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Caught on Camera

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Today in history

<p>To many Americans, April means just one thing &#8211; baseball.</p><p>If you&#8217;ve had baseball-playing ancestors locally, there&#8217;s no more appropriate time to add to your genealogical knowledge by tracing their teams, their accomplishments and their careers.</p><p>The single most comprehensive source is local newspapers, traditionally available on microfilm but now gradually shifting to digitization. Beginning in the late 19th century, Wyoming Valley&#8217;s newspapers gave extensive coverage to amateur and semi-pro teams throughout the region. Since the teams tended to play in the late afternoon, the morning papers are your best bet.</p><p>As Wilkes-Barre developed a minor league team in the 20th century (at various times a farm club of Cleveland and Detroit), the daily newspaper coverage became even more intensive. The Wilkes-Barre Record Almanac, an annual end-of-year publication from 1886 to 1962, always carried a full wrap-up of the season. The minor league team disappeared for good in the mid-1950s.</p><p>Amateur weekend baseball was played locally all through the 20th century (and still is played today), with fans eagerly following the teams representing their communities. It too received good coverage in the papers.</p><p>The local high schools began playing afternoon games well before mid-20th century, and our colleges were quick to organize teams when they developed in the post-World War II years. Of course, the newspapers followed the teams closely.</p><p>For the scholastic teams, school yearbooks offer team photos, always fascinating to genealogists. But often those yearbooks were distributed before the end of the school year and did not encapsulate the actual season. Town libraries might or might not have the yearbooks. College libraries are more likely to have them.</p><p>Regardless of what teams you&#8217;re following, where do you find the newspapers?</p><p>The largest collection is at the Luzerne County Historical Society, on South Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre. Non-members pay a $5 fee, while the library is free to members. For distance research, you&#8217;d have to know specifically what articles you are looking for.</p><p>Another good collection is just a few doors away at the Osterhout Free Library. Their microfilms don&#8217;t go back quite as far as the Historical Society&#8217;s. But the Osterhout has the old weekly Sunday Independent newspaper spanning nearly all of the 20th century. The Independent sports section typically offered solid coverage of Saturday games and previews of the upcoming week&#8217;s games and can be a good starting point.</p><p>The Osterhout&#8217;s website offers information on research.</p><p>Incidentally, both those libraries have the almanacs mentioned above.</p><p>Here&#8217;s a word of caution regarding names: Sports stories of 75 years ago and more often gave only last names of players. Even yearbooks generally followed this policy. So, you might have to do some additional searching to determine if the &#8220;Johnson&#8221; in a story or photo is actually the relative you&#8217;re looking for.</p><p>Another caution: The area&#8217;s high schools began consolidating in the mid-1960s, and many familiar school names disappeared at that time.</p><p>How likely are you to find your baseball-playing ancestor? There&#8217;s likely a lot of reading to do, but you have good material to work with locally.</p><p>So, do what your ancestor would have done: step up and swing for the fences.</p><p><strong>Genealogical Society News:</strong> The Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society&#8217;s research library will be open Thursdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the second Saturday of the month from noon to 4 p.m. The library is in the caretaker building on the grounds of the Hanover Green Cemetery, Main Road, Hanover Township.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/web1_TOM_MOONEY.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Out on a Limb</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Out On a Limb: Baseball-playing ancestors can be found in newspaper archives