Al Lawson

How many major leaguers have started a full-fledged cult? Alfred W. Lawson did, with his “Direct Credits Society” and “University of Lawsonomy” – a bizarre belief system melding social welfare policy and quack physics.

Along the way he also:

• Founded baseball teams and leagues;
• Invented jersey numbers and pioneered night baseball;
• Invented, built, and crashed the first airliner;
• Wrote and published books about utopian societies and magazines about aviation.

A prolific writer, he often wrote his own press. Lawson wrote about himself under the pseudonym Cy Q. Founce: “To try and write a sketch of the life and works of Alfred W. Lawson in a few pages is like trying to restrict space itself.”1 His writings sometimes sound like good, old-timey tall tales. His real life sometimes does, too.

As a young adult, Lawson was a 5-foot-11, 161-pound right-handed pitcher. He appeared in three big-league games in 1890 at age 21, losing them all. His brief and sporadic playing career is littered with run-ins with all-time great players, ahead-of-the-times inventions and innovations, questionable business decisions, and accusations of fraud. But his varied other endeavors carried on for decades. Like the Wizard from The Wizard of Oz, he was a bit of a fraud – but, in the end, he meant well.

***

Alfred “Al” William Lawson was born on March 24, 1869, in London, England. His father, Robert Henry Lawson, allegedly studied mechanical engineering at Oxford and was an inventor and theological scholar, but also worked as a music teacher and scripture reader at church.2 The family lived in Bethnal Green, a London slum which (as biographer Jerry Kuntz points out) was the home of the criminal Bill Sykes from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. 3  

Robert had a daughter, Mary Jane, with his first wife, Mary Jane Osbourne, who died in 1854, possibly of cholera. Robert remarried in 1856 to Mary Anderson Lawson, who Alfred claimed was a “student of economics.”4 They met while he was performing in a Shakespeare play. By 1859, they had two kids they named after themselves—Mary Ann (“Min”) and Robert Henry, Jr. The family moved house to Victoria Terrace, where Robert worked as a foreman at the docks. Then came George Herman (1864) and Catherine Isabella (1866). Older brother George would be Al’s sometime rival in starting new baseball leagues,5 and ultimately something like an evil twin.

In 1867, Robert was arrested for allegedly exposing himself to a minor, but he was discharged by the courts. In 1869, weeks after the birth of future pitcher Alfred William, the Lawsons moved to Windsor, Canada, maybe running away from the notoriety that came with the charges. There, Robert was a boot maker. Two more children joined the family: Wallace (1871), who died shortly after birth, and Donald James (1872).

After a couple of years, the Lawsons moved to nearby Detroit, where Robert wove rag carpets. Another two boys were born: Alexander James (1874) and Collin Thomas (1876).6 Younger brother Alex also started some baseball leagues – one might call it a family business.

To help support the family, the kids worked. Young Al Lawson was a shoe polisher and worked in a rug factory. His parents made sure their children were educated, despite their poverty.7 As a teenager, Lawson ran away from home several times, learning to hitch rides on railway trains.8

In Zig, Zag, and Swirl: Alfred W. Lawson’s Quest for Greatness, biographer Lyell D. Henry retold the story of Lawson’s first game, as recounted by Lawson in his own book, Childhood Days. It took place in Frankfort, Indiana, sometime in 1887:

It happens that the local nine held a professional “league team” to a no-run standoff through eight innings. A young farmer asks, “Who’s pitching for the home team?” A businessman replied, “A new fellow that we never saw before. They say he came to town this morning on a freight train. He’s got great speed, good curves, and good control. … I believe they called him Lawson. He’s just a young fellow about 17 years old but he can put the twisters on the ball.”9

Lawson goes on to win the game in a 2-0 shutout. Accompanying the young hero onto the stage, the grateful manager says, “Lawson, that was the greatest pitching that the people of this town have ever seen.” Lawson quickly accepts the manager’s offer a pitching job for the summer at [$40] a month. Then the proprietor of the local hotel also throws in an offer of free board for the season, Lawson requests a meal at once, explaining that “I haven’t eaten anything yet today.”10

For a couple of seasons, Lawson played for teams throughout the Midwest.11 His brothers worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company and Lawson sold Singer’s products door-to-door in the offseason.12

In 1890, a third major league opened – the Players League, founded by the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players. The new circuit presented a direct challenge to the National League and American Association.

With three leagues vying for players, the time was ripe for Al to get a crack at playing in the majors. Lawson had pitched well for the independent St. Augustine (Florida) club and had already signed with the Wilmington (Delaware) Peach Growers of the minor league Atlantic Association with direction to report on April 1.13

When St. Augustine played the National League’s Chicago Colts in February, Chicago manager Cap Anson was impressed enough to try to buy Lawson’s contract, but Wilmington wouldn’t sell.14 Thereafter on loan by Wilmington to the NL’s Brooklyn Bridegrooms, Lawson faced the Colts again in March but dropped an 8-4 decision.15

After reporting to Wilmington, Lawson fought with teammates and pitched some bad games. After the Peach Growers released Lawson, manager Frank Selee signed him for the National League’s Boston Beaneaters, where he joined a staff headed by future Hall of Famers John Clarkson and Kid Nichols.16

On May 13, 1890, Al Lawson made his major league debut at the Polo Grounds, drawing a starting assignment against the defending world champion New York Giants. He labored through nine innings, surrendering 12 base hits and four walks in a 7-2 loss to another future Hall of Famer, Mickey Welch. Two days later, Lawson was released.17

Ten days later Lawson signed with the worst team in the National League, the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. On May 28, he started the first game of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Phillies but did not make it out of the second inning and was charged with the 12-10 defeat.18  On June 2, Lawson was given another start and absorbed a complete-game 14-1 drubbing by Chicago.19 Pittsburgh released him the next day.

At age 21, Lawson’s major league career was done. In three games spread over a three-week period, he posted an 0-3 record, with a 6.33 ERA in 19 innings pitched. He allowed 27 hits and 14 walks, while striking out three enemy batsmen. Lawson also did himself little good with the bat (0-for-6) or on defense (.714 fielding percentage).

For the rest of the season, Lawson bounced between teams, eventually landing as a player-manager for the Wellsville team of the Western New York League.20 There, he met 17-year-old John McGraw.21 After the season, Lawson invited McGraw and major leaguers Ed Mars, Jake Wells, Pat Luby, Dan Minnehan, and Will White to join an exhibition tour of Cuba that he had organized.22 The Lawson team, dubbed the Ocala All-Americans, had mixed success on tour. The All-Americans lost to Havana on January 31, 1891, then beat Matanzas, Progreso, and Almendares, before getting demolished by Fé 17-6 on February 5. The tourists also lost to an all-star Cuban team, 11-0.23

The All-Americans’ bright yellow uniforms were eye-catching, earning shortstop McGraw the nickname of “El Mono Amarillo” – translation: “The Yellow Monkey.”24 There was speculation that the team threw the last games to raise money to get home, but they received some good press in the U.S.

Upon returning, Lawson and McGraw formed a team in Gainesville, Florida, to play exhibition games against the Cleveland Spiders. With the Players League shuttered, Chief Zimmer, Cupid Childs, Ed McKean, Spud Johnson, Patsy Tebeau, Jake Virtue, and Jack Doyle had rejoined the Spiders. Cleveland also had future Hall of Famers George Davis and Cy Young on the roster. Matched against the club ace Lee Viau on March 26, 1891, Lawson held the Spiders to five hits, while McGraw played great defense and hit three doubles. It was not enough, as Cleveland prevailed, 9-6.25 During 1891 he played in the Pacific Northwest League with Spokane (17 games) and after a bout of arm trouble with Portland and Pendleton of the Pacific Interstate League. He then talked his way into a spot with Oakland of the California League,

In December 1891, Lawson tried organizing a new league around a team he formed in Tampa, Florida. The league never materialized, and some of the men Lawson claimed to have signed, like McGraw and Connie Mack, never played for his team. Nevertheless, the Lawson team did well enough to be given the chance to play a six-game series against the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, a National League club featuring future Hall of Famers John Montgomery Ward and Dan Brouthers.26

In 1892, Lawson won 10 games and lost 4 with Atlanta of the Southern Association before being suspended – he was caught soliciting offers from other teams.

In July 1892, Lawson enlisted some new players for a baseball tour of England. But after playing only one game, he had a disagreement with his business partner over gate receipts and abandoned the team. A Sporting News headline read:

LAWSON A FRAUD; His Trip to England a Swindling Operation. He Deserts his Backer and Fellow Players, Leaving Them Penniless in a Strange Land.27

In October 1892, Lawson made his way to Australia, where he met J.A. Chuck of the newly formed New South Wales Baseball League. Chuck showed Lawson the latest issue of The Sporting News, with the headline claiming that he was a fraud.28 Chuck initially refused to work with Lawson because of the accusations, but Lawson explained the situation and Chuck decided to hire him as a pitching instructor for the new league.

Lawson managed to put together a baseball team and toured Sydney, Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia. A November 5 article in Sydney’s Evening News had him playing in a match between two local clubs, Sydney and West Sydney, at Moore Park.29 The December 21 issue of the Australian magazine Referee mentioned another match between two different local clubs, Young Australia versus South Sydney in Moore Park. The story said:

Mr. Lawson, the professional player, now in Sydney, is giving some very useful instruction to all those who may desire to avail themselves of the opportunity. He will be in attendance next Saturday, and will give an exhibition of the ball curving. This, I might state, is one of the performances much disputed by other ball games.30

The article was credited to “The Pitcher.” Likely, Lawson wrote it.

From 1895 to 1907, Lawsons’ baseball career shifted from playing to entrepreneurship: he learned organization and promotion. As an organizer, Lawson coordinated baseball tours, founded outlaw leagues, and managed or owned any number of teams. In promotion, he was one of the first to introduce portable lighting for night games and one of the first to offer season-ticket packages.31

In 1904, Lawson published his first book, a sci-fi utopian novel called Born Again, the story of John Convert, a man who finds himself thrown overboard from a ship and washes up on a strange island, among the ruins of an ancient civilization. There, he meets Arletta, a beautiful giantess who greets him with a kiss. She is the last of a race of superhumans — toothless, telepathic giants called the Sagemen – who lived vegetarian, egalitarian, and perfect lives in a utopia over 4,000 years before. Using telepathy, she reads Convert’s mind to learn about the modern world, finding it full of violence and iniquity and calls his race Apemen:

“I understand it all now,” she made known to me in her mysterious way, “the experiment failed.”

“What experiment was that?” questioned I in surprise.

Looking me straight in the eye as though trying to impress upon my mind the importance of her communication, she answered, “the attempt of man to change the course of the earth in space.”32

It goes on. And on. Eventually, there are two more Arlettas. And another John Convert. Arletta shows Convert the need for Natural Law, which eventually becomes the basis for Lawsonomy. The book was not a best-seller; Lawson continued baseball endeavors for a living, while keeping his hand in publishing.

In 1907 Lawson organized the Atlantic League, an outlaw circuit that did not honor the National Agreement and attempted to lure away established players from Organized Baseball. Lawson also introduced numbered uniforms in the Atlantic League, and in the end cleared a $12,000 profit.33 That success encouraged him to start another renegade loop, the Union League, in 1908. This time, Lawson placed franchises in established major league cities like Washington, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn in an attempted challenge to the National and American Leagues as a third major league. The circuit failed, in part, because of its inability to lure away any major league talent.

Lawson thought he had Philadelphia Athletics pitching ace Rube Waddell engaged for the Philadelphia Unions.34 On May 23, over 3,000 fans showed up at the West Philadelphia ground for Waddell’s announced start against the UL’s Paterson, New Jersey, club, only to have the umpire announce that Waddell wouldn’t appear despite a signed contract and a receipt for the money paid which the ump showed to the crowd.35 Connie Mack had convinced Waddell to stay in the American League. At the same time Paterson left the Union League, replaced by a team from Allentown, Pennsylvania. 36

Such were the risks of running an outlaw league. One day, you have a superstar, then the next day that superstar is gone. And another team disappears. Lawson’s Union League fizzled.

In 1908, Lawson started publishing Fly magazine. Aircraft (a term he invented) magazine followed two years later. Both focused on a new invention – the airplane. In fact, Lawson was a pioneer in human flight.37 He saw commercial potential in airplanes and, more distinctively, he imagined a utopian future for humanity based around perpetual flying machines, with echoes of the science fiction of H.G. Wells.

In an article called “Learning to Fly” published in the September 1913 issue of Aircraft, Lawson wrote that powered flight would evolve humanity into “a superior quality of mankind as far in advance as the present man is in advance of the ape.”38 He said that by the year 3,000:

“…the evolution of a superior type of man will have begun—the alti-man—a superhuman who will live in the upper strata of the atmosphere and never come down to earth at all.

The alti-man will be born and live his whole life at the very top of the atmosphere and will never go below a certain depth, while the ground-man will live upon the crust of the earth at the bottom of the atmospheric sea like a crab or an oyster, and will never go above a certain height.”39

By 1913, Lawson had learned to fly.40 He flew his airplane to work, taking off in northern New Jersey and landing on open ground near 75th Street in Manhattan, thereby becoming New York’s first air commuter. Through his journals, he continued to promote the idea of airplanes for commercial flight.41

In the midst of World War I, Lawson founded the Lawson Aircraft Corporation to design and build airplanes. With funding from the US Department of War, Lawson Aircraft built two prototype military trainer planes, but hostilities ceased before the planes went into production.42

One of the airplane designers was Vincent J. Burnelli, who called Lawson “perhaps the craziest man I ever knew,” and a “wiry megalomaniac filled with nervous energy,” who “didn’t need alcohol to get high; his ego kept him floating in the clouds.”43 To Burnelli, Lawson was “a cross between a crackpot and a genius.”44

After the war, Lawson’s focus moved to commercial airflight. By 1919, Lawson Aircraft Corporation unveiled the Lawson C-2 Airliner, a term he invented. The maiden flight of the C-2 (an 18-seat passenger plane) on August 28 ended with an emergency landing in a cow pasture.45

On September 21, Lawson took the C-2 on a successful, well-publicized flight between New York and Washington, DC, before returning to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On board the flight were six United States Senators. The publicity helped Lawson win the first large airmail contract with the U.S. Post Office.46

Ignoring what might be a profitable business, Lawson dreamed bigger, and started on two prototypes for larger, three-engine planes to carry 34 passengers — dubbed the L-3 and L-4. To that end was built the L-4 prototype. On its May 8, 1921, maiden flight before company investors, the plane proved too heavy and the runway too short. On takeoff, a wing hit a tree and ripped off, and the L-4 crashed.47 Lawson’s investors backed out; Lawson Aircraft Corporation went belly-up.48

In the late 1920s, Lawson tried to reestablish himself in airplane manufacture with the intention of building a fleet of gigantic, 12-engine airplanes. He designed a two-tier passenger plane with seats for 125. But as construction began, the Great Depression hit, and his financial backers withdrew. As his biographer Henry wrote, “with considerable bitterness, he abandoned aviation work forever.”49 Later, Lawson patented the two-tier passenger design and licensed it to train and bus companies. The royalties funded his subsequent endeavors.50

As a result of his entrepreneurial experiences in baseball and airplanes, Lawson developed a deep resentment toward bankers and money men. After the stock market crash and the Great Depression that followed, he started a movement called the Direct Credits Society. In 1931, he wrote and published the pamphlet “Direct Credits for Everybody,” attacking banking, and arguing that, instead of money, the government should issue credits directly to everybody.51 Direct Credits is a bit like an early version of Universal Basic Income.

The Direct Credits Society concentrated on Midwest farm areas and industrial centers. Lawson toured the region giving speeches on Direct Credits and filling auditoriums. Regional conferences often involved thousands of members parading through city streets.52 Through the Direct Credits society, Lawson published numerous books on the economy and eventually on quack physics. He thought the key to understanding the economy was physics—but not the physics of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, or even Niels Bohr. Lawson developed his own physics over the years. He invented concepts like Equieverpoise and Zig-Zag-and-Swirl.53    

Lawson dubbed his new physics Lawsonomy and circulated his crackpot theories in a series of books that he wrote, published, and distributed through the Direct Credits Society locations in various cities, eventually opening the University of Lawsonomy in 1943 in an abandoned campus in Des Moines, Iowa. Lawson’s tomes were the university textbooks.54

The Direct Credits Society gradually morphed into a cult. Students of his university attended churches of Lawsonomy.55 The vision was for Lawsonomy to transform the world into a utopia. An advertising pamphlet for Lawsonomy proclaimed that by the year 2000, “ALL RACES WILL ACCEPT LAWSONOMY PRINCIPLES.” Through the practice of Lawsonomy humankind would evolve into a “new species.”56

On October 12, 1944, Lawson sent a mimeographed announcement to all officers of his organization declaring that he and a previously undisclosed wife had begotten a child and pronouncing his wife the progenitor of a new species.57 The son was named John Convert, after the hero of his Utopian novel Born Again, but retained his mother’s maiden name to avoid “future confusion and jealousy” among the group’s leaders.58 That announcement triggered what Mills called a “wholesale exodus of major generals.”59

Lawson was well into his 70s and his wife under 30. Henry said, “some might also have found impropriety in the disparity of their ages. If so, then their shock must have been greatly compounded by the announcement that Lawson’s wife had delivered a child fathered by a septuagenarian.”60 Henry thought it more probable that “disgruntlements had long been simmering and private alarms growing over Lawson’s steady shift of focus [of the Direct Credits Society] to Lawsonomy.”61 Later, Lawson and his wife had a daughter, whose name and date of birth are also unknown, though she was also given her mother’s maiden name.62

On March 10, 1952, Lawson gave testimony at a congressional hearing regarding the Des Moines University of Lawsonomy, by then the center of his organization. DMUL was accused of defrauding the government, which had sold World War II surplus at steep discounts to tax-exempt universities. Some of those in charge of DMUL were suspected of reselling such surplus at a large profit.63

On November 29, 1954, Lawson died of a heart attack in San Antonio, Texas. He was 85. An obituary published in the Des Moines Tribune described him as the founder of the cult of Lawsonomy, barely mentioning his aviation exploits, with not a peep about baseball.64

In 1956, the University of Lawsonomy moved north to a farm in Racine County, Wisconsin, between Chicago and Milwaukee. Until 2006, a large sign reading “University of Lawsonomy” stood along Interstate 94.65 Nearby was a barn with “Study Natural Law” painted on the roof,66 which airplanes flying overheard could read. By the 2010s, there was one last surviving follower, Merle Hayden. Hayden, who died in 2017 at age 96, was the subject of a documentary called Manlife: The Last of the Lawsonians.

Acknowledgments

This bio was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Mark Miller. Thanks very much to them for their help.

Thanks a ton to Jerry Kuntz, who very kindly reviewed this story, which owes a great debt to his mighty baseball tome, Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines – an amazing, fun read. The second edition is coming soon.

Thanks also to Plastic Crimewave for the baseball card artwork.

Sources

In addition to the sources cites in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, www.baseball-almanac.com, and MLB.com.

https://www.lawsonomy.org/

https://www.lawsonomy.org/Lawsonomy11.html

His novel:

https://www.lawsonomy.org/BornAgain/BornAgain100.html

Direct Credits:

https://www.lawsonomy.org/DCEverybody100.html

Lawsonomy:

https://www.hbf-hq.com/

https://www.lawsonomy.org/Lawsonomy/Lawsonomy100.html

https://www.lawsonomy.org/Mentality/Mentality200.html

https://www.lawsonomy.org/TheAlmighty/TheAlmighty300.html

Notes

1 Donna Kossy, Kooks: Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief (Portland, Oregon: Feral House, 1994), 149.

2 Kossy, 150.

3 Jerry Kuntz, Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines: The Many Lives and Outrageous Times of George and Alfred Lawson (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009), 5–6.

4 Kossy, 150.

5 Jerry Kuntz, “George H. Lawson: The Rogue Who Tried to Reform Baseball,” Baseball Research Journal, 2008. Accessed January 8, 2025: https://sabr.org/journal/article/george-h-lawson-the-rogue-who-tried-to-reform-baseball/.

6 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 6–7.

7 Jerry Kuntz, “Tramping Through the Baseball Subculture: The Early Career of Alfred W. Lawson,” ourgame.mlblogs.com, July 19, 2021. Accessed November 17, 2024: https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/tramping-through-the-baseball-subculture-747d90f20bfa.

8 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 16.

9 Lyell D. Henry, Jr, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl: Alfred W. Lawson’s Quest for Greatness (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 19.

10 Henry, 19.

11 Kuntz, “Tramping.”

12 Kuntz, Baseball Fiend, 21.

13 Kuntz, “Tramping.”

14 Kuntz, “Tramping,” and “Anson After Pitcher Lawson,” Chicago Tribune, February 21, 1890: 2.

15 Kuntz, “Tramping,” and “Anson’s Colts Win Again,” Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, March 19, 1890: 2.

16 Kuntz, “Tramping,” and “Pitcher Lawson: It Was Not Anson’s Fault that Boston Got Him,” Boston Globe, May 6, 1890: 5.

17 Kuntz, “Tramping,” and “Lawson’s a Nice Young Man, But He Couldn’t Pitch Ball,” Boston Globe, May 14, 1890: 7.

18 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 2.

19 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 36, and “National League,” Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, June 3, 1890: 2.

20 Kuntz, “Tramping.” 

21 Kuntz, “Tramping.”

22 Kuntz, “Tramping.”

23 Kuntz, “Tramping,” and “In Far Off Cuba,” The Sporting News, February 28, 1891, and “Notes of Numerous Sports,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 13, 1891.

24 Kuntz, “Tramping.”

25 Kuntz, “Tramping,” and “Cleveland and Gainesville,” The Sporting News: April 4, 1891: 2.

26 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 44-46.

27 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 56.

28 “Private Correspondence,” (to whom and date?) Jerry Kuntz, author of Baseball Fiends and Flying Machines.

29 “Baseball,” (?) Evening News, November 5, 1892: 6.

30 The Pitcher, “Baseball,” Referee, December 21, 1892: 8.

31 Kuntz, “Tramping.” Lawson’s lighting apparatus is described in David Pietrusza, Lights On! The Wild Century-Long Saga of Night Baseball (Metuchen, New Jersey:  1997)

32 Alfred W. Lawson, Born Again (Detroit: Humanity Publishing Company N.D., 1904). Accessed January 1, 2026: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19459/19459-h/19459-h.htm#chapter1.

33 Kuntz, “Tramping.” The order for the numbered uniforms was reported in Sporting Life, April 27, 1907: This article has been cited in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Dressed to the Nines exhibit.

34 “Waddell in Union League,” Philadelphia Record, May 22, 1908: 10.

35 “Waddell Throws Up Union League Job,” Philadelphia Record, May 24, 1908:  

36 “Waddell Will Rejoin St. Louis,” Philadelphia Record, May 25, 1908: 7.

37 Lyell D. Henry, Jr., “Alfred W. Lawson, Aviation Pioneer,” Baseball Research Journal, 1980. Accessed November 17, 2024: https://sabr.org/journal/article/alfred-w-lawson-aviation-pioneer/. 

38 Henry., Zig-Zag-and-Swirl: 12-13. Lawson, “Learning to Fly,” Aircraft, September 1913: 151. Available at archive.org. Last accessed December 1, 2024: https://archive.org/details/aircraft419131914newy/page/148/mode/2up.

39 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 12-13. Lawson, “Natural Prophecies,” Aircraft, October 1916. Available at archive.org. Last accessed December 1, 2024: https://archive.org/details/aircraft419131914newy/page/148/mode/2up.

40 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 79.

41 Henry, “Alfred W. Lawson, Aviation Pioneer,”

42 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 81.

43 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 58. Vincent Urnelli as told to Booton Herndon, “The Non-Sked Adventure of the First Airliner,” True, June 1962, 56-60, 103-107.

44 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl: 58; Urnelli, above.

45 Jim Price, “The cult of Al Lawson: From a baseball career that landed in Spokane but never took flight, to aviation pioneer to, ultimately, crackpot economic theorist,” The Sportsman-Review, July 17, 2023. Accessed November 17, 2024: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2023/jul/17/the-cult-of-al-lawson-from-a-baseball-career-that-/.  

46 Henry, “Alfred W. Lawson, Aviation Pioneer.”  

47 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”   

48 Henry, “Alfred W. Lawson, Aviation Pioneer.” 

49 Henry, “Alfred W. Lawson, Aviation Pioneer.”  

50 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”  

51 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”   

52 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”   

53 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”  

54 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”   

55 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”   

56 Henry, “Alfred W. Lawson, Aviation Pioneer.”  

57 See Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.” See also, Henry, “Alfred W. Lawson.” The name of the wife was not discovered.

58 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 199-200.

59 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 218.

60 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 218.

61 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 221.

62 Henry, Zig-Zag-and-Swirl, 218.

63 Kuntz, Baseball Fiends, 196-197.

64 Price, “The cult of Al Lawson.”

65 “Property Record: 4529 Highway 41: Architecture and History Inventory,” Wisconsin Historical Society. Accessed March 25, 2025: https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Property/HI141603    

66 Matt Mueller, “‘The Last of the Lawsonomists’ lives on,” onmilwaukee.com, August 21, 2013. Accessed November 17, 2024: https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/lastofthelawsonomists.