Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Ancestry.com Has U.S. Baseball Questionnaires, 1945-2005 Online

I've been waiting for this record collection to appear on the Ancestry.com new collection list.  And now we have it.

The U./S. Baseball Questionnaires collection is at https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/baseballquestionnaires/

These are questionnaires filled out by baseball players, not necessarily major leaguers at the time, on a standard form created by William J. Weiss of San Mateo, California.

Here is an example of the questionnaire filled out by my 10th cousin (we share the same Y-DNA chromosome! He got the baseball gene, I didn't!), George Thomas "Tom" Seaver, the Hall of Fame pitcher, in 1966:


Cousin "Tom Terrific" filled this out in 1966, about the time he started playing professional baseball in the New York Mets system.

The "About" section of the record collection page on Ancestry says:
This collection is comprised of self-completed surveys of professional baseball players from 1945-2005. The forms may include such information as:
  • Full Name
  • Nicknames
  • Position
  • Self-reported Ancestry
  • Birthplace and Date
  • Residence
  • Height and Weight
  • Batting and Throwing Handedness
  • High School and Graduation Year
  • College Information
  • Sports Played in School
  • First Professional Club
  • Off-Season Occupation
  • Scout
  • Memories
  • Military Service Details
  • Family Details
There are 154,727 questionnaires in this record collection.

There are two other baseball related collections on Ancestry.com:

*  U.S., Professional Baseball Player Profiles, 1876-2004 (13,622 entries)

*  U.S., Professional Baseball Player Photos and Illustrations, 1876-2004 (2,184 entries)

As my devoted readers know, I am a big-time baseball fan.  The season in San Diego starts on Thursday (tomorrow!) and even though my beloved San Diego Padres haven't been in the playoffs since 2006 and have been in only two World Series (1984 and 1998), hope still springs eternal today!!

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Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

What a fun database! You can use the keyword search to find a player by nickname or high school. I found 6 graduates from my high school. You can also type in female names in the first & middle name search to find mothers, wives, and daughters. Thanks for the link!

-Alex, alex@flippingthroughrecords.com