Ruggles, née Scobee.

• 1880: family living in St Louis; Howard’s siblings include a younger brother, Ennis.

• 1892: Howard P Ruggles, of Lake View High School, Chicago, wins the Illinois High School Association “Baseball Throw” competition.

• 1892 & 1893: Howard and Ennis Ruggles play for the Lake View High School baseball team—Howard is the catcher; he is also on the football team.

Lake View High School Baseball Team. 1892. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://cdm16818.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ahs/id/366. (Accessed December 31, 2024.)

Howard Ruggles is sitting in the middle row, second from the left; his brother Ennis is in the front row, on the right.

• Summer 1895: “Ruggles”, the “Regent-street twirler”, pitches for Fullers baseball team in the London Baseball Association season; described as the ‘finest pitcher in England’.

Daily Chronicle (London), 29 July 1895. Ruggles and Carey playing for Fullers. Image created by the British Library Board. No known copyright holder. Note the reference to the team being known as the ‘Chocolates’. This was because the team’s founder W B Fuller, was in the confectionary trade.

• 12 October 1895: “H P Ruggles”, US citizen, aged 20, a publisher, leaves the UK on the SS Campania. Regent Street is a centre for the publishing trade in London in this period.

• August 1899: ‘Mr and Mrs Howard P Ruggles’ travel to England. Ruggles is a publisher, 24 years old.

• October 1899: Marriage license for Howard P Ruggles and Georgiana Edla Ketcham issued in Missouri but never used.

• November 1899: Georgiana Ketcham Ruggles dies, aged 21, in London, England, of “enteric fever” (typhoid). She is described as the ‘wife of Howard Palmer Ruggles’, and Howard Ruggles’ profession is listed as “publisher (literary)” on her death certificate. Howard was at his wife’s side when she died.

Death notice for Georgiana Ruggles, Standard, 18 November 1899. Image created by the British Library Board. No known copyright holder.

• December 1899: H P Ruggles leaves the UK and returns to the US.

• 1900: Census places Ruggles family in Lake View, Chicago; Howard is described as ‘single’ and a ‘publisher’; their next-door neighbours are the Ketchams. Oliver Wilson Ruggles is a railway ticket agent.

• 1902: Howard Ruggles marries Cornelia, his deceased wife Georgiana’s younger sister.

• Before 1907: Oliver and Rebecca Ruggles move to a ranch in Sacramento, California.

• 1919: Howard Ruggles, his wife Cornelia, and son Palmer are living in New York. Howard is in advertising and a founder member of the “New York Advertising Giants” baseball team.

• January 1959: Howard P Ruggles dies in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

Howard Ruggles in 1919 (back row, right), organising a ‘New York Advertising Giants’ baseball team for a charity match against their Chicago rivals. Editor and Publisher, 21 August 1919. Public Domain. Accessed at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/The_Editor_and_Publisher_1919-08-21-_Vol_52_Iss_12_%28IA_sim_editor-publisher_1919-08-21_52_12%29.pdf 12 January 2025.

I feel confident that the odds are in favour of ‘Ruggles’ the pitcher and Howard P Ruggles, the publisher and then ad man being one and the same; however, in the absence of an initial for Ruggles the pitcher, this identification must remain tentative. Critically, the exercise has produced a working theory that can be tested against any more evidence that may emerge, as I will discuss below.

The workflow on Carey is more abbreviated, as, to date, I have been unable to go much beyond identifying a possible candidate, albeit based in large part on a single, contested, piece of information: ‘Carey’ being a man of colour. (SEE UPDATE BELOW)

Step 1: Search britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk andarchive.org for extant accounts

Key Results:

Information presented above on Carey

Step 2: Ancestry search, England and Wales census records, and incoming and outgoing passenger lists for ‘Carey’ born in the USA around 1870 +/- 10 years.

Key Results:

‘Charles Car(e)y’, ‘music hall artist’, born around 1869, ‘America foreign subject’ living in Holborn, London, 1900 England Census

January 1892, ‘Charles Carey’, born in Barbados, around 1871, travels from Liverpool to Queenstown, Ireland, working his passage as an able-bodied seaman

Step 3: Search britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk for ‘Charles Carey’ music hall artist, filter for 1890s, 1900s

Key Results:

Charles Carey, member of ‘Messrs. Robertson and Holmes’ Kentucky Minstrels’, alongside ‘America’s leading coloured comedian and acrobat’ Frank Broom [13]; Broom and Carey also appear with the ‘Royal Bohee Minstrels’, led by Black Canadian banjo-playing brothers James and George Bohee (Daily Telegraph (Derby), 31 January 1893); according to one newspaper account, Carey and Bloom are both ‘gentlemen of colour’ (Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 24 September 1893); that Charles Carey and Frank Broom are both men of colour is also implied by an ad in The Era, 19 December 1891, placed by Andrew Robertson, inviting ‘clever coloured ladies and gentlemen’ to join a new minstrel troop that specifically asks ‘Charles Carey’ and ‘Frank Broom’ to get in touch. There are further references to Charles Carey’s appearances on stage throughout the 1890s.

Advert placed by Andrew Robertson in The Era weekly magazine, 19 December 1891. Robertson was looking for ‘clever coloured ladies and gentlemen’ for his new minstrel troop. He specifically writes that he wants to hear from Charles Carey and Frank Bloom. Image created by the British Library Board. No known copyright holder.

This identification of ‘Carey’, the baseball player, as Charles Carey, the African American music hall artist, is, as can be seen, much more tentative. The relevance of the Charles Carey born in Barbados working as an able-bodied seaman in January 1892 is also uncertain as a “coloured seaman” by the name of Charles Carey was charged with ‘wilful disobedience of the lawful commands of the captain’ in Cardiff in 1899 [14], and we know that “our” Charles Carey was still working as a music hall artist a year later, so it seems these are two different Charles Careys, and both men of colour? It is also not clear what relationship “our” Charles Carey had with the actor–impresario Charles Carey who managed Tunbridge Wells Opera House in the early years of the 20th Century [15]. Much more research is needed here. However, as with Ruggles/Howard P Ruggles, it represents a working theory that can be tested against any new evidence that might emerge.

Where might that evidence come from? From other researchers. This brings us to the final element in the burgeoning of resources available to the researcher of early British baseball: social media. Posting a theory on a personal website, such as this one, or on a social media platform such as Facebook, can provide the final piece of the jigsaw (or upturn the board). To move the process forward, one need only press ‘publish’.

Jamie Barras, January 2025

Note added in Support, 1/25

After this piece was first published, I found a paper copy of an article written by R G Knowles for the Windsor Magazine in November 1895, previously only available as a low-resolution scan on archive.org. The article leads with a photo showing the 1895 Fullers and Derby teams alongside players from other teams in the LBA. The clear image only now available with the discovery of this paper copy makes plain that the Fullers catcher (identifiable because he has a catcher’s mask on the ground in front of him), front row, left, is a man of colour. Carey the catcher and Charles Carey the African American music hall artist are likely, therefore, to be the same man. Ruggles is harder to identify, for obvious reasons, but the player two places to the Fullers catcher’s right (his left, our right) bears a strong resemblance to Howard Palmer Ruggles as he appears in his 1893 high school baseball team photo.