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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Walter Burch

baseball player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ20709849 ↗
Source-derived summary

Walter Burch Jr. (May 2, 1908 – May 10, 1985), nicknamed "Double Duty", was an American Negro league baseball player in the 1930s and 1940s.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Burch played catcher, second baseman, and shortstop for various teams in the 1930s and 1940s, including the Kansas City Monarchs and the Homestead Grays. He served as a manager for the Cleveland Buckeyes in 1942. Burch died in Detroit, Michigan in 1985 at age 77.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Walter Burch” as baseball player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Walter, Burch and baseball.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1908, 1985, 1942—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Walter, Burch and baseball providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Walter Burch”, the useful work is to connect “baseball player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20709849. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1985 and 1942.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Walter Burch”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Walter Burch primary sources, Walter Burch archive and Walter research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Walter Burch”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Walter Burch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.