Net54baseball.com Forums - How to identify an old cabinet card?

Posted By: AndyI picked up an old cabinet card from a collector who picked it up in an S.F. Estate sale. My best research efforts have placed it at around 1870, this based primarily on the fact that the gent in the photo has a jersey that reads "Kemper-Paxton" and my best research efforts find an un-named baseball team in Caldwell County Missouri in around 1870, and two of the prominent businessmen/family names in the county were Kemper and Paxton. There was also a Kemper-Paxton dry goods store in town, and the members of those two great families are buried in the Kemper-Paxton plot. I can send a scan to anybody who REALLY thinks that they can help; I have spoken with residents of Hamilton, MO and surrounding communities, and have found no definitive leads. Read the below excerpts from a Caldwell county historical website and see what I mean. Here is some info from <a href="http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/mo/caldwell/misc/booth1a.txt" target=_new>http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/mo/caldwell/misc/booth1a.txt</a>: JAMES M. KEMPER HAMILTON MERCHANT IN THE SIXTIES Narrator: W.T. Kemper, 68, of Kansas City and Others Wm. T. Kemper, the Kansas City banker, is a son of James Madison Kemper, a pioneer of Hamilton and Sallie Paxton both natives of Kentucky. James M. Kemper came to Hamilton at the age of seventeen in 1858 to be a clerk in the A.G. Davis store - the first store here - located at the site of the Courter Theater facing south. He was a clerk under John Burrows of Mirabile, who managed the Davis Store. When he came, people called him Jimmy and for years he was thus known. When about twenty one he and Wm. Stone started a General Store in the Davis Building for themselves and it was in this store that the Casey-Bristow killing began. Later the firm was made up of John Ballinger, S.P. Cox, and J.M. Kemper, still down by the railroad. An old ad in the 1864 Kingston Newspaper said they had a good supply of flour, salt, dry goods, groceries and took produce. They had a salt yard just north of their store building. In 1865, Kemper and Paxton built a two-story frame on Main Street on the spot where the Bram Store now stands. James Whitt lately of Daviess County was the head clerk and above the store lived the young George Lamson and wife and baby Harry, who was then depot agent. This store was popular and a money maker as all the early old timers recall it. It burnt sometime about 1870 and Kemper sold the site to Anthony Rohrbough and son-in-law Moore who built on the site the brick block which still stands. When James Kemper decided to leave town a farewell dinner was given in his honor and B.M. Daley a prominent young lawyer sang a funny song with a refrain, "Jimmy Don't Go." Where upon every one present was supposed to weep in fun and ended by weeping in earnest. During the rest of his life Mr. J.M. Kemper's heart was always in Hamilton. Here in this county he had met and lost the bride of his youth Sallie Paxton and they are both buried in the Kemper-Paxton lot in the Highland Cemetery. While living here he owned the big white house on the hill in the west end of town, now the James Kautz home. He left here to enter a Mercantile business in St. Joseph where he stayed forty years. His first wife having died, he married again. He died in California 1928. He was related to the Kemper family which have lived for years in the Mirabile neighborhood. He was also related by inter-marriage with the Paxtons of Mirabile and with the A.G. Davis family and the Penney family of Hamilton. TAYLOR ALLEE IN HAMILTON IN 1865 Narrator: Taylor Allee, 85, of Hamilton, Missouri Mr. Allee's parents were Isaac Reed Allee (1812 War soldier) buried at Kingston and Mary Ann Parks Allee buried in Highland Cemetery Hamilton. He was born in Henry County Indiana. In 1865 Taylor Allee, his sister and half brother came to Caldwell County, the father and mother came 1866. The children had come because a near relative Sarah Smith and her husband Philander Smith had located in the county. Their father's farm was a half of the later Waterman farm three miles west of Hamilton, the other half was the P. Smith farm. Later Allee sold to W.H. Henry, a relative, and bought in Daviess County. Isaac Allee was an herb doctor and doctored many people here and in Indiana. In Indiana he had his own herb garden and always compounded his own medicine. The Taylor Allee family still have some of his old bills in which his charges are shown as 12 1/2 cents for medicine, 16 2/3 cents for a visit. Taylor Allee with five other Allees enlisted in the Union army from their county in Indiana. He declared he was 18 but really was 15. He was a big boy five feet seven inches weighed 143 pounds, and got by with it. They examined him by giving him two big thumps on the chest and having him jump over a box. His job was to hunt down bush whackers. He well recalls Hamilton of the 1865 day - which was the time he first saw the town. Then, Kidder was a better town than Hamilton. There were not five hundred people here. He came fresh from the war - age 16. He as all the other older citizens begins the description of early Hamilton by going to the corner now occupied by the Picture Show north west of the depot. This in 1865 was occupied by the Brosius Brothers (George and Jim) in a general store and Otis B. Richardson had his Post Office in the store. Then came a space and then Charley Manuel Saloon, then a space and Aiken Dry Goods and Saloon then a space and a Drug Store which might be Jas. A. McAdoo or he might have come a little later. On the south east corner of this little street in 1865 was a vacant lot but it was soon to have the Dry Goods Store of Bye and Gibson. Due south of the depot on a high bank was the Hamilton House with Uncle Jake Brosius (father of George and Jim) as landlord. On north Main just north of Bye and Wilson was the Van Buren grocery. It was a few years later that Phil Covington opened a restaurant in a poor building located where Hopson is now (and about the same time John Minger had one across the street). About the time of Mr. Allee's coming, the Goodmans had built a hotel south of Covington and Sain had a saloon in the back room. It was in the brick now owned by Whitman and erected as a part of the Goodman block. On the east side of Davis (Main) was the Kemper-Paxton store (a frame on the Bram site) first building in 1865, then came a space and the livery stable of Thurston Green brother of Harvey who ran the stage coach line which originally ran from Richmond to Gallatin with Hamilton as a middle point. As the railroads developed to the north it was shortened from Richmond to Hamilton. In the middle sixties Dr. Nunn was the only doctor. Before 1870 Bennett Whitely built a mill due east of what is now the park on the south west corner of the block. This was afterwards used for church and school. He was an ordained Baptist Elder, a merchant and Editor in his time. There was the Goodman lumber yard on Broadway on present Ralph White home. Before 1870, on Mill street about the site of Parker's grocery, Austin Dodge had a blacksmith shop. His wife soon opened up a millinery shop on the corner of Mill and Broadway. At his death, she married R.D. Dwight and the shop became known as Mrs. Dwight's Millinery Shop. After Mr. Allee's father bought the Daviess County farm Taylor went there and worked ten years, so he knew little of Hamilton in the seventies. It was about 1870 that the elevator by the right of way on Main was put up, Guy and Naugle ran it, Love and Lamson, Love and Eugene Low, were some of the early men there. When he came back to Hamilton after living in Daviess County he worked for Schaffer-Tanner in the hard lumber business, site of Alec Warden's home south of the tracks on Broadway. Then he worked seven years for Lamson and Love in the elevator. Then he began clerking for Emmet White who bought out Deaerick on north Main. Mr. Allee played on the first baseball team in Hamilton about 1870. Dr. King was captain, another player was Roy Bowman (Alston Bowman's son). They played in Dudley's pasture. There were some differences in the old game. The pitch was underhand pitch, not a throw. The pitcher had to give the batter whatever kind of a ball he asked for, as a knee ball, a waist ball. Interviewed June 1934.