Saturday, October 18, 2008

The Lone Star Base Ball Club of New Orleans Honor A Fallen Fireman

I've been spending some time trying to run down the links between the Empire Club and the St. Louis Fire Department, correlating my list of known Empire Club members with lists of 19th century St. Louis firemen. One of lists that I'm using is Scott Williams' list of St. Louis firemen who fell in the line of duty. His site also includes a nice piece on Phelim O'Toole, a fireman who was killed on July 6, 1880.

Serendipitiously, I was looking for information about John Barrett, one of the field captains of the Empires in 1863 and a member of the St. Louis Fire Department, when I found the St. Louis Globe-Democrat's July 8, 1880 account of Phelim O'Toole's funeral. In the article was an interesting baseball reference:

The Lone Star Base Ball Club, of New Orleans, at present in the city, will attend the funeral in a body.

It was also noted that the Lone Star Club would march in the funeral procession.

While this really doesn't have anything to do with anything, I think it was a nice gesture by the Lone Stars to honor O'Toole, who was a remarkable person and a true hero. It seems that the Lone Star Base Ball Club was made up of honorable men.

2 comments:

chocc said...
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Jeffrey Kittel said...

You know, it's three in the morning and I've been out at the pub all night drinking and I'd rather not come home to find you bastards spaming my blog. It's not like I'm anybody and it's not like this site gets a ton of traffic so why don't you take your crap somewhere else.