1871 Preview - Fort Wayne Kekiongas

Fort Wayne, Indiana is a strange place for an elite professional sports team, and yet the Kekiongas were the first of three different teams to try to compete at their sport's highest level while calling Fort Wayne home. (In the 20th century, the Fort Wayne Daisies would represent the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and of course the Fort Wayne Pistons would make it to the NBA finals twice before moving to Detroit.) In the 1870 census, Fort Wayne had 17,718 inhabitants, and northeastern Indiana wasn't exactly a huge metropolitan area surrounding the city, so even for the 1870s it was a very, very small town trying to compete with Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

The Kekionga name actually encapsulates a fair amount of early American history. (Most of the history that follows is taken from Wikipedia's article on Fort Wayne.) At the site of present-day Fort Wayne, the Miami nation founded a settlement in the mid-1600s called "Kekionga," which rapidly grew into an important settlement for the Miami. The location took on added importance in 1697, when the French set up a fort and trading post on the site, due to the site's strategic location at the confluence of three rivers, and its location between the French settlements in Quebec and St. Louis. Kekionga remained primarily a settlement of the Miami despite the presence of the trading post, and ultimately the French ceded the territory to the English at the end of the French and Indian War in 1760. (Note, of course, that the people actually living on the land were given little consideration by either nation.) The settlement was renamed Fort Miami.

In 1763, as part of the Pontiac Rebellion (again, note that this is a "rebellion" rather than a "war for independence"), the Miami wiped out the English and regained control of Kekionga for the next 30 years. In 1790, the Washington administration decided to secure Indiana for American settlers, and sent the army to battle the Miami near Kekionga. At first, the army had little success, until they decided to wipe of the village of Kekionga while the warriors were away. That "victory," led by Mad Anthony Wayne, led to the establishment of Fort Wayne. Less than 100 years later, the now-settled Fort Wayne area had a professional base ball team, and of course they named it after the destroyed Miami settlement from the area. (The city's seal contains the word "Kekionga" to this day.)

So this relatively small village with an Indian name joined the National Association to take on the nation's top base ball clubs. It seems to be a formula for something other than success, but they did have a few players who were destined for long careers as professional ball players.

P - Bobby Mathews - This Maryland native pitched for the Baltimore Marylands as a teenager before being lured to Fort Wayne. He is credited by some for being the first spitball pitcher and the first breaking ball pitcher. He had a much longer career than most pitchers of the early 1870s, pitching as a professional until the late 1880s. He died of syphilis at age 46. (Again, hooray for modern medicine!)
C - Frank Selman - I didn't find much information about Selman, but he died in Baltimore at age 55, all of the other professional teams he played for were in Baltimore or Washington, DC, and Bobby Mathews' bio mentioned that he was one of several top Baltimore players lured to Fort Wayne for the 1871 season, so I'm going to assume he came over along with Mathews.
1B - Jim Foran - He was a native New Yorker who played only one season of professional base ball, but hit quite well. Not much online about what he did after his big league career; I only know he died in Los Angeles at the age of 80 in 1928.
2B - Jimmy Hallinan - Hallinan was one of the first of many Irish ball players of the 19th century. He was associated with the amateur Aetna base ball club of Chicago for most of the early 1870s (generally his time with the Kekiongas was regarded as a brief interlude) before playing for some of the top teams of the mid-1870s. This thread suggests he had a serious alcohol problem, as many players of the time did, and he evidently became too ill to play in the summer of 1878. He died in late 1879 of an "inflammation of the bowels" at the age of 30. Here is his obituary from a couple of leading papers.
3B - Wally Goldsmith - Goldsmith was another player with Maryland connections who was evidently lured to Fort Wayne in 1871. He played for a few years in the National Association, but only ever played regularly on bad teams.
SS - Tom Carey - He was a solid but unspectacular infielder throughout the 1870s. One interesting fact I have is that he was born J.J. Norton. I'm picturing some guy with a Don Draper-like double life, though I'm sure the reality was probably much less exciting.
LF - Pete Donnelly - I don't know much about Donnelly. He played for three different National Association teams and never made much of a mark. He died at age 40 of tuberculosis, and evidently was active in local politics.
CF - Bob Armstrong - All I know about him is that he was born in Baltimore in 1850. From that, I'm going to infer that he was another Maryland guy lured to Fort Wayne.
RF - Bill Kelly - I know nothing at all about him. Common name, short career.

On the whole, it does not appear that the experiment of professional base ball in Fort Wayne is likely to be successful. Certainly the team won't have the financial resources to survive long, and they don't appear likely to be competitive on the field either.