Josh --
I heartily agree with those who are recommending the Old Judge book, which is indispensable. But if you're looking for more biographical info than is found there, especially for people not (yet) included in the SABR BioProject, the following three books, edited by David Nemec and written by him and other members of the SABR Nineteenth-Century Committee, are very useful:
* Major League Baseball Profiles, Volume 1: The Ballplayers Who Built the Game
* Major League Baseball Profiles, Volume 2: The Hall of Famers and Memorable Personalities Who Shaped the Game
* The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball: Biographies of 1,084 Players, Owners, Managers and Umpires
These three books include biographies of every man who played, managed, or umpired even a single game in major league baseball from 1871 through 1900. Unfortunately for your purposes, they don't include people who never played in the majors, and so they don't have many/most of the people in your original list. But they have the most complete biographical information available about many obscure major leaguers from that era, including most of the players on Old Judges.
|