One of the great things about genealogy is that in the course of collecting information about who your ancestors were, where they lived, who they married, and when they died, you may also get to know more about them through family stories, newspaper articles, or other resources. I think that names and dates are important, but it is the pursuit of information about my ancestors’ lives that is my favorite part about genealogy.
During a recent visit with my dad, I learned a little bit more about my grandfather, whom I never met because he passed away before I was born. The topic of discussion was baseball, because we were vacationing on Cape Cod and we attended a couple of Cape League baseball games. My son Dylan is only two and a half, but he is very much interested in baseball. My husband loves baseball too, and during vacation he was enjoying spending time watching some games with Dylan as well as pitching tennis balls to him so that he could bat at them with his toddler-sized aluminum baseball bat.
I knew that my father had played baseball in high school, but I wondered whether others in the family had played baseball in high school or at any other level. My dad said that his brother, my uncle John, had played very well in high school and in college. My dad also mentioned that his father had played in something called the Industrial League. Of course, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to research what the Industrial League was. In Massachusetts and other places, beginning in the 1920’s when baseball was becoming very popular in America, the owners of mills started to form company teams for their workers. Back then, mill owners were heavily involved with providing day to day necessities like food, housing, and other things for their workers, who were not paid all that much. Baseball was sort of an extra “amenity” that was offered to keep workers happy, to give them some leisure time and healthy recreation. Many people went to see the games, and some of the players even went on to have careers in the big leagues. I was very happy to learn this new bit of information, as part of discovering more about the history of my family.