Quote:
Originally Posted by eastsussexred
Update regarding Thomas Broster (1845-1921)
Attached is the page of a book, which I believe was written by The Old Boys Association of Queenstown College, South Africa, which identifies Thomas Broster's contribution to cricket in Queenstown.
The second attachment shows the name 'T Broster' carved into a rock overlooking Queenstown and dated '1890'.
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As previously mentioned, Thomas Broster was an avid cricketer who played for Wrexham Cricket Club, as well as being one of the 10 founding players who took to the field to play for Wrexham Football and Athletic Club in the clubs first ever game on 22nd October 1864. He later emigrated to South Africa where he founded The Willows Cricket Club in Queenstown.
As part of my research, I have tried to locate and contact the descendants of all of our founding players, to see if anyone has any additional information, and today I received an email from a distant relative of Thomas Broster who informed me that her family also had another link to football history.
Thomas’s sister- Harriet Broster (born Wrexham 1833) married Edwin Caldecott (born Erbistock 1834).
Edwin’s nephew- James Enoch Caldecott (born Saltney 1887) moved to West Bromwich in The Midlands where he married Mable Smith in 1913. Mable’s father- Thomas Smith had worked for many years at Salter’s Spring Factory in West Bromwich, which founded a football team in 1878; this team evolved into West Bromwich Albion in 1881. Thomas Smith is said to have been one of the founding members of the original club and he was listed as the club secretary of Albion in 1886 as well as being elected to the committee again in 1887. Around the same time, he proposed that a throstle (West Midlands dialect for a thrush) sitting on a cross bar be adopted as their official crest, although the crossbar was later replaced by a hawthorne branch.
The connection between the team and the throstle stems from the days when the players changed in a public house where a caged songbird was kept. This also gave rise to WBA’s early nickname ’The Throstles’.