Susan Blakley has sent in some great photos of her great uncle, the pitcher Louis Adward “Ad” Lankford. He was born in 1882 in Canton, Missouri, and according to his family he played for the Kansas City Monarchs (probably the earlier team that flourished in the 1900s, rather than J. L. Wilkinson’s Negro National League club) before moving on, by 1910 or so, to Salt Lake City, where he played for a club called the Occidentals. By 1914 he was with the Lincoln Stars of New York, and he seems to have remained on the east coast after that. Most of the latter part of his baseball career was spent with the Penn Station Red Caps. He passed away in New York in 1967.
Many thanks to Susan for the photos!
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