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Originally Posted by Patsy Tebeau
I think Richard Hershberger would be the man to ask then. He has a giant collection of 19th century clippings so I'm sure he can tell us maybe possibly. As I said I haven't interacted much with people outside of specific projects I worked on nor am I super close with him but I know of him and his collection and have talked to him at least twice ever since he's a part of protoball too.
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https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ernie-hickman/
Bill Lamb's SABR bio covers Hickman's career in detail. I'd spent a lot of time on his case a few years ago and his career was fairly brief - roughly 1882 to 1886. I was hoping a photo might have appeared in the paper given the outrageous and tragic nature of his death - but it happened before printed photos were especially common in the paper.
To my mind the best bets would be a Vincennes or East St. Louis paper reprinting an old team photo. Vincennes had some pretty strong semi-pro clubs in the early 1880s, while East St. Louis (along with Peoria) are among my most desired locales for 19th century newspapers to be digitized.
No photo of the Kansas City Unions 1884 exists nor the St. Louis Browns Reserve club of the St. Louis Unions Reserve club and I figure those are much less likely to be around.