Ancestry Magazine

I must admit to a significant amount of skepticism regarding family stories because many of my family’s stories have turned out to be untrue. But my husband’s family stories have proven to be quite accurate, and this one was no exception.

One day, early in our marriage, my husband mentioned that his Doherty ancestors lived along the third-base line of the baseball field that preceded Tigers Stadium in Detroit. He indicated that the house was torn down to build Navin Field, an earlier name for Tigers Stadium.

I must admit to a significant amount of skepticism regarding family stories because many of my family’s stories have turned out to be untrue. But my husband’s family stories have proven to be quite accurate, and this one was no exception.

Using city directories, I was able to document Charles Doherty and—after his death in 1876—his wife, Mary, living at 12 National Avenue from 1864 until 1911. The 1912 Detroit City Directory does not list any low, even-numbered houses on National Avenue, although they had been there in previous years, including number 12.

Bennett Park was the first stadium—made of wood—in which the Tigers played. It was on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull avenues, and just behind the houses lining the eastern side of National Avenue. Home plate was situated in the corner of the stadium closest to the intersection of Michigan and National avenues. According to an 1897 Sanborn Fire Map, house numbers 8 thru 16, and 20 thru 28 backed up to a ten-foot-high board fence along the third-base line of Bennett Park. Most of these homes had a one- or two-story stable at the back of the lot.

After proving the story true, my appetite was whetted to learn more. I asked my mother-in-law if she remembered anything else about her family living at this location. She recalled that her grandmother used to sell tickets to watch the ball games from the top of her stable.

As I discovered, nearly all of homeowners along the ball field were entrepreneurs. A visit to Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library enlightened me to the concept of “Wildcat Bleachers” adjacent to Bennett Park around the turn of the century. The homeowners built these rickety bleachers atop their stables and sold tickets, pocketing the money. This didn’t sit well with Tigers owner Frank Navin, who tried a variety of methods to discourage the loss of revenue. At some point before 1910, a cloth screen was erected to block the view from the bleachers.

Eventually, Navin’s frustration peaked and in 1911 he bought the properties along the eastern side of National Avenue from the offending homeowners and leveled Bennett Park. In 1912 he opened a new stadium built of concrete and steel. The 1919 Sanborn Fire Map shows Navin Field extending all the way to the corners of National, Michigan, and Trumbull avenues, with no chance for wildcat bleachers to interfere with revenues. Some of my early research was complicated by the fact that National Avenue no longer exists. At some point, the City of Detroit changed the name of Nati onal Avenue to Cochrane Avenue, after popular Tigers ballplayer and manager Mickey Cochrane.

A small ironic twist to this story is that I am a native of a Chicago suburb and grew up an avid Chicago Cubs fan. I spent many summer afternoons in the legitimate left-field bleachers at Wrigley Field and frequently noticed people watching the ball game from lawn chairs atop the apartment buildings that overlook left and right fields. At some point after I was unable to attend Cubs games any more, bleachers were built on top of some of these apartment buildings. A century after Frank Navin objected to the loss of revenue due to the wildcat bleachers, Cubs owners are battling the loss of revenue from their own wildcat bleacher crowd on the surrounding apartment buildings. Cubs owners and the Wrigleyville neighborhood association are frequently at odds regarding improvements to the stadium, including a wind screen that was put up in 2001 that allegedly blocks the view from the wildcat bleachers.

Being a die-hard Cubs fan and Wrigley Field romantic, I hope the final result of the disagreements between the two camps is not the destruction of the ball park, the second oldest in the major leagues. That was how Frank Navin solved his problem.

So once again I have to bow to the inevitability that the stories from my husband’s side of the family are true—and can be verified—while the stories from my side of the family belong more in the category of tall tales. But the intrigue for me is taking that tidbit and flushing it out into the reality that was the day-to-day lives of our ancestors.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, CGL, is a frequent contributor to Ancestry Magazine. She is also the managing editor of Genealogical Computing.