If you haven’t seen it, you should check out Dick Thompson’s article, “Cannonball Bill Jackman: Baseball’s Great Unknown,” in the latest issue of National Pastime. (Also see in the same issue: Bill Young on “Ray Brown in Canada,” and Peter Bjarkman on “Retiring Clemente’s ‘21’.”) Dick’s piece, part of an enormous project to document Jackman’s thirty-year-plus career, puts the spotlight on two little-studied areas of research: professional black ballplayers outside the Negro Leagues, and black baseball in New England. Jackman pitched professionally from at least 1920 to 1953, mostly for New England-based teams, but spent only 1935 in the organized Negro Leagues (with the Brooklyn Eagles).
Dick notes that Jackman, in his Hall of Fame questionnaire, put his birth date and place as October 7, 1897, in Carta, Texas, though at other times “he said he was unsure of the exact circumstances of his birth,” and census information seems to give conflicting birth years of 1894 and 1897. Here, as a kind of addendum to Dick’s article, is Jackman’s World War I draft card:
I’m not exactly sure where Carta, Texas, is; but Carta Valley, Texas, is in Edwards County, near (though not adjacent to) Hays County, the location of Kyle.
And here is Jackman’s World War II draft card, front and back:
In 1917 he only knew the month (October) of his birth, but it appears that he eventually settled on October 7 as his birthday, with the year varying from 1895 to 1897.
Comments