Appalachian Figures
In the summer of 1930, Memphis fans crowded into Lewis Park to watch their Red Sox face the best Black ballclubs in the country. Somewhere on the infield dirt of that segregated ballpark stood a third baseman whose story began in the hills of eastern Kentucky. His name was Daniel Richard “Dan” Tye, born in Barbourville in 1899, and for at least one Negro National League season he carried Appalachian roots onto one of the biggest stages available to a Black ballplayer of his time.
Only a handful of box scores preserve his name. By modern statistical reconstruction, Tye is credited with five Negro league games and three hits. Yet when we follow those numbers back through genealogical records, memorials, and the history of the Memphis Red Sox, a fuller picture begins to emerge. His life links Knox County, Memphis, and Cincinnati, and it reminds us that the Negro Leagues were built not only by stars like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, or Charley Pride but also by working players from small towns across Appalachia.
Growing up Black in Barbourville
According to the Negro Leagues database at Seamheads and modern genealogical indexes, Daniel Richard Tye was born on November 9, 1899 in Barbourville, the seat of Knox County in southeastern Kentucky. Ancestry’s index to Kentucky births and deaths identifies him as a son of William Tye and Patsy, often recorded as Patsy Clark Tye, a Black family rooted in the region.
Collaborative trees on WikiTree place Daniel among several siblings, including George T. Tye and Sadia Tye, and tie the family to the federal census schedules for Barbourville precincts in Knox County. These compiled profiles, which are based on the original census returns, show the Tyes appearing repeatedly in early twentieth century records for the town and surrounding countryside. The picture that emerges is of a Black Appalachian family with deep local roots, navigating the constraints of Jim Crow Kentucky.
Barbourville itself was and remains a small Appalachian county seat. Baseball Reference’s Bullpen notes that modern Union Commonwealth University in Barbourville fields a college baseball program, and its “players by birthplace” lists show a surprising number of professional players with Barbourville or Knox County connections. That modern record hints at something older. By the time Dan Tye was a boy, baseball had spread across Kentucky into schoolyards, industrial teams, and sandlots, including Black independent and semipro clubs that rarely made white newspapers.
Negro league historians remind us that when organized Black professional baseball began to coalesce in the early twentieth century, it drew heavily from these local and regional circuits. Segregation kept Black players barred from the major leagues, so a separate structure of teams and leagues developed across the South and Midwest. For a young Black man from Barbourville who loved the game, reaching a club like the Memphis Red Sox would have represented the top rung of a parallel, segregated baseball world.
A Black owned ballclub on the Memphis frontier
The Memphis Red Sox emerged in the early 1920s as part of the broader Negro Leagues story. BlackPast.org describes the club as a Negro League team based in Memphis that operated for decades, one of the few outfits to keep the same name and city throughout its existence. A detailed history on Wikipedia dates their active years from roughly 1920 to 1959 and traces their shifting league affiliations: the Negro Southern League, the Negro National League, and later the Negro American League.
What set Memphis apart was ownership. The Negro Leagues Baseball eMuseum notes that the Red Sox franchise belonged to two brothers, Dr. J. B. Martin and Dr. B. B. Martin, both dentists and prominent Black businessmen in Memphis. J. B. Martin owned a drugstore, a funeral home, real estate, and eventually a hotel and ballpark that served the team. He built his own park for the Red Sox and ran concessions there, turning the club into the centerpiece of a broader Black business district.
Later historians, including Keith B. Wood in his 2024 study The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History, have underscored what that meant. A Tennessee State Museum program summarizing Wood’s work describes the Red Sox as a Black owned and operated pillar of success in Jim Crow Memphis, a lens through which to study racial inequality and Black civic life in the city.
On the field, the Red Sox shifted leagues as Black baseball itself evolved. In 1937, MLB’s official Negro Leagues history notes, Memphis became one of eight founding members of the Negro American League, and in 1938 they came within a whisker of a league title. Earlier, in 1930, when Dan Tye wore their uniform, the club competed in the first Negro National League. Seamheads’ team record for that season shows the Red Sox finishing 33-54-1 overall, with a 28-40 mark in league play, playing their home games at Lewis Park in Memphis.
Off the field, local public history projects such as StoryBoard Memphis describe how the Red Sox ballparks and nearby businesses functioned as community centers for Black Memphians, hosting not only games but also social events and gatherings. These spaces began to disappear after desegregation and the integration of Major League Baseball, and the team finally dissolved around 1960.
It was into this world of Black owned baseball and bustling ballparks that a third baseman from Barbourville arrived in 1930.
Five recorded games at the hot corner
Modern researchers have reconstructed Negro league statistics by combing through thousands of box scores in Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, and regional Memphis papers. Those efforts, compiled at Seamheads and other databases, give us the only surviving season line for Dan Tye.
The 1930 Memphis Red Sox were a middling club in a tough league. Seamheads lists Nat Rogers as their top hitter and Murray Gillispie as one of their pitching mainstays, while veteran manager Candy Jim Taylor guided them through a losing season in the Negro National League. Within that roster, the statistical tables show “Dan Tye” as a 30 year old third baseman with a short but clear record.
In the 1930 season, Memphis’s batting ledger credits Tye with five games and fifteen plate appearances, all of them official at bats. He scored two runs, collected three hits, and drove in one run. One of those hits went for extra bases as a double. That line works out to a .200 batting average, a .200 on base percentage, and a .267 slugging percentage, for a .467 OPS.
Fielding data on the same site places him exclusively at third base. In those five games he logged thirty six innings, handled seven total chances, and finished with six assists and one error, for a .857 fielding percentage at the hot corner. The league average fielding percentage for third basemen that year, as estimated by Seamheads, was higher, which suggests that he may have struggled at times with the difficult infield conditions and sharp grounders that defined the position. Yet the tiny sample makes any firm judgment about his defense risky.
Negro league historians emphasize that even this brief line is likely incomplete. Seamheads explicitly notes that its tables reflect only games for which surviving box scores have been located. For every contest that appears in the record, there may be one or more that have not yet been documented. Memphis Public Library’s Negro Leagues Baseball Collection and the Negro Southern League Museum in Birmingham point researchers toward additional local artifacts and game programs, which may yet reveal more appearances by Tye that are lost to the statistical record.
Even if we take the existing numbers at face value, they show something important. For a brief stretch of 1930, a Black man born in Barbourville, Kentucky stood in against Negro National League pitching, fielded the hot corner for a Black owned team, and added his labor to a franchise that would outlast the league itself.
From Barbourville to Cincinnati
The surviving baseball statistics do not tell us what Tye did before or after the 1930 season. There is no clear evidence that he appeared in another Negro league campaign, though it is entirely possible that he played independent ball or barnstormed with semipro teams whose records have not survived. What we can see more clearly is the arc of his life after Memphis, as recorded in vital records and family memorials.
A Find A Grave memorial for “Daniel Richard ‘Dan’ Tye Sr.” gives a full set of life dates. It identifies him as born on November 9, 1899 in Barbourville, Knox County, Kentucky, and dying on February 27, 1965 in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, at the age of sixty five. That trajectory from Appalachian Kentucky to an industrial Ohio city matches the path taken by many Black and white families during the Great Migration era.
The clearest near primary confirmation of that move comes not from a baseball source but from the obituary of his daughter, Mary Esther Walker. Published in 2024 by James H. Cole Home for Funerals in Detroit and reprinted on Legacy and Ever Loved, Mary’s obituary identifies her as “daughter of the late Daniel Richard Tye and the late Nannie Pearl Tye,” born in Cincinnati on May 4, 1934. It notes that she grew up and was educated in Cincinnati alongside six siblings before marrying and moving to Detroit in the 1950s.
Taken together, those notices show that by the mid 1930s Tye and his wife Nannie Pearl had settled in Cincinnati, where they raised a large family that would send descendants north to Detroit and elsewhere. Genealogical entries for Mary’s siblings, including a son named Daniel Tye Jr., echo this pattern, placing the family firmly within Black Midwestern communities shaped by migration from the South and border states.
Behind paywalls, genealogical databases indicate that city directories, voter lists, and possibly an Ohio death certificate survive for Daniel R. Tye in Cincinnati. These documents would give addresses, occupations, and perhaps confirm his work life after baseball, but they are not yet easily accessible to the general public. What we can say is that he died in Cincinnati in 1965 and was remembered by his children and grandchildren not first as a ballplayer but as a father and grandfather whose care shaped their lives.
An Appalachian thread in Negro Leagues history
Because he appears in only five recorded games, Dan Tye will never be counted among the legendary names of Negro league lore. Yet that is precisely why his story matters for Appalachian history.
First, he stands as one of the few documented Negro leaguers from Barbourville and from this corner of Kentucky. Modern player indexes by birthplace show relatively few major or Negro league players from Knox County and the surrounding mountain counties, which makes each confirmed figure especially valuable for local historians. Tye’s career gives Barbourville a direct connection to a Black owned professional ballclub that operated for nearly four decades and produced Hall of Famers as well as major league alumni.
Second, his life illustrates how the Negro Leagues drew on talent from small towns and rural communities. The statistical databases that now undergird modern recognition of Negro league records, including MLB’s decision to treat certain Negro leagues as major leagues, rest not only on stars but on players like Tye whose box scores might otherwise have been forgotten.
Third, his family’s path from Barbourville to Cincinnati and then to Detroit through his daughter Mary mirrors the broader migration patterns of many Appalachian Black families, who left coal counties and river towns for industrial jobs and urban opportunities. Mary’s obituary describes a woman who “never met a stranger” and cherished travel, crosswords, and family life, suggesting that the Tye legacy reached far beyond the ballfield and into the everyday lives of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
Finally, his story points toward avenues for future research. Local newspapers from Barbourville, Knoxville, and Cincinnati may yet hold box scores or brief notices of his early and later baseball exploits. Federal census schedules from 1900 through 1940, World War I draft registration cards, and city directories in Memphis and Cincinnati could expand our understanding of his work and movements. Archival collections like the Memphis Public Library’s Negro Leagues Baseball Collection, the Negro Southern League Museum, and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City offer rich troves of ephemera, oral histories, and photographs that may one day put a face with his name.
For now, we can say this much with confidence. On a handful of days in 1930, a Black man from Barbourville named Daniel Richard Tye stood at third base for a Black owned Memphis ballclub and helped write a chapter in the history of Negro league baseball. His life, traced through family records and box scores, belongs firmly within the story of Appalachia.
Sources and further reading
Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, player page for Dan Tye and 1930 Memphis Red Sox batting and fielding statistics. Seamheads+1
Baseball Reference, Dan Tye register entry and players by birthplace lists for Kentucky, along with Bullpen entries on Union Commonwealth University in Barbourville. Baseball Reference+3Baseball Reference+3Baseball Reference+3
“Dan Tye,” Wikipedia, and “Memphis Red Sox,” Wikipedia, for concise biographical and franchise overviews and league affiliations. Wikipedia+1
Daniel Richard “Dan” Tye Sr. memorial on Find A Grave for vital dates and places, and Ancestry index entries and WikiTree family pages documenting his parents William and Patsy Tye and their children in Barbourville. WikiTree+3Find A Grave+3Ancestry+3
Obituaries for Mary Esther Walker, daughter of Daniel and Nannie Pearl Tye, published by James H. Cole Home for Funerals, Legacy.com, and Ever Loved, which tie the Barbourville born ballplayer to a Cincinnati based family whose descendants later moved to Detroit. obits.jameshcole.com+2obits.jameshcole.com+2
Negro Leagues Baseball eMuseum entry “Memphis Red Sox,” BlackPast.org article “The Memphis Red Sox (1920-1960),” MLB’s Negro Leagues history page on the Memphis Red Sox, and Keith B. Wood’s The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History for context on the club’s Black ownership, ballparks, and significance in Jim Crow Memphis. viewpointbooks.com+4nlbemuseum.com+4BlackPast+4
Storyboard Memphis’s “The Negro Leagues Come to Memphis,” Memphis Public Library’s “Negro Leagues Baseball Collection” and “Additional Resources,” and materials from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and Negro Southern League Museum for the broader cultural and archival landscape in which Tye’s career is situated. Negro Leagues Baseball Museum+3StoryBoard Memphis+3Memphis Public Libraries+3