I love perusing the archives of the Antrim Reporter to look for ideas for historical stories to share in the Limrik. If you’ve ever done this yourself, you may have experienced what is known as the rabbit-hole effect. This month my plan was to see what was happening 100 years ago, in the summer of 1920, but what I found was not very exciting. Guy Hulett had just received 650 rolls of wallpaper to be sold at the old prices; G. H. Caughey and family returned Tuesday morning from a few days of camping at Rye Beach; Help is very scarce for haying. The women will have to do their share this year; and some guy named C. J. Larson from Hancock was looking for some cows. No, they weren’t lost; he just wanted to buy more cows. Business as usual in the Antrim Reporter.
Since professional baseball in 2020 just got started in July, I thought that baseball in 1920 might be a good topic. As I looked through the 1920 issues, I began to notice there was an abundance of information about baseball scores and stats. Not the Red Sox or the dreaded Yankees, but local baseball. Occasionally I’d see information and scores for local high school teams but the information that I was seeing on the front page of every issue were the scores and schedules of the town teams. Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920, but I couldn’t find any mention of the Babe in the Antrim Reporter that year. What I did find was that game after game, the boys from Antrim could really swing the bats.
These boys, really young men in their late teens, twenties and thirties, were part of the Antrim Athletic Association. As I looked further, most of the information about the A.A.A. was found between 1918 and 1921, but the earliest mention of it was in 1906. In January of 1907, the A.A.A. was mentioned when they played basketball against Francestown, winning 23–16 and then losing to Wilton a couple of days later 20–22. According to an issue in September 1919, the Antrim Athletic Association became a “permanent organization and will direct the base ball and basket ball games. John Thornton has been elected captain and B. G. Butterfield manager.”
In the May 5th, 1920 edition, the A.A.A. published its elections and reported the following; President—H. W. Johnson, Manager—Ross Roberts, Treasurer—C. A. Bates, Secretary—C. W. Prentiss and Directors—Leo Mulhall, Byron Butterfield and John Thornton. On Saturday, May 7, the town provided entertainment at Town Hall as a fundraiser for the team using local singing talent, bringing in juggler Fred Hart from Worcester, Massachusetts, showing the movie Laughing Bill Hyde starring Will Rogers and topping off the evening with a dance. The hall was filled to capacity and raised a gross profit of $150 (equal to $1900 in 2020), which doesn’t seem bad considering the tickets were “two for a dollar—some for less if you want.”
After going 11 and 5 in 1919, their success continued in 1920, when the Antrim Athletics finished the season with a winning record of 12 wins and 6 losses. Their rivals were the Wilton Athletics; they lost 2 games out of 3 against them that summer. They beat Hillsboro 2 out of 3 times, including a game when Hillsboro brought in three ringers from Manchester. They beat East Manchester 3–2 and on Labor Day they lost to a team from Boston 0–3 in the morning and won 4–0 in the afternoon. They outscored their opponents 98 to 61 in 1920. Some familiar names on this team were John and Albert Thornton, Ellerton Edwards, Donald Madden and Fred Raleigh.
Fred Raleigh was born in Antrim in 1890 and lived in the house built by his father, Henry, in 1895 at the corner of Grove Street and Hilton Avenue. He spent most of his years working as a merchant in the local stores. Fred’s great, great, great grandfather was Philip Raleigh (Riley), the first settler of Antrim back in 1744 and the namesake of Riley Mountain.
Antrim history tells us that we had organized baseball in Antrim by 1891 and possibly even earlier. In our archives, we have a team photo from 1912 and another from the mid 1890s. One name that appears in both of these photos is Cuddihy. The Cuddihys were well-known as the stars of Antrim sports for many, many years. Andrew appears to have been the oldest of the Cuddihy stars. His younger brothers John, James, Richard and Matthew were also great basketball and baseball players. Andrew was the uncle of two well-known recent Antrimites; Russell and Bruce Cuddihy. As I read more about Andrew, I realized that he wasn’t just a great athlete. There was more than his athletic prowess; there was his service to his town and his country.
Andrew was born in 1877, and later in life he lived in the house on the north side of Clinton Road just before Brookscroft Drive, now known as 105 Clinton Road. If you research Andrew Cuddihy in the Antrim Reporter, you’ll see that he played on both the town basketball and baseball teams and was a strong swimmer, but you’ll also see that after his playing days were over, he was very involved with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in Antrim, including a stint as Noble Grand in 1922, among many other notable positions. In 1930, he also held the position of Master of the Antrim Grange. He spent almost his whole adult life, 47 years, working at the Abbott Company, which was located just up the road from his home. And although it doesn’t appear that Andrew was a veteran, I found a copy of his registration card for World War I dated September 12, 1918. On the registration card is a spot for the registrar to note why the person may be disqualified from serving. On Andrew’s, it was noted “first, third and fourth fingers gone on the right hand”. Here was Andrew, a 41-year-old man, missing 3 fingers on his right hand and he was registering to serve his country in the First World War. Look up fortitude in Webster’s Dictionary and you may find Andrew’s name printed there.
From baseball in 1920 to the great-grandson of the first settler of Antrim in 1744 and back to 1918 to a life-long Antrim resident with more talent and fortitude than most of us can only imagine, the rabbit-hole effect is real.
The amount of information that is available at my fingertips is simply amazing at times. Using my computer, tablet or even my phone, I can read an article or a story and be transported back to the times of my ancestors and beyond. To write this story, I used Antrim’s history books including Whiton, Cochrane, Tibbals, Parades and Promenades, A Stroll Through Antrim, New Hampshire and the electronic versions of the Antrim Reporter and Antrim Limrik. If you need assistance with researching Antrim’s historical past, please get in touch with us.
Comments