Hertford County, NC - Obituary of Jim "Catfish" Hunter, 1999 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Chronicle Telegram, Ohio 9-13-1999 Jim "Catfish" Hunter probably would have despised this - people dressed in suits making a fuss over him. He was buried Sunday, several hundred yards from the High School field in Hertford, N.C., where he began a baseball career that would send him to the Hall of Fame. More than 1,000 family, friends and former major league teammates turned out for the funeral of the pitcher who won five World Series titles with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This section is contributed by Jim Pearce of "The Poor Town News" About Jim Hunter ~ please don't pull him from the Hertford County site ~ everybody down there knows he was from near the Town of Hertford, in Perquimans County, a couple of counties away from Hertford County ~ BUT ~ he played American Legion baseball in the town of Ahoskie (Hertford County) and is very famous around Ahoskie ~ when he broke the old baseball "reserve" clause and became one of the first "free agents" in baseball (when he went to the Yankees). His lawyers were from Ahoskie (Hertford County) ~ Carlton Cherry and son Thomas (Humphries) Cherry ~ and when he went onto the free-agent market, Ahoskie (Hertford County) was where all the big-shot team owners had to go to try to get him to sign a contract ~ the Yankees got him ~ lot of publicity back then. When he retired, he went back to the family farm, near the TOWN of Hertford (Perquimans County) ~ but he kept his contacts in TOWN of Ahoskie of which Poor Town is a suburb) in Hertford County ~ too complicated to explain to "outlanders," probably BUT ~ everybody in both places knows all about him ~ Around the time of his death, attorney Thomas (H.) Cherry of Ahoskie published a book about him and his career, with lots of photos. Just [to] clarify that while Jim Hunter grew up near the Town of Hertford (Perquimans County) and after retirement farmed there (and is buried there), he was very, very well known in the Town of Ahoskie (Hertford County) ~ since Ahoskie is a larger town and the Town of Hertford is only one river and one narrow county away from Ahoskie, there probably are more folks in Hertford County who know of Jim Hunter than there are in Perquimans County. __________________________________________________________________ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Marianne Ordway ___________________________________________________________________