Second Lieutenant Albert Goodwill Spalding, Jr, born Spalding Brown, was an American officer of the British Army who died during the First World War.
He was born in Illinois, the illegitimate son of businessman and former baseball player Albert Goodwill Spalding and his mistress Elizabeth Mayer (née Churchill). Spalding was placed in the care of his father's sister, Mary Brown, who raised him as her child. After his wife Josie died in 1899, Spalding, Sr formalised his relationship with Mayer, marrying her in 1900, and a year later acknowledged his progeny, albeit by adopting him. Spalding spent the remainder of his youth at the Californian commune Lomaland, established by the Theosophical Society of which his mother was an adherent, where the family constructed a sprawling estate.[1]
Spalding, who went to Europe prior to the war to work at the Paris office of his father's sporting goods company,[1] enlisted on 29 August 1914, in the 5th Dragoon Guards. Soon afterwards, Spalding transferred to the 3rd Coldstream Guards, with which he attained the rank of corporal and proceded to the Western Front. He survived the battles of Festubert, Hill 70, Hulluch, and Loos, and contributed to a bombing party in which Serjeant Oliver Brooks earned the Victoria Cross. Spalding obtained his commission in November 1915 and died, aged 25, on 1 July 1916, on the opening day of the Somme Offensive, while serving with the 10th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.[2]
He has no known grave and is commemorated by the Thiepval Memorial.
Notes[]
References[]
- Spalding, Albert Goodwill, cwgc.org. Retrieved 23 August 2013.