Sam B. Dow, the Problem of Historical Memory, and the Origins of Knoxville Baseball (Part 2)

1895 Maysville (KY) Baseball Club

“This good town is baseball mad,” proclaimed the sports reporter with the Knoxville Daily Journal. For a week in late July 1895, thousands of Knoxvillians turned out at Baldwin Park to see the amateur champions of Maysville, Kentucky play the home club, the Knoxville Reds.  The Kentucky boys were in the midst of an extended road trip in which they had scheduled matches with various professional and amateur teams. The sense of excitement running through the town and its baseball cranks was palpable. Prior to their arrival in Knoxville, the Maysville club had scored two significant victories over two National League teams—the Cincinnati Reds and the Washington Senators—and were deemed, by one reporter, the “Champion Amateur Team of the World.” The Knoxville Reds’ manager, Frank Moffett, was confident in his boys’ ability to handle such a formidable opponent, even if local gamblers were not as keen to put their money down on the home team. The first game, a lop-sided slugging fest set the tone for the Maysville club’s 10-day visit to the mountains—the Kentuckians had scheduled a 4-game series with the Knoxville Reds, followed by another 3-game series with the Asheville Moonshiners, before returning to Knoxville for 3 final matches against the Reds. The first match went in favor of the visiting club. But in the second and third matches, the Reds took commanding victories over the Kentuckians. The only close match was the fourth in which the Reds took a third consecutive victory over Maysville by two runs. Derailed by their fellow amateur Reds, the Maysville club dropped their next match against the Asheville Moonshiners before returning to form and defeating the Asheville club in the final two matches to claim that series. When the Kentuckians arrived back in Knoxville for a final 3-game series, Moffett’s Reds picked up where they left off and soundly defeated Maysville 10-5 and 26-8 in the first 2 games to secure another series victory. But the Kentuckians would get their revenge in the final game in the series with a 16-7 victory over the Reds. Though the Knoxville Reds had lost the first and last matches against Maysville, the home team had won 5 of the 7 games and clinched both series against the much-celebrated Kentucky club.

1895 Cincinnati Reds

Knoxvillians simply could not get enough baseball. Even the first generation of Knoxville baseballists were buzzing. As word circulated around the lobby of Col. Frank McNulty’s Imperial Hotel that the Maysville club had dropped its first of three matches with the Asheville Moonshiners, the Daily Journal’s baseball beat reporter noticed that one of the city’s earliest baseball players had become animated and was reminiscing about the first games played in Knoxville after the American Civil War. Those stories told by this baseball veteran became the basis for an article entitled, “In the Good Old Days” that ran in the July 23, 1895 issue of the Daily Journal. Though the player went unnamed in the article, he revealed an origins story that was, in many respects, quite similar to the origins of Knoxville baseball that Col. Samuel Billings Dow recounted for a Knoxville Sentinel reporter some sixteen years later in 1921.

Samuel Billings Dow, ca. 1890

“I think it was in 1865, maybe it was in 1866,” the unnamed Knoxville baseballist recollected, “when the first exhibition game of base ball was played south of the Ohio.” Unlike Dow who specifically stated 1865, here there is some doubt as to when that first game was played in the city. That said, both accounts are very specific that the first baseball game played in Knoxville was the first such contest ever played in the South. Of course, that was the not the case since baseball had been played in various southern towns and cities such as New Orleans, St. Louis, Louisville, Baltimore, Norfolk, Macon, Augusta, Galveston, and Houston in the years preceding the American Civil War. Moreover, baseball was being played in Memphis and Nashville two full years before Knoxville organized its first baseball clubs in the Spring of 1867.

Two origin stories.Knoxville Daily Journal, July 23, 1895 (left)
& Dow's interview with the Knoxville Sentinel, Nov. 20, 1921 (right)

The next interesting bit of information revealed by the unnamed Knoxville baseballist in the 1895 article was a list of names, essentially most of the rosters for Knoxville’s first two teams, which are identified as the Knoxvilles and the Holstons. There is an admission from the informant that they are not as clear as to all of the original members of the Holstons, whereas they are much more specific in identifying the players for the Knoxvilles including the positions that they played in the field. In this respect, the 1895 article reads much like Dow’s 1921 interview with the Sentinel (might this baseballist be Dow or, at the very least, one of the founding members of the Knoxville Knoxvilles?). The list of names for both Knoxvilles and Holstons is beneficial to the researcher because this information can be corroborated by looking at available box scores to match up names and the various positions they played in the field; however, this article, like Dow's interview, provides both first and last names, which many box scores for the Knoxvilles do not. This is critical, for example, because without first names, it would be difficult to ascertain which “Smith” or “Richards” in the city directory or census may have played for the Knoxvilles. Moreover, the 1895 article provides us with two additional Knoxvilles that are not accounted in the box scores—Dow's good friend and fellow Mason Dr. John W. Paxton, a Rebel officer, and General Luther S. Trowbridge, the lone known Rebel and highest-ranking Union general, respectively, to play for the Knoxvilles.   

Another interesting comparison between the 1895 and 1921 articles is that both the unnamed baseballist and Dow tended to blend various plays and injuries incurred over the course of multiple matches into their account of the first game. Both tell about the horrendous injury incurred by Spencer Munson (dislocating his arm throwing a ball back into the infield), Samuel Luttrell being knocked unconscious as he fumbled a barehanded catch of a sky ball launched deep to center field off the bat of William Chamberlain (the 1895 article, unlike Dow's account, named the Holston outfielder), and Dow's broken middle finger on his right hand as he tried to field a hot liner struck back towards him at the pitcher's point. Although the first game's score was never recorded in the newspapers, both articles agree that the Knoxvilles triumphed over the Holstons in that first game (Dow put the margin of victory at seventeen runs), which is confirmed by extant sources. Most subsequent matches, though not all, went in favor of the Holstons, which the unnamed baseballist placed the score of the third match at a staggering 80 to 79 (no newspapers record such a score). Interestingly, there is little reason to doubt the accuracy of this account because the unnamed baseballists states that he had, in his possession, “the old score book among [his] old papers somewhere.” Sadly, for this historian and any other researcher interested in Knoxville amateur era baseball, the scorebook has not surfaced.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the 1895 article is the focus on the Gay Street Base Ball Grounds on which the Knoxvilles and Holstons played the first of many matches, which offers some insight into perhaps the identity of the unnamed baseballist who was holding forth in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel, reminiscing about how baseball was first played in post-Civil War Knoxville. Like the 1921 Dow article, the unnamed baseballist noted that the Knoxvilles secured ground owned by Frank H. McClung on the east side of Gay Street north of Cowan, McClung & Co. to Commerce Street (present-day 300 and 400 blocks of East Gay Street between Union Ave and E. Summit Hill Drive, bounded largely by State and Central Streets to the east). Both articles document the clearing of the land, which was covered with high jimson weeds and cockleburs and used as a town dump, and both state that they went to Col. McClung to play on the grounds. However, a close reading of both articles is telling. Dow's account notes that he went to McClung to obtain permission for the Knoxvilles to use the land for playing baseball. The unnamed baseballist went a further than Dow in his account of acquiring access to McClung’s land and noted that he had “leased the property” from McClung and had hired a force of laborers to clear the ground for baseball, thus implying a more direct role in the transaction than Dow. Furthermore, there is a distinct difference in voice and a missing player that is not included in the unnamed baseballist’s Knoxvilles roster that appears in Dow’s account. First, Dow is referenced on several occasions in the 1895 article and he is casually mentioned as any other baseballist—unless the reporter intentionally disguised Dow as the source for the article, there is no indication that this is a firsthand account from Dow. Second, two baseballists are conspicuously ignored when the unnamed baseballist identifies the Knoxvilles and their positions in the field, which matches the names and positions. One player omitted was first baseman Homer C. Squires; however, he had long since left Knoxville and had died in 1887. The other Knoxvilles player omitted from the 1895 article was longtime lawyer Charles Seymour, the Knoxvilles second baseman. 

Charles Seymour had arrived in Knoxville at the end of the American Civil War from New England and quickly set himself up as a real estate agent. He first partnered briefly with William Cockrill before bringing on his fellow teammate, Spencer Munson, in a business he branded the “East Tennessee Land Agency.” Most property transactions in Knoxville passed across Seymour’s desk and, it is quite likely that Seymour, who had the wherewithal, much more so than Dow in the spring of 1867, was the one who approached Col. McClung and negotiated the lease so that the Knoxvilles could convert the land that he owned on the east side of Gay Street into the city's first baseball field. 

Charles Seymour Grave, Old North Cemetery, Hartford, CT

One last piece of information that points to Charles Seymour as the likely source for the 1895 article. The article begins noting that the Knoxville Daily Journal baseball beat reporter had encountered this unnamed “local base ball veteran” inside the Imperial Hotel. A quick scan of the 1895 Knoxville city directory reveals the location of Charles Seymour’s residence at this time—the 2nd floor of the Imperial Hotel.  

Knoxville City Directory, 1895 

For the full July 23, 1895 Knoxville Daily Journal article, click on the following image below (if you have a newspapers.com subscription, you can link here: https://www.newspapers.com/image/584164151/?terms=Dow&match=1&clipping_id=35175438