Albert Smith

Albert Edward Smith’s one season in the major leagues was with Boston’s 1883 National League championship club. At 6 feet even and 200 pounds, Smith was called “a tall, powerfully built fellow of fine physique,” by The Paper Trade Journal.1 Smith didn’t play baseball very long, but even so he became a mystery for baseball historians. We don’t know which way he batted (he threw right-handed), and he is one of a few players of whom we don’t know where and when he died. But Smith’s reference work entries took complexity to a whole new level. Official baseball records incorrectly identify him as Edgar Smith. As of May 2026, Baseball-reference.com still identified him as Edgar, while Retrosheet.org identified him as Edward. This error persisted even though members of the SABR Biographical Committee discovered his true birth name in 2011, based on his son’s passport.2

Albert Edward Smith was born October 15, 1860, in North Haven, Connecticut, to Robert William and Elizabeth (Stiles Brooks) Smith. Robert was a dairy farmer who served as town tax collector.3 He was described as a “a stout, middle-aged, honest-looking farmer.”4 Albert also had a younger brother, Frank.

From 1876 to 1879, Smith attended Hopkins Grammar School, a preparatory school for Yale University.5 He played first base and catcher on the baseball team. The school’s 1876-1877 Annual noted that Smith played for the Class Nines and played on the football team.6 According to the 1877-1878 Annual, Smith played for the H.G.S. Nine, which school archivist Thom Peters believes was the interscholastic baseball team. “Smith was the only man who succeeded in hitting (pitcher) Lamb at all,” wrote the student newspaper, The Critic, of a game in which Smith “then spoiled a run by poor base running.”7 After the season, The Critic wrote, “We compliment Mr. Smith on the fine manner with which he filled his difficult position, and hope he will not feel obliged to abandon ball-playing this year.”8

Smith also belonged to the Class Base Ball and Foot Ball committees in his junior and senior years. In his senior year, 1878-1879, Smith was not recognized for any academic awards, nor did he belong to any societies or clubs. He played for the Class Base Ball Nines and competed in the baseball long-throw contest. The Critic of May 1879 stated that catcher Smith “exceeded the expectation of everyone and played a good plucky game throughout” in a 17-6 win over the Stars.9

Smith was a student at Yale from 1879-1882. He spent his freshman year on the Consolidated Yale baseball team, then two seasons playing catcher and center field on the varsity squad.10 Off the field, Smith gave a well-received evening lecture on the Ancient Romans and participated in a few Glee Club numbers which received “round after round of applause, the listeners being very unwilling to let them go,” wrote the New Haven Register.11 Smith also organized a Yale public speaking competition in 1881 and the New Haven Register wrote “too much credit cannot be given Albert E. Smith of Yale ’83, for the conception of the idea” and success for the event.12

Smith was involved in controversy in his senior year and did not graduate from Yale after he was arrested for fraud in September 1882. Smith had been going around campus soliciting donations for the consolidated baseball team, but had no authorization to do so, and the team never saw that money. The investigation uncovered other shady acts Smith had committed earlier in his Yale career. A teammate named Stone, who invited Smith to his home, discovered that his revolver and other items had disappeared. The revolver turned up in a local pawn shop. Pawnbroker Engel was subsequently made aware of this theft and kept on the lookout for Smith. When Smith returned to pawn other items, Engel stalled, hoping to get the attention of a police officer. Smith was on to him and punched Engel, who fell into the gutter. Smith then hurried to find Stone, pleading with him not to contact the police. Stone let him go. When Smith was arrested for fraud, students offered to pay his $200 bail if he left the country. Students packed the courtroom, but Smith had already repaid everyone and received only a fine. However, he withdrew from Yale.13

Smith found work at the Winona Paper Mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He joined the Holyoke baseball team of the Massachusetts Association and batted .388 with one home run and a 1.000 fielding percentage.14 Smith signed an agreement to play with Philadelphia of the National League, if he decided to play any baseball at all. He was not persuaded to sign because “he has a good position at the Winona Mill” wrote the Daily Transcript, “and is very sensible not to adopt base ball as a means of livelihood.”15 The National League’s Boston club played Holyoke in an exhibition game and expressed interest in Smith. He tried to get released from his Philadelphia commitment, but when he couldn’t, Smith signed in June with Boston anyway.16 The engagement created hard feelings in the “City of Brotherly Love.” “Mr. Al] Reach felt rather sore about the matter,” wrote the Daily Item, “as did ‘Cap’ Ferguson.”17 This probably mattered little to Smith, who collected $1,200 for his four months with Boston.18

Boston needed a center fielder. Paul Radford, one of Boston’s pitching aces, had spent time in center but was “not as heavy a gun as the B’s need.” Smith was labeled a “heavy batsman and a good fielder” by the Fall River Daily News.19 In his debut on June 20, 1883, Smith started in center field and had a couple of hits in a 29-4 thumping of Philadelphia.20 It may just be this game which created decades of confusion in identifying this “Smith.” The Philadelphia pitcher that day was Edgar Eugene Smith, and Albert Edward Smith possibly inherited the name of Edgar from him. At least that was the possible basis of confusion, as historian David Nemec theorized.21 It didn’t help that both players were contemporaries at Yale. It was all sorted out 128 years later by SABR researchers who discovered Albert’s true full name.22

In his second game, the Boston Globe reported that Smith “was not a success, being very slow in handling and throwing the ball poorly.”23 The Boston Evening Transcript elaborated, calling Smith “listless…as to greatly disappoint those friends of the Bostons who had hoped he would prove a valuable acquisition to the team.” Fans saw that Smith was “slow, very slow, and [he] threw poorly.”24 The Fall River Daily News responded to the negative Boston newspaper reports, stating that “The Bostons seemed determined to give Smith a trial notwithstanding the papers pounding him on account of his alleged slowness, and called for the restoration of the favorite Radford. If Smith is no better man than Radford, then the Bostons need to try again and get a stronger player than either.”25

Boston was in Buffalo on July 23, where it poured all morning long, putting the game in doubt. The rain let up, but umpire Bill Furlong couldn’t make it while a meager 250 fans did. The Buffalo Commercial described how the call went to Smith to umpire the game:

By mutual consent, ‘Al’ Smith, one of the Boston sub fielders, was permitted to officiate. Smith is a collegian, and too good to belong to the Bostons, though (Jack) Burdock, (Joe) Hornung, (Sam) Wise, and the rest of the bean-eaters love him. He is thoroughly conscientious and has no vices. He wears good clothes and a clean shirt, is not bad looking, and is about the last person one would pick out for a professional base ball player. It would be a good thing for the Buffalos if he could umpire all the games this week.26

Buffalo won, 3-2. “No wonder the Buffalos thought Smith a glorious umpire,” countered the Boston Globe. “In his (Smith’s) attempt to be impartial he went too far and was dead-set against the Bostons throughout. Try hard as he could, [Charlie] Buffinton could not get him to call strikes on balls pitched squarely over the plate, and the result is that men got hits when they should have been called out.”27

Smith contributed very little to Boston’s pennant run when they went 20-3 from August 25 on. He rarely appeared in a box score from September onward. Smith played his final major league game in Boston’s season finale against Cleveland on September 29. He tripled, scoring a run in a 6-4 Boston victory. After the game, Smith was released.28 His final numbers for the year: a .217 batting average (25-for-115) in 30 games, all in the outfield save one game behind the plate. In all, Smith committed six errors.

Smith could have stayed in professional baseball, but he declined a $2,000 offer from the NL’s Detroit Wolverines and became general manager of B.F. Hosford’s paper mill in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Bridgeport plant was a branch of the Holyoke mill that he worked at before joining Boston.29 In 1888, Smith became the New York sales representative of the Glen Paper Manufacturing Company (of Berlin, New Hampshire) and the Haverhill Paper Company (Haverhill, Massachusetts). Many of his clients were newspaper companies.30

On January 14, 1891, Smith married Ella Lawton Dow, the daughter of John M. and Isadore (Platner) Dow, in Rahway, New Jersey.31 Smith met Ella when he was playing a baseball game in Rahway. The Smiths made a home in Rahway, and Smith’s neighbors said he “was a man of exemplary habits, not indulging in dissipation or extravagance of any kind, and that he was extremely popular with all classes in Rahway.” The Smiths were actively involved in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.32

Smith resigned from the Glen Paper Manufacturing Company in 1894, a departure reported in newspapers nationwide. A rumor circulated that he had stolen between $30,000 and $45,000 from his co-workers. His attorney asserted that Smith had borrowed money from friends to pay for debts associated with losses on Wall Street. Others stated that the losses were from the horse track.33 Also, in tactics eerily like his extracurricular activities at Yale, Smith asked his clients for cash, claiming their accounts were short. “The account was so manipulated,” wrote The Paper Trade Journal in a lengthy story, “as to show a sale settled by check, the cash item being wiped out entirely.” Smith’s employment was terminated upon the discovery, and the paper companies refused to comment. Smith had carried a salary of $10,000 per year and had to sell off his luxurious furniture to pay his creditors. His estate in Rahway included horses, carriages, and coachmen.34

While living in Rahway, Albert and Emma had two sons: Donald Lawton Smith and Henry Malcolm Smith. The family lived on West Milton Avenue in Rahway and Albert was again a salesman in the paper industry.35 A 1906 Paper Trade Journal stated that Smith had recently resigned from the F.W. Felch Paper Company.36 The Smiths moved to New York City and lived at 200 West 81st Street. It was there, on Christmas Eve 1907, that Ella died.37

Per the 1910 census, Smith was living in Erie, Pennsylvania, a guest at the Reed House Hotel on North Park Row. His occupation was listed as “commercial traveler” for a book company. In 1911, the New Haven Union reported that Smith had married an unnamed woman in New York City.38 No marriage record or name of his new wife has been found. In the 1920 census, Smith (listed as married) lived on West 71st Street in Manhattan and owned his own publishing company. In a 1922 correspondence with Yale, Smith identified Standard Books as his employer but also noted his ownership of the publishing company.39

In 1926 Smith lived at 42 West 72nd Street. In another letter to Yale, he updated his contact information on stationery which read “A.E. Smith: High Class Standard Publications, Fine Bindings.” No information has been found about this company. Smith requested that all correspondence be sent to his secretary, Ethel Wright, who lived in Syracuse, New York, because he was “traveling the major portion of time throughout the year.” Wright moved to Cortland, New York, and Smith’s mail was forwarded there.40

Son Donald Lawton Smith spent much of his adult life working in China for Standard Vacuum Oil Company.41 Information from his passport verified the full name of his father. The other son, Henry Malcolm Smith, served in World War I, staying at least a year in Paris during post-war peace negotiations. Henry married Marian Janet Richardson in 1921; he died of an internal hemorrhage in 1929 while living in Richmond, Virginia. His obituary confirmed that his father was living in Syracuse at the time.42

Yale again confirmed Smith’s address in 1930: he was living at the Sagamore Hotel in Syracuse.43 The 1929 and 1930 Syracuse directories list Smith living with Harriet Smith, a public-school teacher who apparently was no relation to him.44 How Harriet Smith was connected to Albert is unknown. Later Syracuse directories list Harriet, but Albert is not listed.

A letter to Yale from Standard Book Company in 1938 provided no information on Smith.45 One letter in Smith’s Yale file is from his former classmate Horace D. Taft, a Yale graduate in 1883 who established The Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, and was the younger brother of President William Howard Taft. “He (Smith) collected two or three hundred dollars (a handwritten note above the sentence reads “by subscriptions for a fake cause”), in our senior year,” Taft wrote, “and when detected, left college in a hurry. I once heard that his career had not indicated a reform of his character or methods, but I have never been able to verify this statement.”46

Marion L. Phillips, Yale Alumni Registrar, attempted to find Smith over several years of correspondence, and made one last effort in April 1948. She sent a letter to A.E. Smith, living at 515 W. 156th Street in New York City. There was no response to the correspondence. Smith was removed from Yale’s directory of living alumni on July 1, 1948, with the justification he was at least 72 years old and no address had been available for several years.47

Smith’s final years and final resting place remain unknown as of 2026.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello fact-checked by Paul Proia.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author wishes to acknowledge the following for research assistance with this biography:

Ancestry.com

Baseball-reference.com

Family search.org

Rebecca Maguire, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Retrosheet.org

Steve Clark, genealogist

Thom Peters, archivist at Hopkins School.

Tim Copeland, SABR member

Yale University, for providing a scanned copy of Smith’s alumni file.

Notes

1  A Change of Agency,” The Paper Trade Journal, Vol. XXIII- No. 6, February 10, 1894: 131.

2  SABR Biographical Research Committee November/December 2011 Report, 10. http://sabr.box.com/shared/static/yb5ctq5kgdck8p2sbust.pdf

3  “Wallingford Notes,” Meriden (Connecticut) Journal, April 22, 1912: 3.

4  “Twenty and Costs,” New Haven (Connecticut) Register, September 30, 1882: 1.

5  Hopkins was actually founded before Yale. As the construction of Yale dragged on, this preparatory school was built and many of its first graduates attended Harvard. See “Yale College,””Hartford Courant, February 19, 1876: 1.

6  Information provided by Thom Peters, archivist of the school now known as Hopkins School. Correspondence with the author, August 16, 2024. Hereafter referred to as “Thom Peters.”

7 Thom Peters.

8 Thom Peters.

9 Thom Peters.

10  “Played on Boston’s Ball Nine,” Boston Herald, February 12, 1894: 2.

11  “North Haven,” New Haven Register, February 18, 1881: 4.

12  “State Correspondence,” New Haven Register, April 29, 1881: 1.

13  “A Dishonest Senior,” New Haven Register, September 28, 1882: 1; “Twenty and Costs,” above.

14 “Base Ball,” Boston Globe, November 18, 1883: 5.

15 “Base Ball,” Holyoke Daily Transcript, June 4, 1883: 1.

16  “Base Ball,” Boston Globe, June 14, 1883: 4.

17 “Base Ball,” Lynn (Massachusetts) Daily Item, June 21, 1883: 3.

18  “Holyokes, 5; Crescents, 2,” Boston Herald, June 19, 1883: 5.

19 “Base Ball,” Fall River (Massachusetts) Daily News, June 21, 1883: 2.

20 “The Clubs Beaten Again,” Philadelphia Times, June 21, 1883: 4.

21 David Nemec, The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball: Biographies of 1,084 Players, Owners, Managers and Umpires. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2013), 267.

22 SABR Biographical Research Committee November/December 2011 Report, 10.

23 “Sporting Matters,” Boston Globe, June 22, 1883: 4.

24 “Base Ball,” Boston Evening Transcript, June 22, 1883: 1.

25 “Base Ball,” Fall River Daily News, June 23, 1883: 3.

26  “Sporting,” The] Buffalo Commercial, July 24, 1883: 3.

27  “Pitched and Caught,” Boston Globe, August 5, 1883: 5.

28 “Yesterday’s Games,” “Gossipy Gleanings,” Boston Globe, September 30, 1883: 5.

29  “Personal,” New Haven Evening Register, October 9, 1883: 1; Holyoke (Massachusetts) Transcript-Telegram, October 15, 1883: 4.

30  Paper Trade Journal, Vol. XVIII, No. 20, May 18, 1889: 373.

31 (Rahway, New Jersey) National Democrat, January 9, 1891: 5; The divorce of Ella’s parents made the front page of the New York Tribune. John and Isadore married in 1869, and lived with her parents, Henry and Sarah Platner. John left Isadore, according to her account. John’s account was that he was unable to find work in Rahway and moved to Newark to secure a job. He paid Isadore $40 a month, which with her music teacher job provided for her unemployed father. Isadore did not want to leave her parents when John secured a house for them in Newark. She filed for divorce. Since adultery was the only cause for an absolute divorce, detectives testified that Henry Platner paid them $250 to track Dow’s whereabouts. Another man testified those detectives paid him $50 to try and persuade ballet dancer Lizzie Marshall to “inveigle him from the paths of virtue.” Dow claimed she was “failed in the consummation of her design” and he was never unfaithful. The divorce was granted in 1878. See “The Dow Divorce Suit,” New York Herald, January 28, 1878: 5; “Following a Husband for Six Months,” New York Tribune, October 28, 1878: 8; “A Divorce Granted,” (Jersey City) Jersey Journal,” October 14, 1878: 1.

32  “He is Not a Fugitive,” New York Tribune, February 9, 1894: 5.

33  “Case of Another Smith,” Boston Post, February 10, 1894: 1. “Has Not Absconded,” Buffalo Enquirer, February 9, 1894: 6; The news reports identified him as Alfred E. Smith, not Albert, but his employment with Glen, former work at Winona, and his home in Rahway confirm his identity.

34  “A. E. Smith’s Costly Furniture To Be Sold,” New York Tribune, February 24, 1894: 12; “A Change of Agency,” above.

35  Based on the 1900 Federal Census and the 1905 New Jersey State Census.

36 Paper Trade Journal, Vol. XLIII No. 19, November 8, 1906: 18.

37 “Obituaries” New York Post, December 27, 1907: 7; “To these farewell,” Fort Lauderdale (Florida) News, November 30, 1972: 15c.

38 “North Haven,” New Haven (Connecticut) Union, October 14, 1911: 8.

39 Smith Yale Alumni File, dated May 29, 1922.

40 Smith Yale Alumni file, Smith letter dated April 24, 1926. Postmaster letters dated May 28 and June 11, 1931.

41 “Obituary Notes,” New York Post, June 13, 1929: 4; Tim Murnane reported that Smith was living in Holyoke in 1907, but this seems to be an error. “Famous Ball Player Gone,” Boston Globe, September 24, 1907: 4.

42  “H. Malcolm Smith,” Richmond News Leader, June 13, 1929: 4.

43 Document in Smith’s Yale Alumni File listing his address as Apt. 26, The Sagamore, 664 W. Onondaga St, Syracuse, NY.

44 “Harriet Smith Dies; Teacher,” Syracuse Herald-Journal, October 28, 1958: 20; Harriet’s obituary makes no mention of Smith or ever being married.

45 Smith Yale Alumni File letter dated March 18, 1938.

46 Smith Yale Alumni File letter dated October 20, 1942.

47 Document in Albert E. Smith Yale Alumni file dated July 12, 1948.