Talk:Frank Turk

Post office

This deserves credence over the versions that substitute customs work: NYT obit for John Lorimer Graham describes Graham's notability & postmastership.
--Jerzy•t 08:02, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Cartwright

Mr. Baseball sez

On the west coast, a baseball club called the Eagles (named after the New York Eagles) was formed in San Francisco in 1859. Baseball had been introduced there by two migrants from New York; Alfred DeForest Cartwright (Alexander's Brother) and Frank Turk, a former Knickerbocker. And baseball was even flourishing in Hawaii in the 1850's... brought there by the master himself, Alexander Cartwright.

and The golden game: the story of California baseball by Kevin Nelson sez in first partial 'graph on p.7

But given [three specific factors] Cartwright almost certainly did not plant any seeds in California.

A serious problem here is that Cartwright's having (apparently) passed thru at the right time makes him such an obvious candidate to be involved it would be odd if no one believed they both were pivotal. That no doubt establishes "a tradition that...", but it means that unsupported tradition has no credibility at all. Is any source traceable back to a contemporaneous written account?
--Jerzy•t 09:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

That is why I chose the words "Is credited with...", but in reliable sourcing Alexander Cartwright is indeed credited, remember Wikipeidia is about verifiability, not truth. The place to look to find hints towards contemporaneous written accounts would be the bibliography of Frank Joel's Book ISBN 081083927X, which is kind rare book but you can read a copy in the rare book room of the SF Main Public Library. Very deeply researched using original resources, mostly newspapers, (the one's remaining after the fire of 1908), while the gist of Joel's book is the ethnic history of baseball he might also mention Turk and Cartwright. I "speed read" the Joel book in a couple hours while researching for the List of baseball parks in San Francisco, California article, so I may have missed mentions of Frank Turk, or either of the Cartwright brothers in the detail. One thing was clear, that by the 1860's baseball was a huge component of the social fabric in San Francisco. It is easy to believe that the seeds for that started germinating due to immigration of Kickerbockers, and Knickerbocker fans around the Goldrush. SaltyBoatr (talk) 14:14, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

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Well said. Still, "usually credited" may be called for.
--Jerzy•t 11:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)