newest addition to my t205 family!

[collectbaseball]

The website findagrave.com is a great resource for this sort of thing. I've never actually gone out grave-hunting, but they often have surprisingly well-detailed bios of obscure Civil War soldiers and the like. A lot of times there are also further details about family/geneaology.

Hanford is here twice (I don't know why he ended up with two records):
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...&GRid=47164034
and
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg...407245&df=all&

A few interesting notes:

Hanford was born in England to William H. and Mary Barnish Handford, and he came to the US sometime between the ages of 2 and 4. The dates seem murky, but apparently his family left because they refused to join the Church of England.

At some point (obviously pre-1911) he dropped the "d" in his last name. It looks like most of his siblings did the same, including a brother who served in the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Hanford’s minor league career began in 1895—only 13 years old. It looks like he bounced around practically the entire country before he was 20.

By 1908 he was playing for the Jersey City Skeeters and lived at 264 Jackson St. in Trenton, NJ. (Maybe that’s right down the street from you, too!)

In 1914 with the Buffalo Buffeds, he became the first batter in the history of the Federal League. He actually compiled a pretty darn impressive stat line that year: batted .291 with 174 hits, 13 triples, 12 homers, 37 stolen bases. A few of his teammates who you’ll recognize from the T205 set: Hal Chase, Russ Ford, Clyde Engle, and Thomas Downey.