Here’s an
interesting comparison (link sent to me by
Fred Brillhart) of three Kansas City Royals greats to their Monarchs equivalents (with a not-so-surprise ending). The account of Bullet Rogan’s career comes mostly from the
Wikipedia entry—which, incidentally, I wrote! It’s my only (recent) foray into Wikipedia land, and I tried very hard to conform to their guidelines. So there’s no “original research”—everything is based on secondary sources (with 42 footnotes)—though unavoidably the article is guided by my interpretation of the sources. One perhaps controversial decision I made was to place Rogan’s birthdate firmly in 1893 instead of 1889.
Although this might seem at first like a minor detail, the difference of four years could strongly affect any assessment of his career. Rogan joined the Monarchs in July 1920; his dominance of the Negro National League really got started in 1921, and lasted more or less through the 1928 season. If he was born on July 28, 1889, as some sources have it, he would have started his NNL career at age 30 (almost 31), had his best years from age 31 through 38. Since most players do not peak in their thirties, it would seem highly reasonable, indeed likely, that these were not really the best years of his baseball career, and that he was even better in the Army in his twenties.
If, on the other hand, he was 26 when he joined the Monarchs, and he enjoyed his best years with them from age 27 through 34, it looks a lot more likely that available records pretty much capture how good he was at his peak.
Anyway, since a couple of people have asked me about it, I thought I’d go ahead and outline the evidence so you can make up your own mind.
The main source for Rogan being born in 1893 instead of 1889 is
Phil Dixon’s book
The Monarchs 1920-1938, which is the closest there is to a book-length biography of Rogan, and is the most wide-ranging collection of research on Rogan and the Monarchs of the 1920s and early 1930s that exists. (Phil is publishing a
new edition with McFarland, which I don’t think is out yet.)
Phil states unequivocally that Rogan was born on July 28, 1893, in Oklahoma City, and his account of Rogan’s early years supports that birth date. Rogan’s first professional or semiprofessional team was Fred Palace’s Colts, a team of 18 and 19-year-olds, which he joined in 1911. Had he been born in 1889, he would have been 21 and 22 during the 1911 baseball season. It’s difficult to believe that a talent of Rogan’s caliber would have first appeared with a team of teenagers at age 21, especially when the established Kansas City, Kansas, Giants, a professional team that had defeated Rube Foster’s Leland Giants in a 1909 series, were right there in Rogan’s home town. Incidentally, according to Phil Dick Whitworth first joined the Colts at the same time in 1911—and he was born on August 28, 1894 or 1895.
Moreover, Phil’s account implies (though it doesn’t exactly state outright) that Rogan joined the Army right out of high school—either before graduation or directly after. He quotes a family friend of the Rogans, Orrin Murray, saying that “Rogan moved his age up by several years, left school and joined the army” (p. 8). He wasn’t the only future Negro Leaguer during this era who did this: Oscar Charleston, Jasper Washington, and
probably Heavy Johnson also added years to their ages when enlisting. The first two were only 15 when they joined up, and claimed to be 18; Johnson was already 18, but claimed to be 21. While I don’t know much about this, I’d guess that you normally had to be 18 to enlist at all, but that until you were 21 you needed to have a parent or guardian’s permission.
Rogan enlisted on October 19, 1911, reporting his age as 22 years and two months, which would be consistent with a July 28, 1889, birthdate. I haven’t seen other military records, his World War II draft card, or his Social Security records, but it would not be surprising if the 1889 date were used in those as well. The 1889 date also appears on a passenger list arriving in Los Angeles from a Royal Giants’ tour in Asia, which indicates that Rogan probably used his “military age” on his passport.
On the other hand, census records (with one exception) are more consistent with an 1893 birthdate. The most important is probably the 1900 census, showing the Rogans still living in Oklahoma City, and giving a July 1893 birthdate for young Charles W. Rogan.
Here are the Rogans in the 1910 census, now living in Kansas City, Kansas. (Note that the children are all said to have been born in Tennessee.)
The one exception is the 1920 census, where, as Patrick Rock pointed out to me some time ago, Rogan is double-entered. He appears both at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona, and at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri. He was probably physically (and temporarily) present at one of the locations, while at the other the census record was compiled from official records of some sort. Anyway, at Jefferson Barracks he is listed as 30 and (accurately) born in Oklahoma, while in Arizona he is listed as 26 and born in...Alabama?
Here’s the 1930 census, with Rogan living in Kansas City, Missouri:
On the eve of the first East-West all-star game, Russell J. Cowans wrote in a brief profile of Rogan that he “was born in Oklahoma City, Okla., July 28, 1893” (
Pittsburgh Courier, August 26, 1933, p. A5).
But, aside from Phil Dixon’s information about his early life and career, the best indicator that Rogan was probably born later than 1889 is in the 1890 Oklahoma Territorial Census, where we find his father Richard Rogan unmarried, without children, and still living with his widowed father and family, which had only recently moved to Oklahoma City from Sumner County, Tennessee:
UPDATE 12:28 p.m. I forgot to include Rogan’s grave marker, which gives a birth date of July 28, 1894, presumably from family sources:
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