Description
From a dated note (June 2006) laid-in to this amazing, personal scrapbook:
This is a scrapbook kept by my father (born in 1895) while a young man. His name was Daniel Wilkie O’Brien and was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The Family moved to Manchester, NH when my father was 4 or 5 and lived in Manchaster or locally until their deaths.
My Father served with the Yankee Division in WW1 and the US Navy in WW2. He died in Candia, NH, in 1981 and was buried locally.
— Harry O’Brien (his son).
In Mr. O’Brien’s hand: “Boxing Notes / In a sensational battle Jim Jeffries defeated Bob Fitzsimmons in eight rounds on July 25, 1902, at San Francisco. After being knocked out by Jeff., Fitzsimmons arose and throughing [sic] his gloves into the crowd exclaimed, “this is my last fight.”
So begins this extraordinary personal scrapbook by the boxing enthusiast / amateur journalist Daniel Wilkie O’Brien. In both his hand and through carefully clipped newspaper articles, O’Brien covers both professional and amateur boxing beginning in 1910 and through 1913.
Various notes throughout this journal, this being just one example: “On the eve of his battle with Freddie Welsh, Ad Wolgast was stricken with appendicitis and rushed to the hospital. Willie Ritchie was substituted for Ad and surprised the fans by battling Welsh to a draw.”
Most newspaper articles without titles are annotated in O’Brien’s hand.
“Mc Carty killed by Pelkey.” / “One of the greatest surprises ever handed to ring followers was when Leach Cross beat Joe Mandot at New Orleans in March 1913.” / “Jimmy Gardiner came back on June 17, 1913 at Manchester, N.H. and stopped Fighling Kennedy of New York in 8 rounds. Gardiner then went up against Frank Klaus in Boston July 1, and quit in the third round. He lacked his old time speed.”
Other annotations seem simply random and placed in the middle of a page with clippings: “‘Bat’ Nelson is the author of two books, “My Life and Career in the Ropped Arena” and “Guide to Yellowstone Park”. / On Jan 24, 1913, Young Mcdonough of Manchester drew with Johnny Dohon of Albany, N.Y. at Lowell Mass. / In four fights with Same Mc Vea, Sam Langford lost once by decision, won twice by decision, and once by Knockout.”
Like most boxing fans of that era, O’Brien was obsessed with the Jim Jeffries-Jack Johnson fight, devoting multiple pages to the event and even annotating newspaper photos with his own statistics. He even describes, in his own hand, a round-by-round coverage of the Johnson-Jeffries fight on 4 July 1910 in Reno, Nevada. Other pages simply list fighters of the era with statistics provided by O’Brien in his own hand. This amazing journal ends with “Bouts of Note”, “New England Lightweights”, and “Manchester Boxers””: “Though Manchester, N.H. never had a champion she produced a near champ in Patsy Sweeny. He was a fast, hard hitting boy in his day but booze got him.”
O’Brien’s final entry in his hand concludes not only this journal but the section on Manchester’s Boxers: “Last but not least comes Peter (Young) McDonough, Pride of Manchester. “Petie” is a light heavyweight. Up to the fall of 1912, he was ranked with the best of New England. He has been out of the ring nearly a year and tonight, Dec. 10, 1913 he fights Knockout Sweeny in R.I. to see if he is the McDonough of old.”
I’ve handled my fair share of scrapbooks, but I’ve never really handled one with this kind of historic significance — as well as being 100% complete.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.