Frederick Wedge
Frederick Rhinaldo Wedge was an American boxer who fought over 70 professional bouts as "Kid" Wedge; an ordained clergyman, who pastored churches in Nebraska, Wisconsin, and California for the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational denominations; a Chautauqua lecturer; an author of several books, including The Fighting Parson of Barbary Coast; and an educator, who taught at Pasadena College, and high schools in Arizona and California, whose admission into the Graduate School of Education of Harvard University in January 1922, and his January 1929 second marriage were both a national cause célèbre in the USA.
Early life and family
Frederick Rhinaldo Wedge was born on July 31, 1880, in Michigan, United States of America, the son of Hugh Wedge, and Nettie Hunter Wedge.Wedge grew up in Martinez, Mecosta County, Michigan. When he was two years old, his father was killed. His mother subsequently married a man who proved to be physically abusive to both her and Wedge. After his mother died when he was 8, making him an orphan, his stepfather abandoned him, and he was sent to live with his father's brother, Isaac Wedge, a sawmill man, and aunt Alice Hunter, who lived at 137 Eagle Street, Pelican, Wisconsin.
As a young boy Wedge worked as a newsboy and sold newspapers, having to defend his location against "street arabs" and prevent theft, and later worked as a helper in various Wisconsin lumber camps, before becoming a lumberjack in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Wedge soon acquired a reputation as a hard drinker and tough fighter, and "took delight in starting drunken brawls in Rhinelander" and other logging camps, or assaulting policemen. with several convictions for drunk and disorderly conduct, serving a total of 105 days in the Oneida County jail. During this time, Wedge was considered "the rough-and-tumble champion of northern Wisconsin".
Boxing career
By the age of 18 Wedge became a pugilist, fighting under the name "Kid" Wedge. Additionally, Wedge fought in many bar fights, resulting in his skull being fractured twice. Wedge was considered "one of the best rough-and-tumble fighters in the days when loggers and lumberjacks considered gouging, strangling and stamping with their hobnailed boots as fair in a fight". Among his opponents were Clarence English, Abdul the Turk and Jack Carrig.Wedge fought as "Kid" Wedge in at least seventy professional boxing contests in seven years from 1899. Wedge was discovered and managed by Bill Daniels. Wedge's first professional fight was a ten-round bout with Chicago Jack Glenn, who had ten years professional boxing experience, with Wedge winning in the 9th round after Glenn's corner threw in the sponge after Glenn broke his right hand. On Saturday, July 23, 1904, Wedge was arrested "on suspicion" by a local police officer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and ordered to leave town by the police chief.
After three fights in Omaha in the summer of 1905, Wedge met his future wife, Prudence Olive Tracy, for the first time after a concert in Omaha. After realizing that he was uncultured and lacking in education, and with Prudence's encouragement, Wedge began a course of self-education guided by a retired doctor. At the age of 22, Wedge had been illiterate, being unable to read or write. About 1905 Wedge entered a preparatory school and completed twelve years of education in six years. His tutor assisted him with his grammar school education in the evenings after working ten hours each day as a lumberjack. Eventually Wedge graduated from the Rhinelander High School, Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
Wedge was converted in a religious meeting in June 1906 conducted by Presbyterian evangelist Rev. Hay Red Bell, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute. By November 1906 Wedge came to believe that it was wrong to fight except in self-defense, and that he should devote his life to Christian service. Other factors in his decision to retire were that he may have been the loser of several of his more recent bouts, and was also remorseful over the death of an opponent in San Francisco. and was encouraged to do so by Prudence Tracy.
At the time of his retirement in November 1906, Wedge was the lightweight champion of Arkansas. Wedge, who was scheduled to fight Guy Buckles in front of 2,000 fans over six rounds on a sand bar south of Omaha, Nebraska, announced his retirement before the bout to devote his life to Christian service and then gave Buckles a religious tract and a New Testament. Buckles, who was insulted by Wedge's actions, punched Wedge on the nose, however Wedge refused to retaliate, choosing instead to "turn the other cheek". However, after another blow from Buckles, Wedge indicated: "I have not been told what to do next, but I guess I can pound you to pulp without interfering with my conscience". In the ensuing altercation, both fighters were severely disfigured, but Wedge was adjudged the winner. Wedge indicated that he would pray for Buckles.
Ministry and education
Nebraska (1906–1910)
In 1906 Wedge was admitted to the University of Nebraska, and completed his first year in June 1907.First Presbyterian Church, Barneston (1907–1908)
By September 1907 Wedge was appointed the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the small village of Barneston, Nebraska, where the Presbyterians had constructed a church building in 1889. However, by March 1908 Wedge had suffered a nervous breakdown.In November 1908 Wedge announced he would resume boxing as he could not make a living as a preacher, and that he would fight Walter Stanton of San Francisco in Omaha in early December.
On February 22, 1909, Wedge preached a 17-minute sermon just prior to the Buckles-Hanson prize fight in Omaha, Nebraska. On Friday, September 3, 1909, Wedge preached a short sermon and sang a hymn before the fight between Dick Fitzpatrick of Chicago and Guy Buckles.
Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary (1908–1909)
After completing three years at the University of Nebraska, in 1908 Wedge transferred to the Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary in North Omaha, Nebraska, for a year in order to complete the requirements for ordination in the Presbyterian Church. To finance his studies, Wedge gave boxing lessons in Omaha.Presbyterian Church, Monroe, Nebraska (1909–1910)
After graduation from Omaha Theological Seminary in September 1909 Wedge was ordained by the Nebraska Presbytery, and elected pastor of the small Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Nebraska, but later was forced to leave due to opposition to his pugilistic past, and the embarrassment caused by his fiancée canceling their wedding amid rumors of Wedge's immorality.San Francisco (1910–1911)
After his fiancée Prudence Tracy cancelled their planned wedding in 1909, Wedge left university in his junior year and moved to San Francisco. By the end of April 1910 Wedge moved to San Francisco and lived in a boarding house at 633 Vallejo Street in San Francisco and served as a missionary to San Francisco's Barbary Coast, described as the "most infamous blot on the underworld, where depravity reigned supreme, despite the officers of the law, and where booze and immoral women turned men to moral lepers".Herbert Asbury described the Barbary Coast: "The slums of Singapore at their foulest, the dens of Shanghai at their dirtiest, the waterfront at Port Said at its vicious worst – none of these backwaters of depravity and vice... achieved the depths of corruption that typified the 'Barbary Coast'". When Wedge arrived there was "over six hundred dance halls and dives" in "a district little over half a mile square". Engaged by the City of San Francisco, during the next few months, Wedge "waged a campaign on vice and corruption in Chinatown and the Barbary Coast". A contemporary report indicates that Wedge "carried the battle to the very doors of the hidden opium dens; he ferreted out the leaders of the tong wars and slave girl rings, and left Chinatown renovated spiritually". Wedge's ministry was considered one of the factors responsible for the amelioration of conditions on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. Wedge also was director of boy's work among the newsboys of San Francisco.
On December 1, 1910, Wedge was arrested and incarcerated in the city jail on charges of battery for attempting to strike a night watchman named Gus Miller and begging after being found on Fifth Street near Market Street at 4.30am. Wedge denied the allegations and explained his alcoholic odor as due to his incarceration with drunks and "wine bums", and that he possessed port wine given to him by the Hahnemann Hospital to prevent pneumonia. Wedge was given the sobriquet "The Fighting Parson of the Barbary Coast". In 1917 Wedge explained its origin: "I was preaching on a beer keg in a saloon on the Barbary coast in San Francisco when a couple of toughs went for me. I guess maybe I cleaned out the place then. A reporter on the San Francisco newspaper gave me the name. He said I was a fellow who, if he could not preach good into men, would knock h—l out of them. Those fellows got me, though, and put me in the hospital for a while". After being hospitalized after a vicious assault by several denizens of the Barbary Coast at the corner of Pacific and Montgomery avenues, by the end of 1910 Wedge decided to return to Omaha to recuperate and to attempt to reconcile with Prudence Tracy.
After his marriage to Prudence on December 18, 1910, the newly weds returned to San Francisco to continue Wedge's ministry in the Tenderloin.
Nebraska (1912–1913)
Presbyterian Church, Genoa (1912)
By January 1912 Wedge had become the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Genoa, Nebraska. After his return to Nebraska, Wedge re-enrolled at the University of Nebraska. Wedge's only child, Hugh T. Wedge was born on January 13, 1912, in Genoa. Wedge had a "fistic encounter" with a lawyer named Rose, whom Wedge whipped in the public street. In the subsequent hearing held by the Kearney Presbytery in July 1912, Wedge admitted conduct unbecoming a minister, and renounced his allegiance to the presbytery. The Presbytery terminated his pastorate at Genoa on July 24, 1912, and suspended him on the ground of insubordination from any ministerial activity until his trial in September.During his suspension from the ministry, Wedge wrote a novel, The Fighting Parson of Barbary Coast, based in part on his own life and ministry, which was published by November 1912. Wedge dedicated it to Prudence: "to the noble woman who saw good in me when others saw evil; who believed I would win despite every handicap." Wedge trained "Battling" Nelson at St. Joe, Wisconsin, in early September as he was "run down and needed the exercise", where he also engaged in street preaching.
On September 24, 1912, Wedge was found not guilty of all charges, after he explained that Rose had "attempted pugilistic tactics by insolent words and by puffing out his chest,... he annoyed my wife when she was in poor health". Wedge refused $3,000 to box again on the orpheum circuit and another offer of $125 a week to play a militant preacher in a New York Bowery play, in order to accept the Presbyterian Church's offer to be an evangelist on the Nebraska home mission district for $800 a year.
About 1912 Wedge held a series of religious meetings at the Presbyterian church in Table Rock, Nebraska. In December 1912 Wedge was tried but found not guilty in the "celebrated" trial of State v. Fred Wedge in Nebraska.
On June 5, 1913, Wedge announced his resignation from the ministry in Eureka, California, as "the call of the blood was too strong". Wedge announced: "I am quitting the ministry for several sufficient reasons. My forehead is too low, my jaw is too square. I like the things of the world too well".
A few hours later Wedge was arrested and incarcerated overnight in the city jail due to public intoxication after a charge by Rev. Arthur Hayes Sargent, pastor of the Eureka Universalist church, who with some other local ministers had tried to rescue him. However, on September 21, 1913, Wedge spoke at the Church of Christ in Lincoln, Nebraska.
By May 1914 Wedge was claimed to have fought and "never suffered defeat", and in 1922 his record was given as having "fought 70 fights and lost but three of them".
In the Summer of 1914 Wedge gave lectures on his life at Chautauquas at Lodi, California, in May, Modesto, California, in June, and Butte, Montana, in July.
In December 1914 The Beatrice Daily Sun reported Wedge's "fall from grace".