A month later, Mr. C.A. Collier, a club director, sent a strongly worded rebuttal to Sporting Life, which had reprinted the original charges. Labelling as false the claim that Mr. Ryan had personally paid the debt owed to Mrs. Henke out of his own pocket, Collier went on to say

“The special dispatch about the Henke benefit money sent to ‘The Cincinnati Swill Tub’ by its Atlanta scavenger…is remarkable only for the facility with which the scavenger has buried a grain of truth under a regular avalanche of falsehood….The money forwarded to Mrs. Henke came from the treasury of the Atlanta Base Ball Association, and Mr. Ryan had no more interest in it than any other member of said association. The ‘old directorship’…are amply able to take care of themselves, and will certainly never need to call upon Mr. Steve Ryan to make advances for them or save them from an ‘ugly legal squabble.’” (24)

Thus, at least for the Atlanta team, the trauma of the Henke affair came to an end. The Atlantas won the second Southern League pennant in 1886, but the team ended up losing money again that year largely due to the refusal of several teams to travel to Atlanta late in the season to play out their remaining games with the local nine. Those actions led to true "bad feelings" between Atlanta and some of the other clubs, the result being that Atlanta refused to join the league in 1887. Atlanta would not rejoin a rejuvenated Southern League until 1892. That league folded after a shortened 1896 season; an Atlanta team had a franchise in the short-lived Southeastern League in 1897 (the league folded in May of that year.)

Charles "Lefty" Marr would play several more seasons in the minor leagues before enjoying a short stint with the National League club in Cincinnati (1886, 1890-1891), the Columbus entry in the American Association in 1889, and the "Kelly's Killers" of Cincinnati (American Association), also in 1891. Primarily an outfielder, he batted .289 with an on-base percentage of .368, 244 runs and 92 stolen bases across 1,626 career major-league plate appearances. Most notably, he was a left-handed thrower who happened to play in 158 games on the left side of the infield. (He ranks # 2 in all-time games played at 3B by a left-handed player.) (25) He died of heart disease in 1912 at the age of 49.

Notes:

(24) "An Emphatic Denial of a Vile Insinuation," Sporting Life, March 17, 1886, p1.

(25) BR Bullpen, accessed February 2, 2022 https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Lefty_Marr