This summer’s issue of Epitaph focuses on baseball and the early days of adventurous car travel.

We are indebted to Chaz Scoggins for his essay on baseball great Al McKinnon. Bricks and Bats details the colorful history of minor-league baseball in Lowell. Game of My Life relates stories from Red Sox stars about the one game they remember most from their distinguished careers. Co-authored with All-Star shortstop Rico Petrocelli, Tales from the Impossible Dream recaptures the Red Sox’ improbable and legendary march to the 1967 World Series, a season that quite likely saved the franchise in Boston.

Kim Zunino’s article on Charles Glidden proves the line, “all roads lead to Lowell.” Here’s a link to archival footage of a 1905 Glidden Tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKqYTivQHcA. This year’s Revival AAA Glidden Tour will be held September 25-30 in Princeton, New Jersey.

"Fall Tour Weekend" will be Saturday, October 15^th and Sunday October 16^th at 10:00 am.

There are a multitude of people who led notable lives interred in historic Lowell Cemetery since the first grave was dug 181 years ago in 1841. Among them are eight people who served in the U.S. House of Representatives (one of whom was also governor of Massachusetts); one U.S. Senator, former Congressman, and candidate for President of the United States; a Civil War General; and several business tycoons.

Lowell Cemetery is also the final resting place for an otherwise obscure major-league baseball player named Alex McKinnon. Had he lived and played long enough, McKinnon almost certainly would have been far better known among baseball historians. McKinnon’s career was tragically shortened by a mysterious debilitating illness and an untimely death, but he was one of the most popular and celebrated ballplayers of his generation, and his funeral was spectacular.

Born in Boston on August 14, 1856, Alexander McKinnon showed a flair for the relatively new and immensely popular game of baseball. A first baseman, he was playing for the amateur Boston Stars in 1875 when he was signed to a professional contract later that summer by the Lowell Amateurs, hit .331 in 32 games, and helped them win the pennant in the misleadingly named New England Amateur Championship series. Perhaps because the future of the Lowell club was murky, McKinnon joined the Syracuse (N.Y.) Stars, another independent professional team, for the 1876 season. The Amateurs, however, would get a new owner during the offseason and establish themselves as a national powerhouse for the next few years and even be invited to join the fledgling National League.

Though his playing time in Lowell was short, McKinnon cultivated many admirers in the city who eagerly followed his career. He also met Emilia Rogers from a prominent Lowell family who would later become his wife. Whenever Syracuse played in Lowell during the next three summers, some of the Amateurs’ largest crowds would turn out to watch McKinnon play. But late in the 1878 season he was sidelined by a mysterious paralysis that affected his agility and running ability.

Although there wasn’t significant improvement in his condition over the winter, McKinnon signed with Rochester of the International Association in 1879. All too often unable to play because of his undiagnosed ailment, at the age of 23 he retired and went into business. It appeared his baseball career was over almost before it had really begun.

During the winter of 1883-84 the partial paralysis miraculously vanished, and, though he would often be hampered by a lingering stiffness for the rest of his career, McKinnon was signed to a major-league contract by the National League’s New York Gothams. Despite nearly five years of enforced inactivity, McKinnon led the league in games played with 116 while hitting .272 with 37 extra-base hits. Having shaken off the rust, McKinnon would become better and better with each succeeding season.

Playing for the St. Louis Maroons in 1885, McKinnon hit .294 in 100 games and followed up in 1886 with a .301 average, 39 extra-base hits, 10 stolen bases, and 72 RBI in 122 games. He was now a bona fide major-league star.

However, the Maroons, on the brink of bankruptcy and about to be taken over by the league, sold him to the Pittsburgh Alleghenies for $400 and a lesser player during the winter of 1886-87. McKinnon’s reputation as both a player and a leader (he had even been player-manager of the Maroons for the last 39 games of the 1885 campaign) saw him immediately being named the captain of the Alleghenies. McKinnon was enjoying his best major-league season, hitting .340 with 21 extra-base hits and 30 RBI in 48 games, when he contracted typhoid.

For the next three weeks he fought for his life at his home in Charlestown, Massachusetts. On July 24, 1887, Alex McKinnon passed away at the age of 30, having hit .296 with 82 doubles, 30 triples, 13 home runs, and 219 runs batted in over 386 major-league games during a 3 ½ - year career. The baseball world mourned his unexpected and tragic death.

Two days later, at 10:45 a.m., his casket arrived by train at the depot in Lowell, accompanied by relatives and friends from Boston and a large number of floral arrangements sent from friends, admirers, and major-league baseball teams. A cortege consisting of a horse-drawn hearse and four carriages, plus hundreds of mourners on foot, met the train and proceeded solemnly to the Lowell Cemetery, just a long home run away from the Gorham Street fairgrounds where McKinnon had launched his professional career. The bell above the entrance to the cemetery tolled solemnly as the procession passed through the iron gates. 

Reverend R.A. Greene presided over the funeral services inside the chapel, and then the pallbearers,­ Charles Knapp and Frank Going, who had been directors of the Lowell Amateurs; and Lowell Daily Citizen publisher Walter West and Lowell Daily Courier publisher Edwin Long; ­carried the casket to the gravesite – lined with hemlock boughs and evergreens – in the Rogers Family plot, where Alex McKinnon was lowered into his eternal resting place.

Many of the floral arrangements were downright ostentatious. The Pittsburgh management and McKinnon’s teammates sent an arrangement with the legend “Gates Ajar” that was described as “one of the most elaborate designs ever made by a Boston florist.” The arrangement sent by the Boston club replicated a baseball diamond in ivy and pansies, topped by a lyre of white lilies with a broken string. At each corner of the arrangement were roses tied with white satin ribbon. The Detroit club sent a seven-foot-high broken column with a white dove perched on top, along with a pillow made of white flowers with the inscription “Detroit Base Ball Club” spelled out in blue violets. The Indianapolis team—formerly the St. Louis Maroons—sent a six-foot high crescent with two stars, and John Gaffney, the manager of the Washington club, sent a broken shaft of roses capped with purple asters. Arrangements also came from the Philadelphia Athletics and Chicago White Stockings.

 Baseball mourned its tragic loss, but the games went on. The New York Times reported that players for the Boston Beaneaters and New York Giants wore “badges of mourning” on their uniforms when the two NL teams played in New York on July 25. The Lowell Browns of the minor New England League, featuring future Hall of Fame High Duffy, took the field a few hours after the funeral and beat the Manchester Farmers 13-3. As a solemn tribute to McKinnon, the Browns wore knots of black crepe beneath the legend “Lowell” on their uniforms. The account in the Lowell Weekly Sun described the scene:

One of our more interesting Lowellians resting here at Lowell Cemetery would be Charles Jasper Glidden (1857-1927). Born in Lowell, he would go on to work with Alexander Graham Bell on using telegraph lines for telephone services and eventually sell his company to Bell to work on his passion: the automobile. In 1902 he and his wife Lucy successfully circled the globe twice in an automobile, bringing attention to what he felt was the transportation of the future.

In 1904 he participated in the first American Automobile Association (AAA) reliability race from New York to St. Louis. Although he did not win, Glidden donated a Tiffany-designed silver trophy for an award for the next tour, along with $2000 dollars. With Glidden’s endorsement, the race was then held annually and called the “Glidden Reliability Tour.” It ran from 1905-1913.

The Glidden Tour was brutal, as it was designed to measure reliability of the automobiles. Most of the route was over trackless land and incidents with farm animals, especially poultry, was common. The Chairman of the AAA, August Post, nearly lost his life during the 1905 Glidden Tour when he almost collided with a train because of a faulty crossing signal. The Tour was also used by car manufacturers to test their products and advertisement. By 1913 automobiles were not as novel, and automobile manufacturers grew demanding and resented the point system used to determine reliability. The Glidden Tours were discontinued in 1913.

The Veteran Motor Car Club of America (VMCCA) revived the Glidden Tours in 1946 as a celebration of antique cars, and the winner is still handed the Glidden Trophy. Its permanent home is in the atrium of the AAA Headquarters in Florida.

Charles J. Glidden remained a car enthusiast as well as a big supporter of the future of air travel. He passed away in Boston in 1927 and was buried in Lowell Cemetery. He loved technology, however, above his grave is a simple monument: a boulder with his family name carved into the stone.