the rabbit’s foot company’s baseball team, 1905

Here’s a photograph from the Indianapolis Freeman (July 15, 1905), showing the baseball team affiliated with the “Rabbit’s Foot Company,” a minstrel comedy troupe and band that marked their arrival in each town they played with an extravagant street parade.  The company seems to have mostly played the South, at least in 1905. 

The ball club featured only a couple of players I’ve heard of:

Robert Gilkerson, an infielder who would later run the Lost Island Giants and, more famously, Gilkerson’s Union Giants (I think he’s the third from left in the back row);

George Washington, who pitched pretty well for the Cuban X Giants in 1906 (3-1, 3.09 against top black teams) and appeared again for the Philadelphia Giants in 1908.  I’m not positive this is the same guy; the Cubans/Philly Giants player was born in Savannah, Georgia, while the caption has this Washington hailing from Goldsboro, North Carolina.  In either case I don’t know which player in the photo is Washington.

Preparing to pitch for the Philadelphia Giants in Connecticut on July 1, 1908, George Washington suffered a heart attack in the club house and died.  A death certificate was filed for him in Philadelphia, on which his profession was listed as “Ball Player”; he had been married, and he was buried in Brunswick, Georgia.

(Washington Post, July 2, 1908, p. 8)

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[james brunson]

Where's Blues singer, Bessie Smith?

Brunson