Walter Johnson Dies
On December 10, 1946, baseball great Walter Johnson died at the age of fifty-nine. Nicknamed “The Big Train,” Johnson pitched his way to fame during twenty-one seasons with the Washington Senators. His fastball is considered to be among the best in baseball history.
He’s got a gun concealed about his person. You can’t tell me he throws them balls with his arm.“Horseshoes”. By Ring W. Lardner[comment on Walter Johnson]. Saturday Evening Post, August 15, 1914. pp. 8-10 & 44-46
Johnson joined the Senators in 1907. After a tentative first season, the former high school star found his ground eventually scoring more shutout victories (110) than any other major league pitcher. Johnson’s 1913 record for pitching fifty-six consecutive scoreless innings stood for more than fifty years until Don Drysdale bested it in 1968. His strikeout record (3,508) held until 1983. In all-time wins, Johnson is second only to Cy Young.
Johnson was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1913 and again in 1924. During spring training in 1927, Johnson was struck by a line drive which broke his leg. He pitched the season, but not as well as before, and he retired from play when the season ended. In 1928, Johnson was a manager in the International League; he managed the Senators from 1929-1932 and the Cleveland Indians from 1933-35.
In 1936, Johnson was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame , along with Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner. These five were the first players chosen for this honor; the Sporting News called them “the immortals.” Johnson retired from baseball to farming and politics in Montgomery County, Maryland, where today, a high schoolbears his name.
Learn More
- Search for other materials about Walter Johnson among the Library’s digital resources. In particular, see the images of Johnson available online.
- Search on Johnson in Baseball Cards to find more baseball cards featuring him. To see other baseball greats from the era, browse the collection’s images.
- Read the essay Tinkers to Evers to Chance! about the legendary double-play making Chicago Cubs infielders.
- See The Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889 to 1939 and By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s. The latter collection includes a special presentation, Early Baseball Pictures, 1860s to 1920s, on the early history of the game.
Wyoming Day
On December 10, 1869, John Campbell, governor of the Wyoming Territory, approved the first law in U.S. history explicitly granting women the right to vote. Commemorated in later years as Wyoming Day, the event was one of many firsts for women achieved in the Equality State.
Twenty years later, on November 5, 1889, Wyoming voters approved the first constitution in the world granting full voting rights to women. Wyoming voters again made history in 1924 when they elected Nellie Tayloe Ross the first woman governor in the United States.
The events leading to the introduction and passage of the 1869 suffrage law remain unclear. One story, long embedded in the history of suffrage in Wyoming, credits Esther Hobart Morris who had arrived in South Pass, Wyoming, shortly before the 1869 elections. The story alleges that Mrs. Morris decided to have a tea party in order to present her support of woman suffrage to candidates for the legislature. Although many historians have not found contemporary records to document this event, the story is recounted in many volumes including Carrie Chapman Catt’s Women Suffrage and Politics; the inner story of the suffrage movement:
At this point, twenty of the most influential men in the community, including all the candidates of both parties, were invited to dinner at the ‘shack of Mrs. Esther Morris’…To her guests she now presented the woman’s case with such clarity and persuasion that each candidate gave her his solemn pledge that if elected he would introduce and support a woman suffrage bill.Woman Suffrage and Politics, the Inner Story of the Movement. By Carrie Lane Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Schuler; New York: C. Scribner Sons, 1926. p.75. National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection. Rare Book & Special Collections Division
One indisputable fact is the appointment of Esther Hobart Morris as the first woman to serve as a justice of the peace. She served for eight and a half months and heard 27 cases.
Democrat William H. Bright, who supposedly had been present as a dinner guest at Morris’ home, won a seat in the legislature and introduced a bill granting women the right to vote. Although the legislators are said to have treated the legislation as a joke, they approved it nonetheless. To their surprise, Governor Campbell signed it into law. The summoning, three months later, of the first women jurors to duty in Laramie, attracted international attention.
Learn More
- Find more material on the achievement of suffrage in Wyoming. Search the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection on Esther Morris. Read Woman Suffrage and Politics, the Inner Story of the Movement for one version of the first election in Wyoming, including a description of the virulent opposition encountered by supporters of African Americans’ right to vote. See the time line One Hundred Years Toward Suffrage for an overview of the suffrage movement, which enjoyed some of its first successes in Western states.
- Additional collections documenting the woman suffrage campaign include:
- Votes for Women–The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage: Selected Images from the Collections of the Library of Congress
- Scrapbooks of Elizabeth Smith Miller and Anne Fitzhugh Miller. Part of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
- Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party
- View images of the “Equality State” in the Library’s collections of Photos & Prints. For example, a search on Wyomingreturns images such as The Grand Teton and Yellowstone Canyon; President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Wyoming is found in the Denver Public Library Digital Collections, which includes extensive photographic documentation of the West.
- Search on suffrage in American Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States for more items on suffrage in the Library’s collections.
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