The following photograph depicts Edwin Americas Rommel (1897-1970), his wife Emma Elizabeth Fahey (1897-1971), and their children, Edwin Americus Rommel, Jr. (1924-2000) and Patricia Ruth Rommel (1925). I assess this photograph was taken in 1925.
They are sitting on the porch of 1610 Chilton Avenue (AKA as Chilton Street) in Baltimore, just a few doors down from the subject of my previous post, 1614 Chilton Avenue where the Drevo family lived.
The batch of photographs associated with the Drevo family contained no captions or identities, which caused me to first assume these folks were Drevos. But I could see the above porch is not on an end unit and the stone work doesn’t match that of 1614. I matched the photograph to 1610 using Google Earth’s Street View and that led to the Rommel family. Though there are hundreds of photographs of Eddie online the comparison wasn’t a simple one, so I found a fellow genealogical researcher who is also a distant relative, Bob Rommel, and he confirmed their identities. He didn’t have a name for the dog–and I spent too much time looking for one.
The Rommels bought the house in November 1923 and lived there until their deaths.
Eddie was the son of Frederick A. Rommel (1848-1934) and Louise S. Bennecke (1864-1940). Louise was born in Germany as were both of Frederick’s parents. Emma was the daughter of Bartholomew J. Fahey (1897-1934) and Emma M. Kares (1868-1949).
Here is ESPN’s statistics for Eddies career as a pitcher. It is said that Eddie was the first person to employ the knuckleball in a MLB game, a pitch he learned after the spitball was outlawed.
The following photograph is probably Edwin Americus Rommel, Jr. riding his trike on the sidewalk of 1610 Chilton.
Nice picture of Eddie and the family and very nice research work. Eddie was a favorite of my family, both of my dad’s side of the family (a lifelong A’s fan from Philly) and my mom’s side (native Baltimoreans and lifelong baseball fans). Thanks for posting this.
You’re welcome. Thanks for reading!!