Branch Wesley Rickey (December 20, 1881
– December 9, 1965) was born on a farm at Stockdale, Ohio, the
second of three sons – Orla E. (1875-1944), Branch (1881-1965), and
Frank W. (1888-1953) – to Jacob Franklin and Emily Rickey.
In 1883, the family moved to Duck Run,
where the family had a farm. There, Rickey attended his first
elementary classes in a one-room schoolhouse.
The Lucasville
Connection
In 1892, the family moved to
Lucasville. Part of the reason for the move was that the family
believed Branch was especially bright, and the one-room schoolhouse
had given him all it could. Lucasville had a better school with more
than one overworked teacher and with a more complex curriculum. His
father stayed to work his farm through Saturday and come into
Lucasville on Sunday for church.
The Rickeys moved into Squire Crain's
house on Valley Pike across from Chandler Moulton's store. Here, they
rented three rooms on each of two floors with separate entries on the
front and rear.
Branch's brother Orla finished high
school (looking for a citation that confirms which school) and
received his teaching certificate from Scioto County. He moved away
to take up a teaching job, leaving Branch to attend school and the
fifth grade alone.
Lucasville's school was contained in a
two-story wooden building with bustling halls and three large
classrooms. It was a dramatic change from Duck Run. And whatever its
physical and scholastic limitations, the school was blessed
successively with two spirited and successful superintendents, both
still students at Ohio Wesleyan University. These men chose teaching,
as did many rural young men of the time, as a stepping-stone to
professional careers elsewhere.
The first was twenty-three-year-old
Frank Appel; his successor was James H. Finney, a vigorous, talented,
and athletic farm boy. Rickey recognized Finney later in life with
great admiration. Of Finney, Branch said: “He was a pace setter, a
man who understood boys, who could win their confidence and merit it.
He was a big man.”
At first, his classmates made fun of
Branch. He was rather diminutive in stature, and he came from a farm
while they came from a village, however small it was. He started
stuttering and only in retrospect did he understand that his peers'
taunts had forced him either to retreat into fearfulness or else to
develop strong defenses.
By force of will and discipline, and
aided immeasurably by Finney (Together each afternoon the pupil and
patient teacher spent time correcting his defect.), Branch's words
soon came pouring out in a torrent that overwhelmed many of his
classmates and teachers. By the end of the first school year, the
other students were increasingly respectful of the small,
good-looking boy.
Rickey even changed his name. Two
cousins living in Harrisonville were both named “Wesley,” so
Branch dropped it. By the age of twelve, he was “Branch Rickey.”
In 1895, Branch decided he had had
sufficient schooling. In an era of early departures from school when
relatively few children of the working and farming classes completed
elementary school's eight grades, classroom work seemed unimportant
to the young Rickey. The world outside, his father's harsh workaday
labors, the give and take of daily affairs – all of these seemed
more manly and appropriate.
Biographers conclude Rickey must also
have fretted about the ceaseless efforts of his parents and their
bitter struggle to see him through school as they tried to cope with
the sharply plummeting prices in corn and sorghum. He decided to
return to the farm “where he belonged.”
In April school closed for a week for
the planting season. Branch returned to the farm and worked with his
father and brother Frank for four days. Then, his father (with great
encouragement) allowed Branch to make up his own mind about returning
to school. Branch said this was a “great out” for him, and with
apparent regret and a show of contrite hesitation, he consented to go
back to school. Branch knew this was what his “wonderful father”
had planned all along.
In the summer, the Rickeys played
baseball. By the end of the summer, Orla was Lucasville's best
pitcher while Branch shared catching duties with someone else.
It is reported by one biographer that
Branch finished his course of study offered in Lucasville at the age
of seventeen (perhaps 18?). The Lucasville school offered instruction
in twelve grades but granted no diploma.
Since the state of the family farm was
more precarious than ever, Branch felt an obligation to stay home. He
wanted to help his parents with chores because his younger brother,
Frank was scarcely ten. And, temperamentally Branch was not cut out
to be a farmer, preferring to read and talk and argue. His mother,
Emily Brown Rickey liked to say with a twinkle in her eye, “He
could sit down on a hoe faster than anyone I ever knew.”
Branch's most immediate problem after
finishing school was finding a job. After trying a job selling books
as a door-to-door salesman, James Finney came to his rescue. If
Branch would agree to take the upcoming summer exam for Scioto
Country primary school teachers, Finney would tutor him without
charge. And, the pay of $35 a week in a teaching position was a great
enticement for the young man because it would greatly contribute to
the family household.
So, Branch played no baseball in the
spring of 1899. He studied instead. Professor Finney helped him bone
up on the requirements to be a teacher. And, when June ended the
school year, Rickey was ready for the County Board.
In July, Branch went to the county
courthouse and took the exam. Two weeks later he received a two-year
teaching certificate to teach “Orthography, Reading, Writing,
Arithmetic, Geography, English Grammar, U.S. History, Physiology, and
Hygiene.” In addition, he was instructed to report in two weeks to
a one-room school on Turkey Creek in the Friendship, Ohio postal
district.
Frank Appel and James Finney had seen
Branch Rickey as a diamond in the rough, an especially passionate and
intelligent young man who had college potential. They were aware of
his limited resources, but they hoped that the Turkey Creek teaching
job would ultimately provide enough money to afford him his college
tuition.
In addition to having the total support
of his mother Emily, Branch Rickey had another reason to aspire to
college and beyond. While he was teaching in Turkey Creek, Jane
Moulton, his sweetheart had entered Western College for Women at
Oxford, Ohio, and would shortly transfer to Ohio Wesleyan. Jame (born
Jenne but often called “Jen” or “Jennie” until she adopted
“Jane” after her marriage) was from the “better side of the
tracks” of Lucasville.
Jane was the fourth of six children of
Chandler and Mary Ceciila Smith Moulton. Chan Moulton was one of the
pillars of the the Lucasville community. He was the grandson of a
Revolutionary Was veteran from Vermont, a prominent merchant who ran
the Lucasville General Store, and would b instrumental in bringing
the Ohio State Fair to the town in 1904. Blessed with “a serene
temperament, Moulton also served for years as a Republican member of
the Ohio state legislature.
It was expected that all the Moulton
children would go to college and marry respectably. And though the
Moultons appreciated Jane was smitten with Branch, they “had grave
doubts whether he could support her in the manner expected.” After
all, Rickey was a man of limited means who lived across the street
from the Moulton store.
Yet, so much in love, Branch and Jane
knew better. Branch always said from the day he first saw Jane
Moulton, she was “the only pebble on the beach.” Jane was pretty,
intelligent, and athletic. She was also a talented painter – as a
teenager, she drew portraits of family members that have remained
treasured heirlooms. Jane was everything to Branch Rickey.
Jane even encouraged Branch to take
both the West Point and Annapolis military service academy exams in
the late 1890s. He scored well on both tests but not well enough to
receive an appointment. Though disappointed by his failure to enter a
prestigious military academy, Branch vowed to make something of
himself in education. Naturally, he wanted to win the hand of Jane
Moulton.
With determination and purpose, Rickey
began teaching and commuting seventeen miles each way to Turkey Creek
from Lucasville. The sons of Turkey Creek's loggers, farmers, and
moonshiners had spat upon, physically attacked, and run the last two
teachers out of town. On Rickey's first day on the job, one of them
with corn liquor on his breath spat at Rickey's feet. He ordered the
student out of the class to settle the issue physically. As the
entire class eagerly watched, Rickey beat him in a bloody fistfight,
proving education was “worth fighting about.”
He spent two years there, and before
the second year, Branch had an invitation to move to a less
physically intimidating school in nearby Pike County at nearly double
the salary. However, the Turkey Creek parents wanted to retain him
and circulated a petition in his behalf while offering him a slight
increase in salary. Rickey felt obliged to stay on “with those poor
people who wanted their children taught.” Years later, Jacob
Franklin Rickey said that he considered the invitation to return to
Turkey Creek for a second year of teaching his now-famous son's
greatest achievement.
In March 1901, Turkey Creek's school
closed for the year and Branch went to Delaware, Ohio, to begin his
college studies at Ohio Wesleyan. Branch Rickey made the journey to
college as a probationary student. In the spring of 1902, he was the
starting catcher on the college baseball team, and he continued to be
much, much more as a man with a transformative impact on both
American sports and on American society.
In a tribute to Rickey many years later
in 2006, Ohio Wesleyan would reminisce ...
“Over 100 years ago, catcher’s mitt
and Latin grammar textbook in hand, a young Branch Rickey walked away
from his small farming community in southern Ohio, stepped onto a
northbound train, and headed for college at Ohio Wesleyan University.
“The year was 1901, just a few years
prior to bloody race riots in Atlanta, the founding of the Niagara
Movement (forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, NAACP) by W.E.B. DuBois, and, ironically, shortly
before the first flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, the
first real demonstration of humanity’s ability to soar toward the
heavens.
“The time was right—the stage was
set—for someone to step forward and grab hold of the heart, mind,
and conscience of the American people—someone who would choose
compassion for others over personal and professional glory, and show
commitment to advancing equality and human rights for all people—and
never look back. That person was Wesley Branch Rickey, a 1904
graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University.
“Stepping off that train long ago to
join the student ranks at OWU, Branch Rickey found a welcoming
community of scholars and friends who were there to help—with odd
jobs and loans—the almost penniless student from Portsmouth, Ohio
(correct to Lucasville). That legacy of caring and giving exists
today through our long overdue recognition of Wesley Branch Rickey...
“Stepping off that train long ago to
join the student ranks at OWU, Branch Rickey found a welcoming
community of scholars and friends who were there to help—with odd
jobs and loans—the almost penniless student from Portsmouth, Ohio.
That legacy of caring and giving exists today through our long
overdue recognition of Wesley Branch Rickey.”
Sources:
(David
Lipman. Mr. Baseball: The Story of Branch Rickey. 1966.)
(Lee
Lowenfish. Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman. 2007.)
(Arthur
Mann. Branch Rickey: American In Action. 1957)
(Murray
Polner. Branch Rickey: A Biography. McFarland and Company.
2007.)
(“Branch
Rickey: The Legacy" Ohio Wesleyan Magazine, Volume 84. Winter 2006.)
“He was like a piece of mobile armor,
and he would throw himself and his advice in the way of anything
likely to hurt me.”
--Jackie Robinson
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