Hobey Baker


Hobart Amory Hare Hobey Baker was an American amateur athlete of the early twentieth century. Considered the first American star in ice hockey by the Hockey Hall of Fame, he was also an accomplished American football player. Born into a prominent family from Philadelphia, he enrolled at Princeton University in 1910. Baker excelled on the universitys hockey and football teams, and became a noted amateur hockey player for the St. Nicholas Hockey Club in New York City. He was a member of three national championship teams, for football in 1911 and hockey in 1912 and 1914, and helped the St. Nicholas Club win a national amateur championship in 1915. Baker graduated from Princeton in 1914 and worked for J.P. Morgan Bank until he enlisted in the United States Army Air Service. During World War I he served with the 103rd and the 13th Aero Squadrons before being promoted to captain and named commander of the 141st Aero Squadron. Baker died in December 1918 after a plane he was testpiloting cra

Baker was born in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, the second son of Alfred Thornton Baker, a wealthy upholsterer, and Mary Augusta Pemberton, a socialite. Alfred, known as Bobby to his friends, had played halfback while a student at Princeton University in the 1880s, the same school his father had attended. One of Bakers ancestors was Francis Rawle, a Quaker who emigrated to Philadelphia in 1688 and became one of the wealthiest members of the city. Baker was named after his uncle, Dr. Hobart Amory Hare, who was the obstetrician at his birth and president of the Jefferson Medical Hospital in Philadelphia. At the age of eleven, Baker and his twelveyearold brother Thornton were sent to St. Pauls School in Concord, New Hampshire. Bakers parents divorced in 1907 and both remarried.

Source: Wikipedia


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