The following 14 signed photographs were part of the Frank W. Smith Collection. Smith was a staff photographer for the Cleveland Ledger in the early 1900s. He created a scrapbook that contained these New York Giants photos as well as Cleveland Naps photos. The better known Giants images were sold individually in Heritage and more recently Christie’s auctions. The Mathewson and Joe Jackson signed images went for premium prices. The descriptions for those auctions provided the story of the discovery of the Smith trove and the very basics of their background, but what is the story of the signed Giants photos collectively and their genesis? Here are images of the Giants photos and Smith’s album as it appeared in the Heritage auction.

When and where were they taken and for what purpose? The first clue is determining which stadium is depicted in the photos and what was the year the jersey worn that the Giants players appear in. The stadium is clearly Pittsburg’s Forbes Field which opened in 1909, we know this by the building behind the outfield fence, most clearly depicted in this photo, but evident in many of the others.

The uniform is a clear fit for the 1911 New York Giants.

So if it is the Giants in 1911 at Pittsburg, can we determine the date? The key is to examine the scoreboard behind Arlie Latham in his photo.

The teams listed on the scoreboard are fuzzy, but line up like this:

Philadelphia at Cincinnati, Boston at St. Louis, Brooklyn at Chicago and our game, New York at Pittsburg. Under the New York Pittsburg game is “New York here” with two dates listed to the right of that. Examining a National League schedule for 1911, the matchups line up for September 16, 18, 19 series when the Giants were in Pittsburg to face the Pirates. Smith was based in Cleveland for the Cleveland Leader newspaper so it would be an easy train ride for him to Pittsburg to catch the Giants who were already well on their way to capturing the 1911 National League pennant by that date. The Giants made a return trip to Pittsburg for a one game series on October 2, 1911, that date is important for our narrative.

The key to discovering the full story of the signed Giants photos is an examination of the pages of The Cleveland Leader in October 1911. Many image of our Giants appeared in the pages of the newspaper that month, but the key date is the October 22, 1911 edition of the Leader. In it this rotogravure of 21 Giants photos, including our 14 images plus 7 that were sold off individually at auction appear.

The photos depicted are exact matches for our photographs. Note the white border has been cropped out and some of signatures on the images that are shown on the rotogravure have now faded out, see the example of the Latham photo below that is still barely visible.

As further proof, if any was needed, that our photos were used to produce this rotogravure, notice the penciled numbers in the white borders of our photographs. They correspond to the position that they appear in the rotogravure, left to right then top to bottom. For example the Latham photo has a “3” as his photo appears in the third from the left top row position. The pencil marking are perhaps by Smith himself as he created the rotogravure.

But when did Smith take the photos and when he did get them signed. The key is the Marquard photo which Marquard has dated October 1, 1911.

The most likely scenario is that Frank Smith shot the images on the Giants trip to Pittsburg in mid September 1911. The photos are printed on double weight stock with a non-gloss finish, ideal for an ink signature. My guess is he took the developed photos back to Pittsburg for the Giants October 2nd game and had the players sign the photographs at the hotel the night before the game, October 1st for Marquard at the least, or at the game the following day. That timeline makes the most sense and was readily doable given the proximity of Cleveland and Pittsburg. He knew the Giants would likely be in the World Series and the photos would be used by the Cleveland Leader all of the month of World Series, culminating in the rotogravure published in the midst of the World Series itself.

Here are the 14 players images that reside in our Collection. All have blank banks with black album page residue where they were pasted in. The only exception is where Bert “J.A.” Maxwell signed his on back, note his signature is under the album page residue. These photos are assuredly Type 1 photos which were signed, or double signed in many cases, by the players themselves in October 1911. Original period signed photos from this era are incredible rarities.