Archibald and Thomas ("Archie" and "Tommy") Stark
Until Messi a Scotsman held, albeit perhaps jointly with Gerd Mueller, the world's record for goals per season in top-fight football, 67. In fact, if Wiki figures are to believed, he still has a better goals to games ratio. His name is Archibald McPherson Stark, who with his elder brother, Tommy, were two of mainstays of the US soccer boom of the 1920s.
Archie's senior career, initially as a defender but ultimately a forward, would start in mid-1912 at just fifteen, last for twenty seasons and include, when there might have been more of both, two US caps and five goals.
Tommy's would begin in 1914 at nineteen, take in eleven campaigns as a full- or half-back, and include a single cap for the land that had adopted them, for both had been born in Glasgow, a stone's throw from Firhill, their father, Robert from the city and initially the manager of factory making picture-frames, and their mother, a MacDonald, a Highlander perhaps from Ardnamurchan.
But by 1911 Robert Stark was employed as a railway clerk and by early 1912, so with both boys already well inculcated with the Scots game, it was decided to take the family to America, there it settling in Kearny, New Jersey aka Scotstoun USA, their father finding work again as a Clerk. And it was with Kearny Scots, by then the town's main club, that both boys made their debuts, Archie almost straight from the boat.
Young Archie would remain with the "Scots" for four seasons but not without problems. The boys were still British citizens and with the outbreak of The Great War he seems to have been called up to the Royal Field Artillery, something that was ignored with Archie possibly declared a deserter, at least for the moment. Meantime he had in 1916 and ostensibly as Machinist to trade joined the company team Babcox and Wilcox for a season and then a short stay at West Hudson back in New Jersey until, with American joining the war in 1917, he was in August that year again called up, this time for the US Airforce, serving for a year in Europe, presumably with the problems with the British army resolved. This was as Tommy, a trained draughtsman, seems not to have been enlisted, was able to marry a Kearny girl, Helen Wood, in New York, living there with her in 1917 with their first child born in the city that same year.
Archie Stark would be demobilised in December 1918 and to Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. But he did not join the local club, Steel, although he did go on its summer tour to Scandinavia, turning out for Paterson back in New Jersey and then Erie back in Kearny, both teams, for which his brother was also playing. But in Paterson Archie must have met a local girl, Elizabeth McAllen, in 1919 marrying her in Manhattan but returning to Kearny to live. He also naturalised that same year as did Tommy in 1920.
Until this point the Stark brothers' soccer careers had run almost in parallel. And with the next move it would continue. They were recruited in 1921 by New York Field Club and for three seasons both remained, Tommy making almost sixty and Archie just under seventy starts, with the suggestion that in the summer of 1923 he travelled back to Scotland to see if he could find a club there. He could not.
However, 1924 saw the brothers' paths diverge. Tommy remained in New York for another season, received his cap and at now thirty hung up his boots. The family then returned to Kearny, where it would stay to 1933, move to Rahway, then seem to oscillate between that New Jersey town and New York, before settling in Colorado Springs,. And it was there Tommy would at sixty-nine die in 1964, followed by Helen a decade later with them together buried in the local Memorial Cemetery and Crematorium.
However, Archie now at his peak would finally sign for Bethlehem Steel, he and his wife moving there, their son born in the Pennsylvanian town. And for the company club he over four campaigns would make well over two hundred appearances, scoring at an equally well-over a goal-a-game. But by 1930 the US soccer boom was over and Archie, perhaps with his mind on the financial situation and in the process of opening a car-business made what was perhaps two miscalculations, one of which might have denied him footballing immortality. The first was that, although asked, he declined to join the US squad for the first World Cup in 1930. Without him the largely Scots team reached the semi-final with the question forever hanging as to what it might have done with him and the Anglo-Scot, Davey Brown, who because of injury could not make it. The second was that, whilst Bethlehem Steel would fold, he would be paid to play on for another three, perhaps four seasons. He retired back playing in Kearny at the age of thirty-seven in 1934.
On retirement Archie would open and run until retirement a bar at 75, Kearny Ave. in his adopted home-town, whilst he would live on Highland Avenue. In 1966 he would lose Elizabeth, she dying at the age of seventy to be buried in the local Arlington cemetery. And he would outlive her by almost two decades, living still in Kearny but dying in Bellville just to the north and curiously be interred with his wife but with no known grave-marking to match hers.
Birth Locator:
1895 - 21, Seamore St., Glasgow (Tommy)
1896 - 21, Seamore St., Glasgow (Archie)
Residence Locations:
1901 - 2, Yarrow Gardens, Glasgow (Tommy & Archie)
1911 - 21, Seamore St., Glasgow ( (Tommy & Archie)
1915 - 145, Chestnut St., Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Tommy & Archie)
1917 - 61, Third St., New York, USA (Tommy)
1918 - 294, Elm St., Arlington, New Jersey, USA (Archie)
1919 - 18, Highland Ave., Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Archie)
1920(Apr) - 18, Highland Ave., Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Tommy)
1930 - 818, Media St., Bethlehem, Penn., USA (Archie)
1930- 47, Highland Ave., Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Tommy)
1933 - 237, Church St., Rahway, New Jersey, USA (Tommy)
1940-1 - 80, Highland Ave., Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Archie)
1942 - 50, Union Square,. New York &
270, West Hazelwood Ave., Rahway, New Jersey (Tommy)
1954 - 87, Highland Ave., Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Archie)
1964 - N/A (Tommy)
1985 - Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Archie)
Death Locator:
1985 - Belleville, Essex, New Jersey, USA (Archie)
Grave Locator:
1964 - Memorial Gardens & Crematorium, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA (Tommy & Helen)
1974 & 1985 - Arlington Cemetery, Arlington by Kearny, New Jersey, USA (Archie & Elizabeth)
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