Baseball Coincidence

By Drew Doebelin

The image of William Van Buren comes from the NLB Museum page for him.

Last week I mostly did research and encapsulated a small bit of documents. In preparation for next week's Baseball event, I helped Ashley organize and glue together displays for it. We have a board with newspaper clips of the Buffaloes vs. Stars of Fulton and one for David McBride. Another baseball player from Fulton we initially didn't have a lot of information on was William "Bill" Edward Van Buren (1935-2007), who participated in one summer term with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1953 before attending Lincoln University that fall.

The image that describes that William was an honors student came from a Fulton Sun article of Callaway Memories by Emily O'Leary.

On my initial search for him, there was unfortunately very little written or surviving of his baseball days. His last name looked very familiar to me, however, I wondered why? It was because he shared a last name with a Martin Van Buren of the USCT from Callaway! I was able to trace their connection, Martin (of who's regiment and company I am still figuring out) is Williams great-grandfather. William was also an honors student of the George Washington Carver school. I hope I can find more information on him and any more facts about his time with the Monarchs to add to a display or information to share for Saturday. 

I had a bit of a struggle finding Martin Van Buren's soldier record, as there were many soldiers with the same name during that time. While I eventually was able to find it, it was incomplete and will need further research to identify which company and regiment he was in. Many of his descendants were also soldiers during their lifetimes, including William who was in the U.S Air force. 

Martin Van Buren's enlistment papers.