Play Ball! Finding Your Baseball Ancestors

 

Baseball has long been thought of as America's "national pastime." From the sandlots to the major leagues, chances are good that the game influenced your ancestor's life in some way.

Here are a few resources to help you find your baseball-playing ancestors.

General Resources

The National Baseball Hall of Fame offers an amazing digital collection of oral histories, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, cartoons, and images of 3D artifacts. The Giamatti Research Center in Cooperstown, New York, is the library and research facility for the organization. You can visit the library in person by appointment or request research assistance from a staff librarian. You may wish to consult ABNER (American Baseball Network for Electronic Research) for a partial list of holdings before your visit.

Ancestry.com ($) offers two databases specific to the research of baseball-playing ancestors. "U.S., Professional Baseball Player Profiles, 1876–2004" is an index to over 15,000 professional baseball players who played between 1876 (the year the National League was founded) and 2004. Available information includes birth/death dates and locations, nicknames, college attended, physical characteristics, and game statistics. The second database, "U.S., Professional Baseball Player Photos and Illustrations, 1876–2004," provides nearly identical information, but also may include a photograph or a baseball card for players who played between 1887 and 1938.

The Society for American Baseball Research offers many useful resources, including the Baseball Biography Project. All biographies in the project are written and peer-reviewed by SABR members with the goal of publishing a biography for every major league player in history. Also available are links to players' professional career statistics, a bibliography of research citations from The Baseball Index, as well as interviews, photographs and much more. Additionally, the project is creating pages for ages for ballparks, broadcasters, executives, games, managers, scouts, spouses, and umpires, so be sure to check those out if your ancestor could have been connected to other aspects of the game.

Baseball Almanac has dedicated itself to "preserving the history of our national pastime" with an interactive website containing 500,000+ pages of baseball history, facts, original research, and statistics not found anywhere else online. The website is privately-held and welcomes contributions and suggestions from the public. Research services are available by request.

LA84 Foundation's Sport History Library is a growing digital collection of more than 70,000 documents on Olympic and general sports history. Included in this collection are images of Baseball Magazine from 1908–1920. The LA84 Foundation supports a library in Los Angeles, California, housing a collection of thousands of books, periodicals, other publications, and photos. A staff librarian is available to do research by request.

Specific Resources

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is dedicated to preserving the history of African-American Baseball. The website offers an eMuseum of resources, including a historical timeline, personal and team profiles, and "Diamond Cuts," which are narratives taken from the history of African-American baseball. The Research Library contains a multimedia archive of oral histories, selections from the Museum's photo archive, and a resource bibliography for further research.

Negro League Baseball offers a trove of historical information, including details about the League, a timeline of events, team profiles, and player biographies. A Frequently Asked Questions section provides answers to inquiries from students, educators, and baseball fans.

If your ancestor played ball as a youngster, be sure to visit Little League® Baseball and Softball. This site offers a unique timeline of the League from its founding in 1939 to its 75th Anniversary in 2014. Various historical articles can be found in the Newsletter, such as this one on "The 18 Girls Who Have Made Little League Baseball® World Series History." The Little League Baseball World Series History Book (which appears to be a forgotten section of the main site) is a browseable database of game scores, team rosters, and tournament brackets for over 50 years of Little League® World Series history.

Did your ancestor play in the College World Series? Then you'll want to check out College World Series History hosted by Omaha.com and the Omaha World-Herald. This site features historical information for each year of the CWS, dating back to 1947. There is a page for every school that has played in the CWS, some with photos, statistics, and players' names. Baseball Reference also has a section of information about the CWS, so be sure to check that one, as well.

 If your ancestor was one of the athletes who inspired the film A League of Their Own, you will want to visit The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association. This site is a "virtual scrapbook…filled with articles, photographs, interviews, and statistics that give you an up-close-and-personal look at the pioneering women who played professional baseball from 1943 through 1954." The site features player biographies, interviews, and obituaries, league history, and you can even read a section of the players' "charm school guide."

Finally, baseball isn't only popular in America. If your ancestor played ball in Cuba, Japan, or Korea, check out Baseball Reference. This comprehensive site contains team and player information for Japanese and Nippon Pro Baseball, the Korean Baseball Organization, the Cuban National Series, as well as American Major and Minor Leagues and the Negro Leagues.

 
Elizabeth O’Neal is a freelance writer, educator, and web developer. An avid genealogist for three decades, Elizabeth writes the blog My Descendant’s Ancestors, where she shares family stories, technology and methodology tips, and hosts the monthly "Genealogy Blog Party."

Find Your Family Online in Digital Books

Is a book about your family out there somewhere, just waiting to be discovered? You may be able to find one without ever leaving the comfort of your home! Digital books are all over the Internet, and many are free to use. Here are the best places to look for digital books about genealogy.

Google Books

Launched in 2004 as "Google Print," Google Books now contains over 25 million scanned book titles. A Google Books search works just like a regular web search: type in your search criteria, and if a book with matching content is available, it will appear in your search results. If a book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given permission, you will be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases, the entire book. Copyrighted books are only available in "snippet view," however, links to where you can buy or borrow the book from a library are also provided. With a free Google account, you can add the books you’ve found to your personal library for later reference.

Internet Archive

The appropriately-named Internet Archive began in 1996 with the goal of archiving the Internet, but the project soon expanded into providing digital versions of other published works. Today, the Internet Archive contains over 12 million freely downloadable books and texts, as well as 550,000 modern ebooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free account. You can expect to find family, county and local histories, census records, and even contemporary genealogy how-to books. Most books are offered in several different formats, including DAISY files for the print-disabled.

HathiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust (pronounced "haw tea") is a partnership of several academic and research institutions offering a collection of over 15 million titles from libraries around the world. Books that are uncopyrightable (i.e., some government works) or in the public domain can be searched and viewed in their entirety, as well as downloaded in PDF format. Books that are still in copyright are considered "limited," cannot be viewed, but can be searched, allowing you to decide whether or not to obtain a physical copy of the book from another source. 

FamilySearch

The Family History Books collection at FamilySearch contains more than 325,000 digitized genealogy and family history publications from the archives of family history libraries such as the Allen County Public Library and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Included in the collection are family histories, county and local histories, genealogy magazines and how-to books, gazetteers, and medieval histories and pedigrees. While some books are only viewable at a Family History Center, many can be viewed from – and downloaded to – your home computer.

MyHeritage: Compilation of Published Sources

One of MyHeritage's best-kept secrets is their repository of digitized books. All are free to access, and you don't even need to log in with a free account! The site currently hosts 84,206,892 pages from 447,870 sources, including "thousands of published books ranging from family, local and military histories, city and county directories, school, university and hospital reports, church and congregational minutes and much more." All records include images of the book's pages, as well as an OCR text transcription. If you have a MyHeritage account, you can save records directly to a person in your tree. You can also print or download individual pages, although it does not appear possible to download entire books at this time.  To learn more about the digital books at MyHeritage watch the free Legacy webinar - Book Matching Technology at MyHeritage.

BONUS: Genealogy Gophers

Despite the funny name, Genealogy Gophers offers access to more than 80,000 digitized "family histories, regional and local histories, genealogy magazines, how-to books, gazetteers, newsletters, and medieval histories." Digitized books are provided through a partnership with FamilySearch, Archive.org, and other free book sources on the Internet. What makes Genealogy Gophers different from the other sites is their search technology, developed specifically for "identifying real people named in genealogy books." In other words, your searches are more likely to return useful results. Having performed searches on all of the sites listed in this post, I can honestly say that I found Genealogy Gopher's results to be surprisingly different than what I received on any of the partner sites. They are definitely worth a try!

 

Elizabeth O’Neal is a freelance writer, educator, and web developer. An avid genealogist for three decades, Elizabeth writes the blog My Descendant’s Ancestors, where she shares family stories, technology and methodology tips, and hosts the monthly "Genealogy Blog Party."

California Digital Collections to Help You Strike Genealogy Gold

As one researcher lamented to me a while back, "California does not give up her secrets easily." That said, there are some excellent California resources. Try these California digital collections and maybe one of them will lead you to strike genealogy gold!

California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC) - If you are looking for newspapers from the State of California, then the CDNC is the place to look. This collection contains more than 200,000 issues comprising 2,102,902 pages and 17,536,359 articles from “significant historical California newspapers” published from 1846 to the present. These include the very first California newspaper, the Californian, as well as the first daily California newspaper, the Daily Alta California. You will also find issues from several current California newspapers that are part of a project to preserve and provide access to contemporary papers. While the site is - and will remain - free to search and browse, you might want to consider becoming a premium user, which will help support the CDNC financially, as well as to give you access to bonus features such as high-resolution images, saving of search histories, seeing your recently viewed articles, and saving articles to private lists. And don’t forget to “pay it forward” by correcting OCR mistakes you’ve found; future researchers will thank you!

Online Archive of California - This collection provides free public access to “detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 contributing institutions including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.” You will find more than 20,000 online collection guides which you can use to browse, locate resources, view selected items digitally, or learn how to gain access to the physical objects. The OAC currently contains more than 220,000 digital images and documents.

Calisphere - Visited a million times a year by undergraduates, K-12 students, teachers, professors, genealogists, artists, and other curious people, Calisphere is a project of the University of California Libraries, providing free access to “unique and historically important artifacts.” The collection contains over 875,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more, covering California’s pre-Columbian era through the present day. You can browse collections such as the “Holocaust Living History Workshop” or the “1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Digital Collection,” or visit unique exhibitions such as “Everyday Life and People: The Gold Rush Era, 1848-1865.” Be sure to check out the historic photos!

Early California Population Project - Developed by the Huntington Library, the ECPP provides free and public access to all of the information contained in California’s historic mission registers, providing a wealth of information on the Native Americans, soldiers, and early settlers of Alta California. The project contains records of more than 101,000 baptisms, 27,000 marriages, and 71,000 burials performed in California between 1769 and 1850, and includes records from 21 of the California missions, as well as the Los Angeles Plaza Church, and the Santa Barbara Presidio.

The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco - This multimedia site offers resources pertaining to historic events in the San Francisco Bay area, such as the 1849 California Gold Rush and the history of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Of particular interest are records pertaining to “San Francisco’s Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906,” which includes photographs, the first-ever list of those “Who Perished” in this tragedy, and the “Great Register 1906 List of Dead and Survivors.” Records from a few contemporary events are also available, such as the “1989 San Francisco Earthquake” and “The Oakland-Berkeley Hills Fire of 1991,” considered “the worst fire involving loss of life and property” since the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

SFgenealogy - Another useful site for researching your northern California ancestors, SFgenealogy offers free access to genealogical and historical information for San Francisco, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the State of California. Originally created as a niche for San Francisco genealogy, the site has expanded to neighboring northern California counties, as well as Spanish genealogy and California early history. The site was recognized by Family Tree Magazine as one of the “Best State Websites” from 2011 to 2014.

California GenWeb Project - No list of California genealogy websites would be complete without including the California GenWeb Project. Established in 1996 by "a group of genealogists who shared a desire to create online centers for genealogical research," the USGenWeb Project websites are created and maintained entirely by volunteers. The California GenWeb includes links to information on the California missions, maps, the California Biography Project, and links to individual county sites.

Have you found any useful resources for California genealogy research? Please share them in the comments!

Do you have California ancestors? The California series will help you find them!

 

Elizabeth O’Neal is a freelance writer, educator, and web developer. An avid genealogist for three decades, Elizabeth writes the blog My Descendant’s Ancestors, where she shares family stories, technology and methodology tips, and hosts the monthly "Genealogy Blog Party."