Baseball in Hawaii

Two scrapbooks documenting the life of Ululani Franklin Lemon

Honolulu. Two folio albums, 16½" x 14½" and 14½" x 12¼", about 200 pp. total, containing ephemera, news clippings, and photographs. Ululani Franklin Lemon - "Uncle Nani" - was born in Honolulu in 1881 to a naturalized Canadian father and a Hawaiian mother. He lived his entire life in Honolulu and died there in 1950. In 1902 he graduated Kamehameha School for Boys as a scholarship student. He had flourished during his school years, establishing himself as a star athlete in gymnastics, track and field and, especially, baseball. There is considerable material in the first scrapbook documenting his career as a pitcher and outfielder at school, and later as a member of the Honolulus and Hawaiian All Star team. Upon his graduation in 1902 he went to work for Albert Baldwin & Co., and stayed with them until his retirement in 1947. The first scrapbook documents his life, friends, travels, and work experience, from ancestry and early years to his death in 1950. Highlights from this album include photographs of early sports teams, baseball ephemera, a letter to his mother written on the inside of a shirt collar, and a manuscript essay on the history of baseball in Hawaii by Lemon. This scrapbook contains 187 b/w photographs ranging in size from 1¼" x 1½" to 9" x 14". The second scrapbook is devoted to his travels both as a young man and later with his wife and family. It contains a good deal of interesting travel ephemera from such places as California, Mexico, Canada, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Java, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, New Guinea, Cuba, and the Philippines. It contains 76 photographs. Some of the pages in both albums are brittle and chipped; a few are loose in the binding. However all the material within is in very good condition. Item #53104

Price: $3,500.00