Talk:Yank Adams

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• Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

General lament

I've got a ton of information in here. I'm despairing a bit about better organizing it, with logical section headers, etc., and writing an actual lead that summarizes the balance without losing any information in the current lead, which is all unrepeated content currently. The biggest information problem is the lack of personal life and lack of death info. He was married, or I'm pretty sure one article implied it (I looked at hundreds), yet haven't found even found her name, and I can't find an obit, though Ive searched hard for one.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I think I've helped a bit (not out of good will; I saw your offer on the Wikipedia:Reward_board and I want that enraged prosimian). I just tried to tweak it so the article wouldn't be so dense/technical that a billiards-illiterate schlub would run away from it screaming. And, as a billiards-illiterate schlub, I think it's A-OK. The only question I would raise is whether all those big blockquotes need to remain in the article. I didn't have the heart to delete or shorten them, since they do make for interesting reading, but they're pretty meaty.

I did delete the bit about Adams acquiring his nickname while finding fame in the western US and Canada, since everything the article suggests he found fame in Europe and the northeastern/mid-western US. If the western US/Canada were mentioned in the body of the article, the original wording would be fine; for now, I figure it's enough to know he's a Connecticutian who traveled a lot and fought for the Union, and who thus probably had occasion to be called "Yank/Yankee" quite often and by all manner of non-Yankees.

And lastly, I tried to dig up some death or marriage records, and I, too, got nothing. Oh well. It's frustrating from a writer's perspective, but I doubt anyone's going to come to this article to find out if Yank Adams got married on their birthday. I found that the insights into his career and travels more than made up for the lack of a "personal life" section. --Fullobeans (talk) 19:58, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Your edits are much appreciated. I've tweaked some bits, added back a few minor things, and made the lead more of a lead. Regarding the block quotes, every article has to be taken on a case-by case basis. Here I think the quotes work given the subject matter and what's available to work with (they're also all public domain material, so there's no copyright concern).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:00, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Good Article nomination stalled?

Is WP so short of reviewers that this can sit for months with no attention? Makes me wonder if the GA process should just be scrapped and "forces combined" into a streamlined FA process instead. I'd go start a GAR myself, but I'm too involved in editing and "pushing" billiards content. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 08:09, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah coming up on 90 days...90! It is at least listed in an alert box at the top of WP:GAC as the oldest unreviewed article. Nice to know you care:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:09, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Any chance this is the same person?

A Frank B. Adams, son of Joseph Adams and Maria Ada Stetson, was born on December 9 (not 19), 1846 (not 1847) in Norwich, Connecticut. He died as a widower on 29 December 1929 in Manhattan, and was cremated on January 2, 1930 at Middle Village, Queens. Those dates and places nicely fit Yank Adams. The author of the short newspaper bio in 1878 may have misheard/misread the birthdate. Moreover, the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle February 1923 article calls him even 67 year old (i.e. born <= Feb 1846). With a Dec 1846 birth he also would have been a little more reasonably 15/16 instead of 14/15 when in (I read) 1862 / (you have) 1863 "he smuggled himself into the Eighteenth Connecticut Volunteers" to fight in the Civil War. Another nice coincidence is that the 1923 article says that in the summers Yank stayed at his brother-in-law's farm in Westport (at the other site of Connecticut as Norwich), while Frank B.'s mother was from Westport (scroll down to page 128). That genealogy lists Henry, Josephine, Harriet and Mary Jane as his surviving siblings. I've unfortunately not been able to validate the connection completely. Perhaps one of the authors of this page can give it a try. Afasmit (talk) 00:44, 20 December 2018 (UTC)