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| Sports March 2002, Volume 5, No. 6 |
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How the Blackhawks got their name
By Jessica L.
I am a big Blackhawk fan and have gone to a couple of games. I have recently discovered how the Blackhawks got their name. The Chicago Blackhawks were founded on September 25, 1926, when the National Hockey League gave Fredric McLaughlin, a Harvard-educated local coffee tycoon, permission to form a hockey team. He purchased the Portland Rose Buds and moved the best players of the team to Chicago.
After rounding up enough good players for the team, he began to focus on coming up with a new name--he was never a fan of the "Rose Buds" name. He thought back to his past to find it.
Fredric McLaughlin fought for the U.S. Army during World War I. He served as a commander in the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 85th Division of the Army.
The members of his division called themselves "Black Hawks" in honor of the Sauk Indian chief who sided with the British during the war of 1812. McLaughlin decided this would be an appropriate name for his team.
The jerseys that Blackhawk players wear today still have pictures of an Indian chief head on them.
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