Did you know?
This is a dangerous job.
Each week when I embark on my trips through newspaper archives of the notable events that have shaped Fayette County, I risk serious bodily injury.
It happens all the time. I reel through old newspapers, and suddenly, and without warning, I find myself falling off my chair.
This week is no exception.
Oh, I’ve already told you about the times I’ve found myself on the floor when I learned about the local visits to the county by Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, Honus Wagner, Josh Gibson, Joe Louis, Joe Montana, “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, James J. Jeffries, Dizzy Dean, Johnny Weismuller, Ken Griffey, Sr., Satchel Paige, John L. Sullivan, Branch Rickey, Woody Hayes, Jersey Joe Walcott, Fritzie Zivic and many of them who’d shown-off their athletic prowess here.
But I never thought I’d experience another potential injury after reeling through Uniontown newspapers published nearly 118 years ago.
Somebody call me an ambulance!
I’ll get to that part later.
Sports wasn’t the only thing on the minds of local newspaper readers in 1893.
In Connellsville, for instance, there was a “queer complaint” that made front page news in the July 7 edition of the Uniontown Evening News.
“Nests of Nuisance,” was the headline for a story about a Connellsville doctor who’d become the subject of complaints because he’d installed bird boxes near his house that were used to feed sparrows and swallows.
The bird feeders had apparently caused an annoyance, and the doctor was hauled before the town’s burgess.
When the burgess ordered the doctor to remove the bird boxes, the doctor refused, claiming the burgess didn’t have any jurisdiction in the matter.
The entire episode was called “one of the most peculiar cases in the history of the town.”
Four days later, on July 11, there was another strange case which involved a missing New Salem school teacher.
That teacher, A.L.W. Fike, had been missing for three years.
It was suspected that he’d taken off with an 18 year-old teacher at his school.
But six months earlier, the young lady returned to New Salem and claimed she’d been furthering her studies at the Ebensburg Normal School.
She also denied she had anything to do with Fike’s disappearance.
However, a month earlier, a letter was sent to the Uniontown Genius of Liberty, by a “tramp” who purported to have murdered A.L.W. Fike at a train depot in Falls City in 1890.
According to the letter, the tramp had intended to rob the school teacher, and he eventually bludgeoned him with a stone.
That letter was immediately called into question.
First, there was a search of the area where the tramp had claimed he killed Fike. There was no sign of Fike’s remains.
And secondly, the letter’s handwriting was considered suspicious. “It was compared with other matter(s) he (Fike) had written and they are identical,” it said.
Now to those aforementioned sporting developments.
“The Pittsburg National League Club to Play Here September 13,” was atop a front page story in the Evening News on Sept. 5, 1893.
“The Pittsburgs are next to the strongest team in the country and there will a good deal of interest in the game, as a great many people are desirous of seeing the big league players, and also making the comparison between them and the Amateurs (Uniontown’s baseball team),” the story said.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any newspaper accounts of that announced Sept. 13 game with the Pirates on Sept. 14.
However, in that day’s edition of the Evening News, I did find another announcement that the New York Giants were scheduled to play in Uniontown in early October.
As it turns out, both the Pirates and the Giants played in Uniontown that year.
But there’s more.
Uniontown’s baseball team actually beat the New York Giants by a score of 12-10 on Oct. 2.
“It was a contest that was exciting from start to finish and every one of the 2,000 spectators almost yelled themselves hoarse,” said the game’s front page account.
(They would also lose a game to the Giants by a score of 7-3 on Oct. 3).
That loss, though, should have been nothing of which to be ashamed, since two of the Giants’ players who played that day would later become members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
John “Monte” Ward played second base and Roger Connor played first base for the Giants
A few days later, the Pittsburgh Pirates did come to town.
To the dismay of Uniontown’s baseball fans, the Pirates clobbered Uniontown’s amateurs by a score of 13-3.
“We wre done up,” was emblazoned across the game’s account on the front page of the Evening News.
In the box score for the game, I noticed the second baseman’s name was listed as “Mack.”
I took a look at the Pirates history, and discovered the Mack who played second base for the Pirates that year was really Cornelius McGillicuddy, Sr. – or as baseball fans everywhere would come to know him – Connie Mack.
That’s right, the baseball Hall of Famer, who would later become the longest-serving baseball owner in Major League history (the Philadelphia Athletics), played a game in Uniontown in 1893.
Connie Mack reached first on an error in the first inning. And he would later reach base on a single, as part of a nine-run second inning.
But, perhaps, most importantly, since the outcome of the game was never in doubt, it was written that he was “one of the most gentlemanly ballplayers in the business.”