The Second Nine Of The Baltic Club

Local Editor Missouri Republican - Sir:  A match game of base ball came off yesterday on the old Commercial grounds, between the Baltic (second nine,) and the Independent Base Ball Clubs, which resulted in the defeat of the latter [by a score of 33-14.]

-Missouri Republican, June 5, 1863


Again, I'm talking about the fact that there was more baseball going on in St. Louis during the Civil War than I previously believed.  Here we see the Baltics, who were one of the antebellum clubs, still playing in 1863 and fielding two active nines.  In fact, just above this notice was a report of another game played between the two clubs that resulted in a victory for the Independents.  I haven't sat down and put a list together but, if I did, I'm reasonably certain that the number of clubs, adult and junior, that were active during the 1861-1864 period exceeded the number that were active during 1859-1860 period.  Not all of those clubs were active during the entire period but there were a substantial number of clubs and a substantial number of games being played as the war was going on.

Also of interest here is that the above notice was sent to the paper by the secretary of the Baltic Club, Shepard Barclay.  Barclay also was the field captain and pitcher for the Baltic's second nine that day.  After the war, Barclay would play for the St. Louis University and Union clubs but at this point he was a fifteen year old kid.  It probably says something about the nature of baseball in Civil War St. Louis that a fifteen year old held such a prominent position in what was, at that time, one of the oldest active baseball clubs in the city.

Note:  I see that I posted the box score to this game earlier this year, when I was first going through the Civil War era papers, but I think it's worth noting again, in light of the fact that I'm drawing different conclusions based on the evidence.  After almost two thousand posts and six years of blogging, it gets tough to remember sometimes what I've posted what I've not posted.            

Speaking Of Match Games During The Civil War...

A match game of base ball came off yesterday on the old Commercial grounds, between the Baltic (second nine) and the Independent Base Ball Clubs, which resulted in the defeat of the latter.

-Missouri Democrat, June 5, 1863


Two days before this game was played, Robert E. Lee launched his second invasion of the North and was heading for Pennsylvania.

Of note here, besides the fact that this was a rare match game played in St. Louis during the Civil War between two senior clubs, is that Shepard Barclay was pitching and captaining the Baltic Club.

Giants On The Ball Field, Part One

You will be surprised when you read below that this dignified bank president, that railroad manager or that rushing business man was once a promising backstop or a "reliable man in the field."  The appended chapter of local history is rich in happy recollection and interst.  There are judges, merchants, bankers, lawyers, engineers, capitalists-scores of busy men of to-day who were marvels in the baseball field.

Asa W. Smith, seventh son of the pioneer actor-manager of the West, Sol Smith, was the founder and for many years president of the old Union Baseball Club, an organization that ranked high in anti-professional days.  At the time of his death, in 1874, by drowning at Biddeford Pool, Maine, where he was spending his summer vacation, he was a member of the banking firm of Kelligher & Smith, and ranked high both in social and business circles.  Probably no one of the young St. Louisans could have been taken away whose loss would have caused such general and poignant sorrow.  He was a friend and companion, whose qualities of head and heart were of the finest character, and in business he had already proven successful.  He was an ardent devotee of the national game, and a No. 1 player.  Two of his brothers belonged to the same club, and another, Mark L. Smith, was one of the finest comedians of the country.  

Judge Shepherd Barclay of the State Supreme Court was another of the brilliant players of the Union Club, ad sustained the difficult position of pitcher with great effect.  He was also a fine fielder.

On February 9, 1895, the St. Louis Daily Republic published an article entitled "These Busy St. Louis Men Were Giants On The Amateur Ball Field."  This article, the beginning of which is produced above, mentions well over one hundred St. Louis baseball players from the antebellum pioneer era and the postbellum amateur era.  The article also gives some biographical information on about eighty of these players.  I'm going to post the entire article here over the next few days.

Once you've read the entire article, I'm sure that you'll agree with me that this is one of the most significant sources of information that exists for the era.  The only other sources that presents so much unified information is the Tobias series and Spink's The National Game.  The 1895 Republic article is truly extraordinary in its scope and relevance.  

I should note that this significant discovery was the work of John Maurath of the Missouri Civil War Museam and he was kind enough to pass it along to me.  I can't thank him enough.

Edit:  No more late night posting for me.  I not only misidentified the paper the article was in (the Daily Republic, not the Republican) but it also appears I had some issues with the concept of noun/verb agreement.  Not to mention my normal problems with spelling.  On the bright side, my English As A Second Language class is going well.       

A Young Shepard Barclay

The above photo comes from Encyclopedia of the history of St. Louis : a compendium of history and biography for ready reference. Barclay was, of course, a member of the Union Club.

Shepard Barclay's Obituary

Judge Shepard Barclay died on November 17, 1925, at the age of 78.

Judge Barclay was born in St. Louis, Missouri, November 3, 1847. He was descended from a family of pioneer American settlers. Following a preparatory education in St. Louis schools, he obtained his A.B. degree at St. Louis University in 1867. He attended the University of Virginia, where he obtained a degree in 1869 and from 1870 to 1872 studied at the University of Berlin and in Paris. Later he returned to St. Louis University, where he attained the LL.D. degree.

On June 11, 1873, he was married to Miss Katie Anderson here. After practicing law from 1872 to 1882, he was elected Circuit Judge in 1882. In 1888 he was elected Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri. He owned the distinction of being the youngest man ever elected to the Supreme Court. In 1897 he was chosen Chief Justice. After serving for a year, he resigned from the Supreme bench to resume his practice.

At the time he was elected to the circuit bench here he was also the youngest judge ever chosen for that position at that time.

In 1901 Judge Barclay was appointed Judge of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, but resigned that post in 1903 to return again to his practice.

Before his death, Judge Barclay was one of seven present subscribers of the Central Law Journal who had been subscribers since the Journal's initial publication.

The loss of a leader in the community and of a lawyer with the highest ideals will be keenly felt. It is a compensating thing, however, that his activities will be an inspiration to others to carry on in his footsteps.

-The Central Law Journal, December 5, 1925


Nothing really new here but a nice summation of Barclay's public life. Barclay was, of course, a member of the Union Base Ball Club and Al Spink's source for the Fruin myth.

Shepard Barclay's Biography

I now have a copy of Shepard Barclay's biography. Privately published in St. Louis in 1931, the book appears to have been edited by William L. R. Gifford. The biographical sketch was prepared by Clarence E. Miller and the book also includes a brief essay on Barclay's legal career written by S. Mayner Wallace. The primary source for the biography was Barclay's private papers. The book was written at the request of Edward Mallinckrodt, Barclay's nephew, "(in) affectionate remembrance of a long and happy relationship."

A couple of interesting things:

-With regards to Barclay's parentage, there appears to be a reason why it wasn't mentioned in other sources. It's a bit complicated and a tad scandalous. Shepard Barclay was born on November 3, 1847 to Britton Armstrong Hill and Mary Shepard Hill. Britton Armstrong Hill was a lawyer from New York who had come to St. Louis in 1841 and married Elihu Shepard's daughter on October 8, 1845. The marriage was not a happy one and ended on March 2, 1849 when the two were divorced "by act of the state legislature." On June 26, 1854, Mary Shepard married David Robert Barclay, a lawyer and native of Pennsylvania, who had moved to St. Louis in 1850.

-While he was known as Shepard Barclay to his teachers and friends, the man's legal name was actually Shepard Hill. In 1868, "upon reaching his majority," he had his name legally changed from Hill to Barclay.

-There are a couple of references to baseball in the book although not much in the way of detail. Miller quotes Barclay with regards to his days at St. Louis University as saying that "(in) 1867, the year of my graduation, we held the local college championship in base ball, after a great game with our leading rival in St. Louis." This game is most likely the one between SLU and Washington University that Kelsoe wrote about in his book. There is also a reference to Barclay enjoying athletics and the outdoors and as someone who had a lifelong love of baseball. There is no mention of his having played baseball at the University of Virginia or in Europe. There also is no mention of the Union Club.

-Of the top of my head, I can't imagine Barclay having played that much with the Union Club or having been a rather prominent member. I can't imagine him playing with the club in 1860 when he was 12 or 13 and Kelsoe wrote that Barclay pitched for SLU before joining the club. So based on that, Barclay most likely didn't join the Union Club until 1867. In December of 1869, he left for Europe and would not return home until May of 1872, by which time the Union Club had stopped playing baseball. At best, if Kelsoe is correct and Barclay didn't join the club until after he graduated from SLU, Shepard Barclay was a playing member of the Union Club for two years.

Shepard Barclay

Shepard Barclay, a member of the Union Base Ball Club, was a lawyer, jurist, and Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court.

Born November 3, 1847, Barclay was the son of Capt. Elihu H. Shepard, "of pioneer American settlers." A member of the St. Louis University baseball club, he graduated in 1867 and received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1869. After studying law at the University of Berlin, Barclay returned to St. Louis in 1872 and set up his practice. On June 11, 1873, he married Katie Anderson.

In 1882, Barclay was elected as a judge to the circuit court in St. Louis and in 1888 he won election to the Missouri Supreme Court. Barclay was named the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court in 1897 and resigned that position the next year, returning to St. Louis to practice law as a partner in the firm of Barclay, Fauntleroy, & Cullen. In 1901, he returned to the bench after being appointed to the St. Louis Court of Appeals and served until 1903, once again returning to private practice.

Barclay passed away in St. Louis on November 17, 1925.

Shepard Barclay is the source for the Fruin myth. In The National Game, Al Spink quotes Barclay as saying that "(it) was in the early fifties...that Mr. Fruin brought the game to St. Louis. I was a little fellow at the time and with other boys I played all sorts of games on a field located right where Lafayette Park is now. I remember while playing there one day Jere Fruin, a great tall boy came among us. He was a stranger who had come from somewhere in the East and on our field he laid out a diamond much the same as the diamond in use to-day, and in fact, showed us just how to play the game. That was really the introduction of the game to St. Louis."

Of course, this claim is without merit and is demonstratively false. Fruin himself, quoted in The National Game, states explicitly that he did not introduce baseball to St. Louis. But this hasn't stopped the myth from being repeated, accepted as fact, and published in histories and on websites. It makes for a nice story but Barclay, when relating it to Spink, was sixty-three years old and talking about events more than fifty years past. I've always felt a bit of scorn for Barclay for perpetrating this myth on us and I'm still working on finding it my heart to forgive him.

W.E. Kelsoe, in A Newspaper Man's Motion-Picture of the City, has a nice piece on Barclay and his baseball exploits:

The night of the conversation with Pitcher Fitzgibbon I had one also with Judge Shepard Barclay, referred to in a former paragraph as a crack pitcher of the Unions in his St. Louis college days. The judge had pitched for the Pickwicks of St. Louis University in their games with the Olympics of Washington University before he joined the Unions. He pitched the Unions to victory in one of their games with the Empires for the championship of Missouri and was their pitcher when the St. Louis Unions (played) the Nationals of Washington City. His fame as a pitcher for a college club continued with him after he left St. Louis University. This was the Barclay who pitched in the game that won for University of Virginia the championship of the South over the Washington and Lee University, the contest being reported by Chadwick for his publication. Nor was that all. Not content with his pitching victories in America, the St. Louisan crossed the ocean and pitched a winning game for "Columbia," a newly organized college club in the University of Berlin. The victory, however, dearest to his heart, the one this ex-member of the Missouri State Supreme Court loves to talk about most, was the one played in St. Louis, May 23, 1867, by the Olympics and the Pickwicks, a contest between the college clubs of, respectively, Washington University of St. Louis and St. Louis University, the latter winning with Barclay as the pitcher. The Judge remembers that Nat Hazard pitched for the Olympics and that the only player in that locally famous game still living, besides the two pitchers, is George A. Strong, now a New York lawyer,who played second base for Washington University. The umpire of the game was Adam Wirth, of the St. Louis Fire Department, as before stated, and nationally famous (because of the honor of having his picture in Harper's Weekly) as the first baseman of the old St. Louis Empire Club. The judge told of a game in which one side scored 127 runs, but I think that was another contest, perhaps one between the Unions and Nationals.

Note: The Book Of St. Louisians, from which I took the biographical information, lists Barclay as the son of Elihu Shepard while my notes list him as Shepard's grandson. I lean rather strongly to idea that he was Shepard's grandson but have to admit that I haven't run down the information. I've bought a copy of a 1931 biography of Barclay (first edition no less) and it's on the way. Hopefully, it will answer the question of Barclay's parentage. Once I get my hands on the book expect to be hearing more about Shepard Barclay.

Charles H. Turner

This weekend I was doing research on three projects that I wanted to get off my plate. The first was a basic genealogy of the Lucas’s, a prominent St. Louis family that was deeply involved in the history of 19th century baseball in the city. The second was the makeup of the board of directors of the 1875 St. Louis Brown Stockings. In A Newspaper Man’s Motion-Picture View of the City, Bill Kelsoe lists the members of the board and I wanted to gather some general information about the men who were instrumental in financing and organizing the team. Finally, I wanted to find more information about the social makeup of the Union Base Ball Club of St. Louis. Based on a few sources that I have, it appears that some of the members of the Union Club came from prominent and wealthy St. Louis families. That members of the Union Club came from the city’s upper class seems to be fairly unique among baseball clubs of the era and demanded more research. While I was unable to finish any of the three projects, interestingly all three research threads came together in the person of Charles H. Turner. As a wise man once said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Charles Turner was born in 1849 to Henry S. Turner and Julia Hunt. Henry Turner was a West Point graduate and classmate and friend of William T. Sherman who served with Stephan Kearney in the Mexican-American War. Julia Hunt was the daughter of Theodore Hunt, a naval officer and favorite in St. Louis social circles, and Anne Lucas, the only daughter of J.B.C. Lucas, one of the earliest settlers of St. Louis and one of its wealthiest and most influential citizens. H.S. Turner, with the support of his wife’s powerful family, would serve as a member of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, the Missouri State Legislature, and as Assistant United States Treasurer. In the 1880 census, he listed his occupation as “retired capitalist.” In the 1870’s, H.S. Turner, as a member of the Board of Aldermen, would introduce legislation that established the street car system in St. Louis. Within a few years, his son Charles would own the company that his father helped to establish.

Charles Turner, according to Jeremiah Fruin, was an original member of the Union Base Ball Club of St. Louis. Other members of Turner’s social set who were members of the club included his cousin Robert Lucas, Shepard Barkley, Joseph Charles Cabanne, Orrick Bishop, and Harry Carr. Turner, a catcher, was described as a part of the original battery of the Union nine. He also pitched and played second base for the club. His membership in the original Union Club raises some questions. If the club was founded in the early 1860’s at about the same time as the Empire Club (and they were certainly playing baseball by 1861) then Turner could not have been an original member, being too young. It’s most likely that Turner did not join the club until after the Civil War.

In 1875, Turner was involved in the founding of the Brown Stockings. With the urging of newspaper men W.C. Steigers and R.P. Thompson, “several young St. Louisans of prominence” set up an organization to create a professional baseball team in St. Louis that could compete with the professional Chicago White Stockings. The board of directors that was elected to run the new organization included J.B.C Lucas, president; W.C. Steigers, vice-president; Charles A. Fowle, secretary; and Charles Turner, treasurer. Other members of the board included Orrick Bishop, William Medart, and Joseph Carr. Interestingly, the Union Club was heavily represented on the board with Turner, Steigers, and Bishop all being members and with the possibility that Lucas and Carr were as well. The Lucas family was also well represented with Turner joining his cousin J.B.C. Lucas on the board.

While it’s unknown exactly what role Turner played with the Brown Stockings, he was involved, according to Jon David Cash, in the signing of the Louisville players in 1877. These signings which were an attempt to duplicate Chicago’s raid on the Boston Red Stockings, coupled with the gambling scandal that involved both the signed Louisville players as well as members of the Brown Stocking nine, helped to bring about the collapse of the Brown Stockings organization and the experiment with professional baseball in St. Louis.

It’s difficult to overstate the prominence of Charles Turner in 19th century St. Louis. Not only was he a member of the wealthiest St. Louis family, he also married into another prominent family. His wife Margaret was the daughter of Stephen Barlow, the cousin of Stephen Douglas and a wealthy politician and railroad magnate in St. Louis. Turner himself was the president of the Suburban Railway Company, which owned the St. Louis street car system, and the Commonwealth Trust Company. He was described by Lincoln Steffens as being a millionaire and served on the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners in the 1880’s. Turner also was a member of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, which raised the money to put on the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

Turner’s influence in St. Louis was exposed in a negative way by Steffen in 1902. In what became known as “The Boodle Scandal,” Turner was shown to have been a member of a cabal that bribed city aldermen and state legislators in order to get legislation passed that was favorable to their business interests. In grand jury testimony, Turner was shown to have paid over $144,000 in bribes to secure legislation that would double the value of the Suburban Railway Company, which he was looking to sell. The case was tied up in court for several years and Turner died in 1906 before facing the legal consequences of his actions.

While “The Boodle Scandal” and Steffen’s exposes may have tarnished Turner’s reputation, his legacy was saved by the service of his grandson. Charles Turner Joy was the son of Charles Turner’s only daughter, Lucy Barlow Turner, and Duncan Joy. He graduated from Annapolis in 1916 and served in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. During Korea, Rear Admiral Charles Turner Joy served as Commander of Naval Forces, Far East. After he passed away in 1956, a destroyer was named after him. The USS Turner Joy, pictured above, served the nation proudly until it was decommissioned in 1982.

Kelsoe On St. Louis Amateur Baseball In the 1860's

AMATEUR BASEBALL.

The death of Asa W. Smith, president of the Union Baseball Club of St. Louis, was reported in the papers of August 2 and 3 (1874). Asa, who was a son of Sol Smith, the actor, was accidentally drowned off the coast of Maine, at Biddeford Pool. The Keokuk Baseball Club had arrived in St. Louis, but the game scheduled with the Unions was abandoned. The visitors played the Empires, winning by 7 to 6.

The Unions were the principal competitors of the Empires for the city and state amateur baseball championship, the Reds being excluded from the contest, as some of their players were paid for their services. The Empires had held the championship two or three years and were again winners in 1874. The last president of the Unions, Judge C. Orrick Bishop, remembers that their winning championship team consisted of Eugene Greenleaf and Jim Freeman, pitcher and catcher; Joseph Charles ("Charley") Cabanne, E. C. Meacham and Rufus J. Lackland, Jr., on the bases; Bob Duncan, at short, and Asa W. Smith, Bill Duncan (Bob's brother) and Tom McCordell in the field. The last surviving member of that team, Mr. Cabanne, died in 1922 (March 17). Judge Bishop used to play occasionally, and so did W. C. Steigers (who died May 25, 1923), well known for over forty years as business manager of the Post-Dispatch; also Robert J. Lucas (died May 18, 1922). Judge Shepard Barclay, remembered as a crack pitcher in his college days, pitched for the Unions in a notable victory over the Nationals of Washington. Then there were Arthur Strong, Henry Berning, Harry Carr, Billy Yore and others who had won honors with the Olympics of Washington University or the Pickwicks of St. Louis University before joining the Unions. In their best days the Unions and Empires made a good showing against the best clubs of the country, including the famous Cincinnati Reds, the Forest Cities of Cleveland, the Rockfords and the Nationals, the Atlantics of Brooklyn, the Excelsiors of Chicago, the Unions of Morrisania, N. Y., and the Athletics of Philadelphia.

Among the local ball players of note in the sixties and who became prominent later in the industrial field were John D. Fitzgibbon, Jeremiah Fruin and John W. O'Connell. Mr. Fruin died in March, 1912, and Mr. O'Connell in August, 1918. Mr. Fitzgibbon is still with us. All three played with the Empires, Mr. Fitzgibbon being the club's captain and pitcher. When I called Capt. Fitzgibbon on the phone recently (in November,1923) he named, in addition to Fruin and O'Connell, already mentioned, most of their fellow players of fifty and more years ago-Pitcher Little, Tom Oran (catcher), John W. Shocky (later assistant chief of the St. Louis Fire Department and killed at a fire), Tom Murray, Tom Walsh, Charley Stevens, Adam Wirth, John Heath and Joe Schimper (a fireman who played ball under the name of Cambers, as stated elsewhere, and who, like Shocky, was killed by a falling wall at a fire). All these had passed away, said the veteran builder, except Stevens, one of the last to go being Fireman Wirth of Engine Company No. 14, a famous first baseman in amateur days.

The night of the conversation with Pitcher Fitzgibbon I had one also with Judge Shepard Barclay, referred to in a former paragraph as a crack pitcher of the Unions in his St. Louis college days. The judge had pitched for the Pickwicks of St. Louis University in their games with the Olympics of Washington University before he joined the Unions. He pitched the Unions to victory in one of their games with the Empires for the championship of Missouri and was their pitcher when the St. Louis Unions defeated the Nationals of Washington City. His fame as a pitcher for a college club continued with him after he left St. Louis University. This was the Barclay who pitched in the game that won for University of Virginia the championship of the South over the Washington and Lee University, the contest being reported by Chadwick for his publication. Nor was that all. Not content with his pitching victories in America, the St. Louisan crossed the ocean and pitched a winning game for "Columbia," a newly organized college club in the University of Berlin. The victory, however, dearest to his heart, the one this ex-member of the Missouri State Supreme Court loves to talk about most, was the one played in St. Louis, May 23, 1867, by the Olympics and the Pickwicks, a contest between the college clubs of, respectively, Washington University of St. Louis and St. Louis University, the latter winning with Barclay as the pitcher. The Judge remembers that Nat Hazard pitched for the Olympics and that the only player in that locally famous game still living, besides the two pitchers, is George A. Strong, now a New York lawyer,who played second base for Washington University. The umpire of the game was Adam Wirth, of the St. Louis Fire Department, as before stated, and nationally famous (because of the honor of having his picture in Harper's Weekly) as the first baseman of the old St. Louis Empire Club. The judge told of a game in which one side scored 127 runs, but I think that was another contest, perhaps one between the Unions and Nationals. Judge Barclay died November 17, 1925.

I have several letters somewhere from Henry Chadwick, but have mislaid them. In one he expressed a great desire that I try to locate a championship baseball won by the St. Louis Unions, rivals of the Empires, and have it presented to The Missouri Historical Society, but I have not been able to find it. The ball has gilt lettering and some reader of this page may know where it is.

-From A Newspaper Man's Motion-Picture Of The City

Note: This is a fascinating piece by Kelsoe on the St. Louis amateur baseball scene of the 1860's. The first thing that jumped out at me was Kelsoe's statement that the Union had defeated the Nationals which was simply not true. Also, there's obviously some connection between the St. Louis Fire Department and the Empire Club which I was only vaguely aware of and that needs further research. It's also interesting that Kelsoe states that the Reds were excluded from the amateur championship when I have other sources that say they not only competed for the championship but they actually won it in the early 1870's. Finally, the ball that Chadwick was looking for may have been the ball that was used in the game between the Morning Stars and the Cyclones in 1860, the first game played in St. Louis. Supposedly, the ball was gilded and used as a trophy ball in St. Louis for years. According to Merritt Griswold, the ball was last in the hands of the Empire Club.

The Griswold Letter

In The National Game, Alfred Spink wrote a great deal about the history of baseball in St. Louis. He gave substantial space to Shepard Barklay's account of Jeremiah Fruin's role in bringing the game to the city "in the early fifties." This account resulted in Merritt Griswold writing a letter to Spink in which Griswold gives his account of how baseball first came to St. Louis. Spink printed this letter in the second edition of his book, which was published in 1911. Below is Griswold's letter in its entirety.


Alfred H. Spink
Author The National Game
St. Louis, Mo.,

Dear Sir-One of the reporters of "The Standard Union" of Brooklyn, N.Y., showed me a few days ago a book written by you entitled the history of baseball.

To start at the commencement of the game in its first introduction into Missouri I would refer you to the files of "The Missouri Democrat" for the Winter of 1859 and 1860, where in you will find published "the rules of the game," also a diagram showing the field and the position of each player made from a rough sketch I gave to Mr. McKee and Fishback, the publishers, or to Mr. Houser, at that time their bookkeeper, cashier and confidential office man (and, by the way, a mighty fine young man).

At this same time I was organizing the first baseball club, "The Cyclone," which name was suggested by one of its members, Mr. Whitney, of the Boatman's Savings Bank.

Other members of "The Cyclone" were John Riggin, Wm. Charles and Orvill Mathews (the latter the late Commodore Mathews of the U.S. Navy), John Prather, Fred Benton, (later captain under Gen. Custer), Mr. Fullerton, (later a General, U.S.A.), Mr. Alfred Berenda and his brother, Mr. Ferd Garesche, Mr. Charles Kearney (son of Gen. Kearney), Mr. Edward Bredell, Jr., and a number of other young men of St. Louis.

Soon after the organization of "The Cyclone" several others were started, viz: "Morning Stars," "The Empire," "The Commercial" and later on several others.

The first match game played between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, (if not to the Pacific Coast), was between "The Cyclone" and "The Morning Stars" and was played in 1860, just back of the Old Fair Grounds in North St. Louis, "The Morning Stars" winning the game, the score of the game I now have. It is 50 years old, and the ball used in that first match game was for years used as the championship trophy, it going from one club to the other, and the last the writer ever heard of it, it was in possession of the Empire Club. I personally sent to New York for the ball to be used in this first match, and after the game it was gilded in gold and lettered with the score of the game.

"The Morning Star Club" was a "town ball" club and played from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Tuesday and Friday mornings in Carr's Park, but after considerable urging and coaxing on my part they passed a resolution at one of their meetings that they would try the national rules for one morning if I would coach them, or more properly, teach them, which I consented to do if they would agree to stick to it for the full hour without "kicking," for as I told them they would no like it until after playing it for a sufficient length of time to become familiar with some of its fine points, all of which they agreed to and kept their word like good fellows as they were, but in ten minutes I could see most of them were disgusted, yet they stuck to it for their hour's play. At the breaking up of the game to go home they asked me if I would coach them one more morning as they began to "kindy like it." I was on hand their next play day, or rather play morning at 5. Result they never played "town ball" after that second inning and in their first match, as stated above, "waxed" my own club. I could give you many incidents up to the breaking out of the civil war and the disbanding of "The Cyclone" by its members taking part on one side or the other.

Hoping you will excuse my intruding with these little facts in regard to early ball playing in St. Louis, I am

Yours Respectfully
Merritt W. Griswold.

P.S.-Although I am now in my 77th year, I take just as much interest in that splendid game as when a kid at school in old Chautauqua Co., New York, or when a member of the "Putnams" of Brooklyn in 1857 and the "Hiawathas" of the same place in 1858-59 in which latter year I went to St. Louis.

Jeremiah Fruin And Shepard Barklay

The source for Golenbock’s claim that Fruin was the first to introduce the game to St. Louis was Shepard Barklay. Barklay stated that “(it) was in the early (1850’s) that Mr. Frain brought the game to St. Louis..."

Barklay was a member of a prominent 19th century St. Louis family and a bigwig in his own right. Born in 1847, Barklay went to St. Louis University, got his law degree from the University of Virgina, and studied civil law for two years at the University of Berlin. He was admitted to the Missouri bar in 1872, was a candidate for mayor in St. Louis, and was elected to the circuit court of St. Louis in 1882 (by a huge majority). Barklay was elected to the Missouri Supreme Court in November of 1888 and served for ten years. He also served for a time as the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. Barklay passed away on November 17, 1921.

Barklay’s grandfather was Elihu Shepard, one of the most influential St. Louisians of the 19th century. Shepard was a captain in the Mexican war, the founder of the Missouri Historical Society (god bless him), and one of the original promoters of the city’s public school system. The Shepard School in St. Louis is named after him.

I can understand how Golenbock placed such weight on Barklay’s claim regarding Fruin and early baseball in St. Louis. The guy was a bigwig, a former Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, and knew Fruin personally (having played baseball with him in the the 1860’s). But his statement about Fruin bringing the game to St. Louis in the early 1850’s is not accurate. Based on Fruin’s statement alone, Barklay’s account is provably wrong.

It looks like Barklay is the Abner Graves of St. Louis baseball.