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Louis Fenn Wadsworth – The Origins of Baseball — 2 Comments

  1. Interesting story and I can provide the ancestry of this great unknown inventor of our Great American pastime! His father was Amos Wadsworth (1786-1850) the son of Luke Wadsworth (1759-1817) and Abigail Cowles. Luke was the son of James Wadsworth (1729- 1773) and Abigail Lewis. James was the son of Samuel Wadsworth II (1698-1745) and Susannah Fenn (No doubt the origin of Louis’s middle name.) Samuel was the son of Samuel Sr. (1660-1731) and Hannah Judson. Samuel was the son of John Wadsworth who arrived on the Lyon with his father William in Boston in 1632. It’s great to know that baseball was influenced by a member of our family.

    I do not show any children for Louis, however, his brother Charles W. had a son Walter(1854-1934) who lived in Shiawassee Co, Mi. If anyone can pick up the trail from there I would be very interested. I do know that other descendants of the Samuel line are living today in Buffalo, NY and SF. The whole genealogy can be seen on my web site at http://www.wadsworthinstitute.org Chart 1 (at the top)

  2. Louis Fenn Wadsworth was married to a sister of my gr. gr. gr. grandfather. Her name was Maria Isabel Meschutt, widow of Jackson Fisher, who had two young children when she married Wadsworth. I learned his mother’s name was Amanda M. ___?___ but do not have proof of his father’s name. Amanda was living with son, Louis’ older brother, Charles W. Wadsworth in the 1880 Owosso, Michigan census. Widowed mother, Amanda, was living with him and his family at that time.

    1870 Rockaway, NJ Census: Maria Wadsworth and Louis F. Wadsworth, both 45, listed in Rockaway, Morris Co. NJ census. Marianne is 13, Charles Fisher is 17. Louis is listed as a farmer. Maria has $25,000 in real estate in her own name. (over one half million dollars in today’s values) Louis has $15,000 and a person estate of $2000. They have a 14 year old boy in the household as a farm laborer.

    1880 Plainfield NJ Census: Maria Wadsworth and husband, Louis Fenn Wadsworth, attorney and Justice of the Peace (& census enumerator) in Plainsfield, NJ. Daughter is listed as Marianne Wadsworth–I believe she is Fisher’s daughter adopted by Wadsworth at time of marriage. Charles is listed as stepson, others in household are Maria’s aunt, Hanna Cation, 87, single, Mary L. Lyon, her niece, and her grand niece and nephew Alonzo C. and Emma E. Brackett, their son Alonzo C. Brackett, Jr., and a domestic servant, age 14.

    John Thorne, the noted baseball writer mentions Louis F. Wadsworth and his wife in his excellent book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden. Below are quotes from this book:
    “You want the truth, you have to read “Baseball in the Garden of Eden,” a splendid new book by John Thorn.

    Thorn is that rare archaeologist who can dig in ancient civilizations and then elegantly describe what he has found. He sprinkles sequins where other baseball historians scatter decimal points. He has been named baseball’s official historian and he has written the best of the flutter of baseball books that arrive in the spring like so many robins.

    In the 1850s, there were many versions of baseball, varying from region to region. Thorn credits Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton and Louis Fenn Wadsworth with codifying the game, configuring the jumble into one set of rules.

    But first he had to solve the mystery of Wadsworth. Thorn knew that Wadsworth played first base for the Gothams and the Knickerbockers from the early 1850s to 1862. And then, poof, he vanished. That baffled Thorn who writes that, “He is the man responsible for baseball being played to nine innings and with nine men.”

    It turned out Wadsworth had left New York in 1862 for Rockaway in Morris County, N.J., with his new wife, the wealthy widow Maria Fisher. He later became a judge in Union County. When his wife died, he began drinking and squandered a fortune estimated at $300,000.

    After selling Sunday papers on the streets of Plainfield, in 1898 he committed himself to the poorhouse, where he died 10 years later without ever having had a single visitor.”

    Louis is buried with wife, Maria, in Brooklyn’s beautiful Greenwood Cemetery in the Meschutt plot. I am glad he has received his due after all these years.

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