Semantic search

Aspin, J., Picture of the Manners, Customs, Sports and Pastimes of the Inhabitants of England [London, J. Harris] per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 191. Aspin's book reappeared in 1835 as Ancient Customs, Sports, Pastimes of the English, with the same material on ball play. Note: Are later games mentioned or listed by Aspin?

US South

"John W. Oliver recalls having baseball in Baltimore, Maryland. His family moved from England when he was three. "He remembers very distinctly having played the game of Base Ball when a boy. He states that his earliest recollection of the playing of the game was when he was about ten years of age, and at that time the game was played in this manner: The batter held the ball in one hand and a flat stick in the other, tossed the ball into the air and hit on the return, and then ran to either one, two, or three bases depending on the number of boys playing the game. If the ball was caught on the fly or the batter hit with the ball while running the bases, he was out. These bases, so called, at that time, were either stones or pieces of sod was removed [sic], or bare places where grass was scraped off. He remembers seeing the game played frequently while an apprentice boy, but always in this manner, never with a pitcher or a catcher, but sometimes with sides, which were chosen somewhat in the manner in which they are now chosen by boys; that is, by one catching a bat in his hand and another placing his hand on top, alternating in this manner until the last one had hold of the end of the bat, which he swung around his head. I never saw the game played with stakes or poles used for bases instead of stones or sods. Never heard of a game of Rounders. One Old Cat, Two Old Cat, Three Old Cat have seen played, but never have taken part in it myself."

Full text of Mills Commission summary of information from John W. Oliver, Editor, Yonkers Statesman, under date of September 26, 1905. From the Giamatti Center at Cooperstown. Note: we wish we could ascertain what were Oliver's own words, given the artlessness of this summary. Oliver was about 90 when debriefed in 1905.

See also 1825.15, 1827.9, 1835.3

College

"What we know as Base Ball was played in its primitive form as far back as the beginning of the last [19^th] century, and many of the oldest inhabitants remember seeing it played. It was one of the college sports as early as 1825."

Francis C. Richter, Richter's History and Records of Base Ball; The American Nation's Chief Sport [McFarland, 2005], page 4. Originally published in 1914. Cited as Richter, History and Records , page 12, by Harold Seymour - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Seymour notes that Richter was editor of Sporting Life in 1906.

US South

Cricket

In the South, "cricket was played even at the end of house raisings and trainings. The game was played along with quoits and other games of skill and strength. Parties were formed to go on fishing trips and picnics, and during the outing, cricket was one of the games played." Jennie Holliman, American Sports 1785 - 1835 (Porcupine Press, Philadelphia, 1975), page 68.

Holliman here cites The American Farmer, vol. 8, no 143 (1825), which John Thorn found online [email of 2/9/2008], and which does not make a strong case for cricket's ubiquity. This piece suggests that an ideal way to spend a Saturday near Baltimore is to have a fishing contest until dinnertime, and "after dinner pitch quoits, or play at cricket, or bowl at nine-pins." "Sporting Olio," American Farmer, Containing Original Essays and Selections on Rural Economics, July 22, 1825, page 143.

Cricket

Sports and Pastimes for Children [Baltimore, F. Lucas, Jr.], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 191. The verse for cricket and trap-ball is taken from the English Juvenile Pastimes [1824, above].

Wicket

The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association reported that, as of 1908, it retained a wicket bat dating from 1825-30. Submitted by John Thorn, 1/13/2007. Note: John is trying to ascertain whether the bat remains in the collection.

New England

"BALL PLAYING: There will be Ball playing in Washington Street, a few rods South of the College, every Saturday afternoon, through the season, the weather permitting, Bats Balls and Refreshments provided by Emmons Rudge." American Mercury [Hartford CT] , April 12, 1825. Submitted by John Thorn, 9/29/2006.

References to Tasmanian cricket date back to 1825, the year the colony gained its independence from New South Wales, but there is no detailed mention of matches before 1832."

Egan, Jack, The Story of Cricket in Australia (ABC Books, 1987), page 16

Bans

Among many column-inches listing things that should never happen on or near a highway, we find: "or fire or let off or throw any squib, rocket serpent, or other firework whatsoever, within eighty feet of the center of such road; or shall bait or run for the purpose of baiting any bull, or play [p. 167/168] at football, tennis [an indoor game then, as far as we know LMc] , fives, cricket, or any other game or games upon such road, or on the side or sides thereof, or in any exposed situation near thereto, to the annoyance of any passenger or passengers . . . " Wm. Robinson, The Magistrate's Pocket-Book; or, and Epitome of the Duties and Practice of a Justice of the Peace (London, 1825), section 87, pp 167-168. Provided by John Thorn, 2/8/2008.

Western New York

Writing in 1866, a man ("W") in Rochester NY described the game he had played "forty years since." That game featured balls made from raveled woolen stockings and covered by a shoemaker, a softer ball - "not as hard as a brick" than the NY ball, no fixed team size, soft tosses from the pitcher who took no run-up, "tick" hitting, the bound rule, plugging, a mix of flat and round bats. He suggests organizing a throw-back game to show 1860's youth "what grey heads can do."

"W," "The Game of Base Ball in the Olden Time," Rochester Evening Express (July 10, 1866), page 3, column 4. Provided by Priscilla Astifan, 2006. To read the full text, go here. Note: the writer does not say where he played these games, mentioning that he moved to Rochester three years before.

Rounders

"'Rounders,' from which modern baseball is generally believed to have derived its origin, was a very simple game - so simple, in fact, that girls could play it. It was played with a ball and bats and was practiced in this country as early as 1825 [p. 437] . . . Rounders was popular between 1825 and 1840, but meantime there had been many other forms of ball playing. [.p 438]"

George V. Tuohey, "The Story of Baseball," The Scrap Book (Munsey, New York, 1906), pp. 437ff. Caution: Tuohey gives no evidentiary support for this observation, and the Protoball sub-chronology [http://retrosheet.org/Protoball/Sub.Rounders.htm] for rounders shows no firm evidence that a game then called rounders was popular in the US.

College, Famous

John Brough was the Governor of Ohio from 1864 to 1865. At the age of 11 his father died and he took on work as a type-setter. In 1825 he "entered the Ohio University, at Athens, where he pursued a scientific course, with the addition of Latin . . . . He was fleet of foot and the best ball player at college."

Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Generals and Soldiers Volume 1 (Moore Wilstach and Baldwin, Cincinnati, 1868), page 1022. Accessed 2/5/10 via Google Books search ("ohio in the war"). Athens OH is in Eastern Ohio near the WV border, and about 70 miles SE of Columbus.

Base Ball

Unknown

Sporting Life 1905-11-25 includes "Played Base Ball In 1825," a Nov 17 
report from Yonkers NY. Yonkers Statesman editor John W. Oliver claims 
clear recall of "how the game was played from 1825 to 1835 in Baltimore.
He said it was known as base ball as far back as 1825, and that the 
players ran bases just as they do now."

I suppose the latter refers to a square run counterclockwise with the 
first base line 45 degrees off the path home to the pitcher --ie, the 
"diamond" run counterclockwise.

19cbb post by Paul Wendt, Apr. 18, 2005

In 1825 the City of Baltimore banned "play and bandy or at ball" on Sunday. See Baltimore Commercial, April 9, 1925. See also Baltimore Gazette, Nov. 20, 1827. This partially confirms John W. Oliver's story.

"Monday [June] 26^th. I breakfasted at this place. In Harmony there are about 900 souls. They make no pretensions to religion . . . . I shall only add, that Sunday is a holiday, they have two public balls a week, one every Tuesday and every Saturday night, that the men played ball all yesterday afternoon, that their cornfields and vineyards are overrun with weeds, their school children are half of the time out of school."

"Extract from the Correspondence of a Young Gentleman Traveling in he Western States," American Advocate, September 9, 1826. The location was New Harmony IN, a settlement organized by the utopian thinker Robert Owen in 1824. New Harmony is near the southern tip of IN, and is on the Wabash River, about 130 miles east of St. Louis and about 120 miles east of Louisville KY. Accessed by subscription search May 20, 2009.

Base Ball

"Troy, a small hamlet in Southwestern Michigan, has documentary proof that a game was played there thirteen years before 1839 . . . . [T]he lineups of the two teams contesting in the game at Troy in 1826 are contained n a history of Oakland County."

The Sporting News, November 14, 1940. Posted by Tim Wiles on the 19CBB listserve on November 18, 2009. Tim enlisted Peter Morris in an effort to find confirmatory details. The result:

Under the heading "A fourth of July in 1826 [the Nation's 50^th birthday, and the day that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died] is an account of the festivities, including a fusillade, patriotic readings, a dinner of pork and beans and bread and pumpkin pies, and "[f]ollowing this was the burning of more powder [cannon volleys?], and a game of base-ball, in which [19 names listed] and other participated." Peter determined that two of the players had sons who played for the Franklin Club in later years.

Contemp. "Base Ball" usage

Base Ball, Foot Ball

Youth

[See image, below] 

Messrs. William Sullivan and John G. Coffin have petitioned the Councils of Boston for the use of a piece of public ground, for two years, for the establishment of a Gymnastic School–a measure of doubtful propriety, we apprehend.  If a boy wants to play; let him play but do not spoil the fun by dictating the modus operandi–a game of base ball, or foot ball, is worth a dozen gymnassiums [sic], where the eye of surveillance is to check the flow of animal spirits.  

United States Gazette (Philadelphia) March 28, 1826

 Note that this find comes five years before town ball is seen in Philadelphia.

 From Bruce Allardice, email of 6/9/2021:

Does this item suggest that 'base ball' was a term used in Philadelphia in 1826?  In Boston in 1826?

Was the Gymnasium actually established in Boston?  Was ballplaying among its activities?  Was gymnastics seen in the Commons in the early years?

Isn't this ref a very early appearance of the term foot ball in the US?  Can we learn what rules may have applied? 

College

New England

Adult

Brown College (Providence, RI) student Williams Latham notes in his diary:

On March 22: "We had a great play at ball today noon."

On April 9: "We this morning . . . have been playing ball, But I have never received so much pleasure from it here as I have in Bridgewater. They do not have more than 6 or 7 on a side, so that a great deal of time is spent in running after the ball, neither do they throw so fair ball, They are afraid the fellow in the middle will hit it with his bat-stick."

"The Diary of Williams Latham, 1823 - 1827," quoted in W. C. Bronson, The History of Brown University 1764 - 1914 (Providence, Brown University, 1914), p. 245. Per Henderson, Bat, Ball, and Bishop (Rockport Press, 1947), p.147, ref # 101.  See also Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball: Baseball and Baseball-Type Games in the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early American Republic.." Nine, Volume 8, number 2 (2000), p. 15-49.  Reprinted in David Block, Baseball before We Knew It – see page 240; Cited in Peterson, "The Man Who Invented Baseball," p. 10-12 (1939)

"The fellow in the middle?"  Does this suggest the lack of foul ground?

What/where is Bridgewater?  Was Bridgewater MA Latham's home town, maybe?

Famous

Western New York

Adult

A story, evidently set in 1880 in Rochester, involves three boys who convince their grandfather to attend a Rochester-Buffalo game. The grandfather contrasts the game to that which he had played in 1827.

He describes intramural play among the 50 members of a local club, with teams of 12 to 15 players per side, a three-out-side-out rule, plugging, a bound rule, and strict knuckles-below-knees pitching. He also recalls attributes that we do not see elsewhere in descriptions of early ballplaying: a requirement that each baseman keep a foot on his base until the ball is hit, a seven-run homer when the ball went into a sumac thicket and the runners re-circled the bases, coin-flips to provide "arbitrament" for disputed plays, and the team with the fewest runs in an inning being replaced by a third team for the next inning ["three-old-cat gone crazy," says one of the boys]. The grandfather's reflection does not comment on the use of stakes instead of bases, the name used for the old game, the relative size or weight of the ball, or the lack of foul ground - in fact he says that outs could be made on fouls.

Samuel Hopkins Adams, "Baseball in Mumford's Pasture Lot," Grandfather Stories (Random House, New York, 1947), pp. 143 - 156. Full text is unavailable via Google Books as of 12/4/2008.

Adams' use of a frame-within-a-frame device is interesting to baseball history buffs, but the authenticity of the recollected game is hard to judge in a work of fiction. Mumford's lot was in fact an early Rochester ballplaying venue, and Thurlow Weed (see entry #1825c.1) wrote of club play in that period. Priscilla Astifan has been looking into Adams' expertise on early Rochester baseball. See #1828c.3 for another reference to Adams' interest in baseball about a decade before the modern game evolved in New York City.

We welcome input on the essential nature of this story. Fiction? Fictionalized memoir? Historical novel?

Youth

Per Stephen Green, interview at Lords Cricket Ground, 2006. Also noted in John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 21. Ford does not give a citation for this account.

Was inter-college competition common in other English sports at this time?  Rowing, maybe?

France

Poisoned Ball

Celnart, Elizabeth, Manuel complet des jeux de societe (Complete manual of social games) [Paris, Roret], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 192. The material on "la balle empoisonee" is reported as "virtually identical" to that of the 1810 Les Jeux des juenes garcons, above at 1810. 

Does this manual cover other safe-haven games?  Other batting games?  Other games with plugging?

Paris, J. A., Philosophy in Sport Made Science in Earnest, Being an Attempt to Illustrate the First Principles of Natural Philosophy by the Aid of the Popular Toys and Sports of Youth (London, Longman), 3 volumes.  Per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 192. Block notes that detailed illustrations of the trap are included, but mentions no other games.

Females

England

Youth

"With the same intention [that is children's health], the games of cricket, prison bars, foot ball, &c. will be useful, as children grow up, and are strong enough to endure such exercise.

"With regard to girls, these amusements may be advantageously supplanted by bass-ball, battledore and shuttlecock, and similar and playful pursuits."

William Newnham, The Principles of Physical, Intellectual, Moral, and Religious Education, Volume 1 (London, 1827), page 123. Uncovered and provided by Mark Aubrey, email of 1/30/2008.

New York

Youth

"In consequence of a dismission from school this afternoon, I play at ball . . . and perhaps you will say that I might have been better employed . . . If so are your thoughts, I can tell you, that you are much mistaken. If you have ever been confined to a study where every exertion of intellect was required, for any length of time, you must, upon releasement therefrom, have felt the pleasure of relaxation."

-- Nathaniel Moore, Student at Clinton Academy, East Hampton, Long Island.

Nathaniel Moore, "Diaries 1827-1828," Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, 106-L-1, May 26, 1827. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 36 and ref #45. 

Pre-Knicks NYC

John Thorn (emails of 9/1/2009) has unearthed an engraving of City Hall Park that depicts a ball game in progress in the distance. My best squint shows me pitcher, batsman, a close-in catcher, two distant fielders and three spectators (two seated). Old cat? Single-wicket cricket? Scrub base ball?

The lithograph, titled "The Park, 1827," is published as the frontispiece Valentine's Manual for the Corporation of the City of New York (1855). For a wee image, try a Google Web search of <"the park, 1827/McSpedon">.

We welcome other interpretations of the depicted ballgame.

Bans

US South

"CITY OF BALTIMORE. 36. AN ORDINANCE to restrain evil practices therein mentioned. . . .[Sec. 3] it shall not be lawful for any person to play at bandy or ball, to fly a kite or throw a stone or any other missile in . . . any street, lane, or alley opened for public use within the limits of the city." Section 7 covers Sabbath play, again including ball, and adding "pitching quoits or money." The penalty was $1.00. The ordinance is dated March 2, 1827.

Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser, March 13, 1827, page 3. Posted to the 19CBB listserve November 2009 by George Thompson. Note:

One type of ballplaying that was banned was that described by young John Oliver at entry #1825c.4, above.

Females

Base Ball

Juvenile

From the London Literary Gazette of March 24, 1827, in a negative review of a book on calisthenic exercises for ladies by one Signor Voarino: 
[noting that the author is a foreigner] "Perhaps he was not aware...that we had diversions like these just mentioned, and many others of the same kind--such, for example (for our critical knowledge is limited,) as hunt the slipper, which gives dexterity of hand and ham; leap frog, which strengthens the back (only occasionally indulged in, we believe, by merry girls;) romps, which quicken all the faculties; tig, a rare game for universal corporeal agility; base-ball, a nonsuch for eyes and arms; ladies' toilet, for vivacity and apprehension; spinning the plate, for neatness and rapidity; grass-hopping (alias shu-cock,) for improving the physical powers; puss in the corner, and snap-tongs, for muscularity and fearlessness;--all these, and hundreds more, not so well known nor so much practised in London, perhaps, as in the county, we have had for ages..."

London Literary Gazette, March 24, 1827, per 19cbb post by Richard Hershberger, Oct. 26, 2010

Pre-modern Rules

Feeder, Northern Spell, Rounders, Stool-ball

Youth

The Boy's Own Book is published in London and contains a set of rules for "stool-ball," [p. 26], "trap, bat, and ball," [p. 27], "northern-spell," [p. 28], "rounders," [p.28], and "feeder" [p. 29]. The rounders entry states: "this is a favorite game with bat and ball, especially in the west of England." The entry for feeder, in its entirety: "This game is played with three bases only, and a player takes the place of feeder, who remains so until he puts one of the other players out, by catching his ball or striking him while running from base to base, as at Rounders; the one who is put out taking the place of feeder to the others, and thus the game goes on. There are no sides at this game." The entry for northern spell describes a game without running or fielding, in which the object is to hit the ball farthest - "this pastime possesses but little variety, and is by no means so amusing to the bystanders as Trapball."

 Altherr uses a reference to an 1829 US version: The Boy's Own Book [Munroe and Francis, Boston, 1829], pp. 18-19, per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, ref # 65. David Block, page 192-193, describes the wide popularity of this text in England and the US, running through many editions through the 1880s, and also identifies this book as Henderson's key evidence in his refutation of the Doubleday theory of baseball's origin 11 years later.

Clarke, W., Boy's Own Book (London, Vizetelly Branston), 1828: second edition. This book is reportedly still available (Appleton Books, 1996), according to Tim Wiles at the Giamatti Research Library. Note: 

Tom Altherr uses a reference to an 1829 US version: The Boy's Own Book (Munroe and Francis, Boston, 1829), pp. 18-19, per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, (Nebraska, 2005), pp. 229ff. 

.

[] David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 192-193, describes the wide popularity of this text in England and the US, running through many editions through the 1880s, and also identifies this book as Robert Henderson's key evidence in his refutation of the Doubleday theory of baseball's origins 11 years later.

[] In 2021 Protoball asked David Block why the Boy's Own Book had not mentioned English base ball among ballplaying versions as late as 1828:

"English Baseball was omitted because it was an under-the-radar game even back then. It was largely unknown in London and thus largely unknown to Clark and, apparently, to anyone else who may have helped him write The Boy’s Own Book."

(Email from David Block, 9/21/21)

Bat-and-Ball

Juvenile

"A Portland newspaper referred to boys playing at "bat and ball"  - Tom Altherr

Anderson, Will, Was Baseball Really Invented in Maine? (private printing, Portland, 1992), p. 1. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball before We Knew It, see page 244 and ref #71. 

The fine announced in 1805.2 must not have persisted?

Can we find the source, and some text, for this?

Famous

Western New York

Base Ball

Adult

[A] "Your article on baseball's origins reminded me of an evening spent in Cooperstown with the author Samuel Hopkins Adams more than 30 years ago. Over a drink we discussed briefly the folk tale about the "invention" of baseball in this village in 1839.

"Even then we knew that the attribution to Abner Doubleday was a myth. Sam Adams capped the discussion by pulling from his wallet a clipping culled from a Rochester newspaper dated 1828 that described in some detail the baseball game that had been played that week in Rochester."

[B] Adams' biography also notes the author's doubts about the Doubleday theory: asked in 1955 about his novel Grandfather Stories, which places early baseball in Rochester in 1827 [sic], he retorted "'I am perfectly willing to concede that Cooperstown is the home of the ice cream soda, the movies and the atom bomb, and that General Doubleday wrote Shakespeare. But," and he then read a newspaper account of the [1828? 1830?] Rochester game."

[C] "Will Irwin, a baseball historian, tells us he was informed by Samuel Hopkins of a paragraph in an 1830 newspaper which notes that a dance was to be held by the Rochester Baseball Club."

[A] Letter from Frederick L. Rath, Jr, to the Editor of the New York Times, October 5, 1990.

[B] Oneonta Star, July 9. 1965, citing Samuel V. Kennedy, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing (Syracuse University Press, 1999), page 284.

[C] Bill Beeny, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 17, 1965.

 Priscilla Astifan has looked hard for such an article, and it resists finding.  She suspects the article appeared in a newspaper whose contents were not preserved.

New England

Cyrus Bradley, born in 1818 in rural NH, refers in 1835 to his boyhood habit of playing ball.

"Journal of Cyrus P. Bradley," Ohio Archeological and Historical Society, Volume XV [1906], page 210. Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

New England

"The big boys had great times playing goal, and other noisy and running games, and the elm trees by our yard were the goals . . . "

History of Samuel Paine, Jr., 1778-1861 and His Wife Pamela (Chase) Paine, 1780-1856, of Randolph VT and Their Ancestors and Descendants, compiled and edited by their grandson Albert Prescott Paine, 1923. Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

Says Ford: "Compromise reached permitting round-arm bowling to the level of the elbow." John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 21. Ford does not give a citation for this account.

New England

[Note: Need to recover lost attachment submitted by John Thorn, 7/23/2005 see 1828 folder.]

Pre-Knicks NYC

"Let anyone visit Washington Parade, and he will find large groups of men and boys playing ball and filling the air with shouts and yells."

Evening Posteditorial no date given. This quote comes from Berger, Meyer, "In the Ball Park Every Man's a King," New YorkTimes, April 14, 1935. Submitted by John Thorn, fall 2005.

English Base Ball, Famous, Females, Fiction

Base Ball, Cricket

Juvenile

"Then comes a sun burnt gipsy of six . . . . her longing eyes fixed on a game of baseball at the corner of the green till she reaches the cottage door . . . . So the world wags until ten; then the little damsel gets admission to the charity school, her thoughts now fixed on button-holes and spelling-books those ensigns of promotion; despising dirt and baseball, and all their joys."

From "Jack Hatch," taken from the Village Sketches of Mary Russell Mitford, The Albion: A Journal of News, Politics, and Literature September 9 1828, volume 7, page 65.

This item was originally dated 1828, and adjusted to 1825 in 2020. For some details, see Supplemental Text below.

Submitted by Bill Wagner 6/4/2006 and by David Ball 6/4/2006. David explains further: "The title character is first introduced as a cricketer, 'Jack Hatch the best cricketer in the parish, in the county, in the country!' The narrator hears tell of this wonder, who turns out to be a paragon of all the skills but is never able to meet him in person, finally hearing that he has died. Mitford treats cricket (with tongue admittedly somewhat in cheek) as an epic contest in which the honor of two communities is at stake. In the opening, very loosely connected section, on the other hand, baseball is described as a child's game, to be put away early in life."

"Two young lads were taken before the police of Glasgow about the 1^st of May, for breaking a pane in a shop keeper's window in playing trap ball. Upon being questioned, they stated that they were employed by a glazier to break glass for him at the rate of a penny a pane, and that several other boys were in the same business. The glazier was of course taken into custody."

RochesterDaily Advertiser, June 24, 1828. Submitted by Priscilla Astifan. Note: Should we assume that the event happened in Glasgow Scotland and that the account was taken from a newspaper there?

Pre-Knicks NYC

A "mob of boys, constantly engaged in playing ball [so that] . . . on the Sabbath, while Congregations are in Church, there is more noise and clamour in the vicinity than on any other day [from this] squad of loungers, commencing their daily potations and smoking."

Commercial Advertiser (NY), January 28, 1828, page 2, column 4. Contributed by George Thompson, email of January 9, 2009.

Bans, Pre-Knicks NYC

It is reported that Alderman Peters of NY's Ninth Ward, "together with High Constable Hays, at the head of eight or ten of the peace Officers . . . arrest a number of men and boys for breaking the Sabbath by playing ball in a vacant lot.:

New York Evening Post, December 22, 1828, page 2, column 2: and Commercial Advertiser, December 23, 1828, page 2, columns 2-3. Contributed by George Thompson, email of January 9, 2009.

Females

England

Bass Ball

Youth

A very strict school mistress scolds the title character: "You can't say three times three without missing; you'd rather play at bass-ball, or hunt the hedges for wild flowers, than mend your stockings."

A.M.H. [only initials are given], "The Gipsey Girl," in The Amulet, Or Christian and Literary Remembrancer (W. Baynes and Son, London, 1828), pp 91-104. This short moral tale is set in England, and the girl is described as being eight or nine years old. Accessed 2/4/10 via Google Books search ("amulet or christian" 1828).

Reported by Tom Altherr, "Some Findings on Bass Ball," Originals, February 2010. This story was reprinted as "The Gipsy Girl," in The Cabinet Annual: A Christmas and New Year's Gift for 1855 (E. H. Butler, Philadelphia, 1855) page 93ff: 

A newspaper article reminded all not to "in any street, lane, alley, or other public place [within a mile of the court house] throw any stones, bricks, snow-balls or dirt, or play at ball or any other game in which ball is used; or play at game whatsoever for money; or smoke any pipe, or cigar."

"Notice," New-Hampshire Gazette, July 14, 1828. Accessed via subscription search May 5, 2009. Query: this is not a new ordinance; can we find the original date for this language, in Section 4 of the police by-laws? How does it relate to the Portsmouth ban on cricket in entry #1795.1 above?

US cricket clubs

US South

Cricket

Unknown

The New Orleans Louisiana Advertiser, Feb. 27, 1828, carries an ad saying "Weather permitting, the Cricket Club will meet on the 2d of March, at 10 a.m."

The New Orleans Louisiana Advertiser, Feb. 27, 1828

Holidays, Pre-modern Rules

In May 1888, a Boston Globe story reflected the recollection of a game played on July 4, 1828 between the Typhoons and the Hurricanes. A man recalls that at age 20 he played short stop that day.

The article says the game was 6 a side, and played in Skowhegan, ME between the local team, and that of Orono. Gives the names of the players. [ba]

Boston Globe, May 29, 1888, page 5.  (Text not secured as of September 2018.)

As of 2018, we do not know the location, game type, or rules for this game.

It is interesting that the man identified his position as short stop, perhaps indicating that predecessor baserunning games in New England had already developed skill positions' decades before the Knickerbocker club formed. 

Can someone help us obtain the text of this newspaper piece?

Pre-modern Rules

Cricket, Base, Foot ball

Youth

 The Harvard Register, Feb. 1828; from an article entitled “Life in College.”

"There are some other features of college life we fain would sketch but our pen confesses its weakness in the attempt. Would we could call upon the Engine to give out a history of the

 exertions of those who managed it in days of yore; or that we could contrive to make the Delta yield up a narrative of the sports it has witnessed. It could tell , before it took its 

present gallows appearance, of Cricket - Base - and Foot ball; it could tell how many pedal members began the game with white, unspotted skins, but limped off at its conclusion 

tinged with variegated hues.”

The Harvard Register, Feb. 1828; from an article entitled “Life in College.”

"Pedal members"? A pretty good Harvard friend of Protoball can't explain this term.

"Delta"?  

Harvard College

Base

Adult

 "There are some other features of college life we fain would sketch but our pen confesses its weakness in the attempt. Would we could call upon the Engine to give out a history of the exertions of those who managed it in days of yore; or that we could contrive to make the Delta yield up a narrative of the sports it has witnessed. It could tell , before it took its present gallows appearance, of Cricket - Base- and Foot ball; it could tell how many pedal members began the game with white, unspotted skins, but limped off at its conclusion tinged with variegated hues.”

The Harvard Register, Feb. 1828; from an article entitled “Life in College.”

Can we assume that 'pedal members' pertained to the feet, and that it was thus foot ball, and not the two base-running games that caused the bruises? 

Philadelphia

Town Ball

A group of Philadelphians who may eventually organize as the Olympic Ball Club begin playing town ball in Philadelphia, PA, but are prohibited from doing so within the city limits by ordinances dating to Colonial times. A site in Camden, New Jersey is used to avoid breaking the laws in Philadelphia. Caution: this unsourced item, retained from the original chronology of 70 items, has been seriously questioned by a researcher familiar with Philadelphia ballplaying. This group may correspond to the eighteen ropemakers whose ball play is cited in “A Word Fitly Spoken,” published in The American Sunday School Magazine of January 1830, pp. 3-5.

College, Famous, Harvard College

Adult

Several sources report that Oliver Wendell Holmes playing ball at Harvard.

[actual Holmes text is still needed]

Krout, John A, Annals of American Sport (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1929), p. 115. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball before We Knew It, p. 240, ref 49. Richard Hershberger, posting to 19CBB on 10/8/2007, found an earlier source - Caylor, O. P., "Early Baseball Days," Washington Post, April 11, 1896. John Thorn reports [email of 2/15/2008] that Holmes biographies do not mention his sporting interests. Note: We still need the original source for the famous Harvard story. Holmes graduated in 1829; the date of play is unconfirmed.

See entry #1824.6 above on Holmes' reference to prep school baseball at Phillips Academy.

We still need the original source for the famous Harvard story. Holmes graduated in 1829; the date of play as cited is unconfirmed.  The Holmes story reportedly appears in JM Ward's "Base Ball: How to Become a Player," where he says OWH told it "to the reporter of a Boston paper." (Ward page citation?)

Small Puzzle: Harvard's 19^th Century playing field was "Holmes Field;" was it named for this Holmes? Harvard is in Cambridge MA.

New England

Round Ball

Adult

From a letter to the Mills Commission: "Mr. Lawrence considers Round Ball and Four Old Cat one and the same game; the Old Cat game merely being the they could do when there were not more than a dozen players, all told. . . . Mr. Lawrence says, as a boy, he played Round Ball in 1829.

"So far as Mr. Lawrence's argument goes for Round Ball being the father of Base Ball it is all well enough, but there are two things that cannot be accounted for; the conception of the foul ball, and the abolishment of the rules that a player could be put out by being hit by a thrown ball. No one remembers the case of a player being injured by being hit by a thrown ball, so that cannot be the reason for that change. The foul rule made the greatest skill of the Massachusetts game count for nothing - the batting skill - the back handed and slide batting. Mr. Stoddard told me that there were 9 of the 14 Upton batters who never batted ahead."

Henry Sargent Letter to the Mills Commission, June 25, 1905.

Other sources suggest that New England style ballplaying goes back even further.  See 1780c.4 and 1780s.6

Famous

Cricket, Base

Youth

 his new Cambridge school too small. "[N]one of the favorite games of foot-ball, hand-ball, base or cricket could be played in the grounds with any satisfaction, for the ball would be constantly flying over the fence, beyond which he boys could not go without asking special leave. This was a damper on the more ranging & athletic exercises."

-- Richard Henry Dana, on the limitations of school ground play at his new school in Cambridge MA

Robert Metdorf, ed., An Autobiographical Sketch (1815-1842) (Shoe String Press, Hamden CT, 1953), pages 51-52. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 38. The text of the autobiography is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/16/2008.

Richard Henry Dana, later the author of Two Years Before the Mast and a leading abolitionist, was 14 in 1829.

Hazard

"As a number of the students at Fairfield academy were amusing themselves with a game of ball, on the 19^th inst., a young man by the name of Philo Petrie, . . . of the town of Little Falls, was hit on the side of his head be a ball club and died almost instantly. He was about 17 years old."

New-York Spectator, October 30, 1829, page 2, column 5; taken from the Herkimer Herald. Posted by George Thompson to the 19CBB listserve on January 3, 2010. The Jamestown [NY] Journal reran the piece on November 4, 1829: accessed via subscription search on 2/17/2009. Fairfield NY is about 15 miles east of Utica in Central New York, and about 10 miles north of Herkimer and Little Falls.

The game played was wicket. See the Ilion Citizen, March 13, 1903:

One Saturday afternoon, in the fall of 1829 while a party of academics were playing a game of wicket ball on the "green," Philo Petrie, a student, was hit by a bat and almost instantly fell dead. Ozias Nellis was at the wicket, defending it, and in his playing raised his bat to strike the fall; as it came he struck but missed the ball, and momentum of the blow swung Nellis and the bat around, raising the bat as it went, and hit Petrie, who was standing near, on the side of his head. Petrie suddenly clapped both hands to his head, and in a moment fell headlong to the ground. No blame was laid on Nellis; the blow was accidental, but fatal.

Philadelphia

Town Ball

A group of young rope makers is reported to have played a game of ball in 1829 at 18^th and Race Streets.

William Ryczek, Baseball's First Inning (McFarland, 2009), page 114. Ryczek cites a 2006 email from Richard Hershberger as the source of the location of the game.  He identifies this game as perhaps the earliest known form of town ball, but Hershberger is unconvinced (see Warning, below).

Citing the makeup of these players as differing from that of early town ball players' reports, and seeing the 1829 account as more of a morality tale than a reliable report, Richard Hershberger (email of 10/31/12) discounts this item as an account of the origins of Philadelphia town ball.

In 1831 two organized groups, which later merged, played town ball: for a succinct history of the origins of Philadelphia town ball, see Richard Hershberger, "A Reconstruction of Philadelphia Town Ball," Base Ball, volume 1 number 2 (Fall 2007), pp 28-29.

Can we find the source of this 1829 account?

The poem "Childhood and His Visitors," evidently first printed [anonymously] in 1829 and appearing in many other places in the ensuing decades, turns on the line "Then Wisdom stole his bat and ball" which signifies the moment when childhood ends and manhood begins. Wisdom then, the verse continues, "taught him . . . why no toy may last forever." One interpretation may be that Childhood was using his bat and ball while "hard at play/Upon a bank of blushing flowers:/ Happy - he knew not whence or why" when Wisdom finally paid her visit. Thus, an image of bat and ball symbolizes immaturity.

The poem was referenced by Hugh MacDougall in a positing to the 19CBB listserve on 2/17/2010.

A possible initial source is The Casket, a Miscellany, Consisting of Unpublished Poems (John Murray, London, 1829), pages 21-23. Accessed 2/19/2010 via Google Books search ("the casket a miscellany"). In 1865 the piece, dated 1829, appears in The Poems of Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Volume I (Widdleton, New York, 1865), pages 370-372. Accessed 2/19/2010 via Google Books search ("bat and ball" 1865 widdleton). Assuming that Praed was the actual author, as his wife thought, the poem had appeared during the year when, at age 27, the young Romantic turned away from thoughts of blushing flowers and toward a career as a British lawyer and Tory politician.

The book Children's Amusements, published in Oxford (England) and New York, contains an illustration of ball playing (page 9) and this text (page 10): "Playing ball is much practised by school boys and is an excellent exercise to unbend the mind, and restore to the body that elasticity and spring which the close application to sedentary employment in their studies within doors, has a tendency to clog, dull or blunt. But, when practised as is the common method, with a club or bat great care is necessary, as sometimes sad accidents have happened, by its slipping from the hand, or hitting some of their fellows. We would therefore, recommend Fives as a safer play in which the club is not used and which is equally good for exercise. The writer of this, beside other sad hurts which he has been witness of in the use of clubs, knew a youth who had his skull broke badly with one, and it nearly cost him his life."

Children's Amusements, [New York, Samuel Wood, 1820], p. 9. Note: we need to sort out the #1820.1 and #1830.1 entries for this title.

Famous, Holidays

New England

Base Ball

"April 10 [1856]. Fast-Day. . . . . I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over beyond the hills in the russet fields toward Sleepy Hollow, where the snow was just melted and dried up.

Submitted by David Nevard. On 8/2/2005, George Thompson submitted the following reference: Torrey, Bradford, Journal of Henry David Thoreau vol. 8, page 270. He notes that Princeton University Press is publishing a new edition, but isn't up to 1856 yet.

Famous

Base Ball

Youth

Hooker is recalled as having been enthusiastic about baseball in about 1830. [Note: Hooker was about 16 then.] "[H]e enjoyed and was active in all boyish sorts. At baseball, then a very different game from now [1895], he was very expert; catching was his forte. He would take a ball from almost in front of the bat, so eager, active, and dexterous were his movements."

Franklin Bonney, "Memoir of Joseph Hooker," Springfield Republican, May 8 1895. From Henderson text at pp. 147-148.

Hooker was born in 1814 and raised in Hadley, MA.

New England

Letter from J. A. Mendum to Albert Spalding, My 17, 1905.. From Henderson, pp. 149-150, no ref given. John Thorn on 3/4/2006 notes that the letter included a clip from the New Hampshire Gazette titled "Origin of Baseball. Mr. Mendum Played the Game in Portsmouth in 1830." XXX request scan from John Thorn

Cited in Peterson, "The Man Who Invented Baseball," p. 10 (1939)

Wicket

Youth

"How far the Connecticut game of wicket has travelled I cannot say, but it is certain that when the Western Reserve region of Ohio was settled from Connecticut, the game was taken along. Our member [of the Connecticut Society of Colonial War], Professor Thomas Day Seymour of Yale, tells me that wicket was a favorite game of the students at Western Reserve College then located at Hudson Ohio . . . . 'Up to 1861,' he says, 'the standard games at our college were wicket and baseball, with wicket well in the lead. This game was in no sense a revival. A proof of this is the fact that young men coming to college [from?] all over the Reserve were accustomed to the game at home. My impression is that my father recognized the game as familiar to him his boyhood [probably in New England], but of this I am not absolutely certain. The ball was about 5 and a half inches in diameter; the wickets were about 4 inches above the ground, and about 5 feet long.  The bats were very heavy, -- of oak, about 50 inches long, with an almost circular lower end of (say) 8 inches in diameter.  The ball was so heavy that most bowlers merely rolled it with such a twist that they could impart; but some bowlers almost threw it.  Mark Hanna was a star player about 1860, and the rule had to be called on his that the ball must touch ghe ground three times before it struck the wicket.  The bats were so heavy that only the strong (and quick) batter dared to wait until the ball was opposite him and then strike.  I was always satisfied to steer the ball off to one side.  The rules favored the batter and many runns were made.'"

Letter from Thomas Day Seymour to  "My dear Kinsman" from New Haven CT, April 25, 1905.  Reproduced in "The Game of Wicket and Some Old-Time Wicket Players," in George Dudley Seymour, Papers and Addresses of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut, Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society, (n. p., 1909.) page 289.

Yale Professor T. D Seymour was born in 1848, and thus about 12 years old in the days he saw wicket played at Western Reserve College in 1860.  Hudson OH is about 25 miles SE of Cleveland.  George Dudley Seymour (p. 289) decribes the local cummunity as "of pure Connecticut stock."

New England

Brewster, Charles W., Rambles About Portsmouth, Second Series [Lewis Brewster, Portsmouth, 1869], p. 269. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, ref # 67.

New England

T. King wrote to the Mills Commission in 1905. "Just a word in regard to the old game of Massachusetts Run-around. We always pronounced the name as if it were run-round without the "a," but I presume, technically that should be incorporated.

"This was the old time game which I played between 44 and 50 years ago [1855-1861 - LM.], and which I heard my father speak of as playing 35 to 40 years before that, carrying it back to the vicinity of 1830." [Actually, the arithmetic implies the vicinity of 1820.]

T. King, Letter to the Mills Commission, November 24, 1905.

Notes: can we establish the age of King's father at King's birth?

Can we determine where the two Kings might have played?

Juvenile Pastimes in Verse [New York, Mahlon Day], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 193. The book describes "several popular games," including trap-ball, with poetry and woodcuts.

My Father [New York, Mahlon Day], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 193. The picture from Good Examples (#1823.3, above) is included without accompanying test.

Sports of Childhood [Northampton MA, E. Turner], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 193. Coverage of trap-ball is accompanied by the same base-ball like scene found earlier in Remarks on Children's Play (#1811.4, above).

Illinois

"Ball was a favorite sport with the men, and the Prophet frequently took a hand in the sport."

John Doyle Lee, Confessions of John D. Lee: Mormonism Unveiled [1877], Chapter 8.

Submitted by John Thorn, 8/17/2004 supplemented 2/22/2006. Note: Are we sure that "1830s" is the right date here? The text may imply a later date.

Equipment

Western New York

Wicket

Youth

"[The Indians] would lounge on the steps of the 'Old First Church,' where they could look at our young men playing wicket ball in front of the church (no fences there then):, and this was a favorite ball ground."

" . . . the boys, who must always have their fun, did not always 'Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,' but would make a holiday of it by a vigorous game of ball, in some secluded spot in the suburbs of he town . . . " 

Samuel M. Welch, Home History: Recollections of Buffalo During the Decade from 1830 to 1840, or Fifty Years Since [P. Paul and bro., Buffalo, 1890], pages 112 and 220. Submitted by John Thorn 9/13/2006. Also see Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 38.

Are these Welch's own recollections? 

Famous, Females, Fiction

Submitted by Hugh MacDougall, Cooperstown NY, 12/6/2006:

"Everyone knows of Jane Austen's use of the term baseball in her novel Northanger Abbey (see item #1798.1). I recently came across, online, an 1841 anthology of works by the English essayist Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1865). A search revealed five uses of the work "baseball." What is intriguing is that every reference seems to assume that "baseball" whatever it is is a familiar rough and tumble game played by girls (and apparently girls only) between the ages of 6 and 10 or so.."

The "baseball" usages:

[] "The Tenants of Beechgrove:" "But better than playing with her doll, better even than baseball, or sliding and romping, does she like to creep of an evening to her father's knee:

[] "Jack Hatch" see item #1828.9 above for two references.

[] "Our Village [introduction]": " . . . Master Andrew's four fair-haired girls who are scrambling and squabbling at baseball on the other." (See item #1824.3 above.)

[] Belford Regis: "What can be prettier than this, unless it be the fellow-group of girls . . . who are laughing and screaming round the great oak; then darting to and fro, in a game compounded of hide-and-seek and baseball. Now tossing the ball high, high amidst the branches; now flinging it low along the common, bowling as it were, almost within reach of the cricketers; now pursuing, now retreating, jumping shouting, bawling almost shrieking with ecstasy; whilst one sunburnt black-eyed gipsy throws forth her laughing face from behind the trunk of an old oak, and then flings a newer and gayer ball fortunate purchase of some hoarded sixpence among her happy playmates.

David Block's forthcoming 2019 book may address the rules of English Base-Ball in this period.

MacDougall asks: "Mary Mitford seems to have a pretty good idea of what the girls are playing, when they play at 'baseball' but it seems to have little or nothing to do with the sport we now call by that name. Does anyone know what it was?"

Military

The Sydney Gazette [date not supplied] reported on a match between a military club and the Australia Cricket Club, comprising native-born members. They played at "the Racecourse" at Sydney's Hyde Park, attracted as many as 200 spectators, and set stakes of £20 per side.

Egan, Jack, The Story of Cricket in Australia (ABC Books, 1987), page 12.

Western New York

Youth

Writing over 50 years later, Samuel Welch recalled:

"the fish I bought as a small boy at that time [1830-1840], at one cent per pound, mainly to get its noses for cores for our balls, to make them bound, to play the present National Game."

Welch also recalls the local enthusiasm for ballplaying: "the boys, who must have their fun, did not always 'Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,' but would make a holiday of it by a vigorous game of ball, in some secluded spot in the suburbs of the town."

Welch, Samuel L., Home History. Recollections of Buffalo during the Decade from 1830 to 1840, or Fifty Years Since (Peter Paul and Brother, Buffalo, 1891), page 353 and page 220, respectively. [Text unavailable via Google Books as of 11/16/2008.]  See also Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball: Baseball and Baseball-Type Games in the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early American Republic.." Nine, Volume 8, number 2 (2000), p. 15-49.  Reprinted in David Block, Baseball before We Knew It – see pages 245-6, and ref #82. 

Famous

Town Ball

Adult

James Gurley (Gourley?) knew Abraham Lincoln from 1834, when Lincoln was 25. In 1866 he gave an informal interview to William Herndon, the late President's biographer and former law partner in Springfield IL. His 1866 recollection:

"We played the old-fashioned game of town ball - jumped - ran - fought and danced. Lincoln played town ball - he hopped well - in 3 hops he would go 40.2 [feet?] on a dead level. . . . He was a good player - could catch a ball."

Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln (U Illinois Press, 1998), page 451.

See also Beveridge, Albert J., Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1928), Volume I, page 298.  The author provides source for this info as: "James Gourley's" statement, later established as 1866. Weik MSS. Per John Thorn, 7/9/04.

There is some ambiguity about the city intended in this recollection.  Springfield IL and New Salem IL seem mostly likely locations.

A previous Protoball entry, listed as #1840s.16: "He [Abraham Lincoln in the 1840s] joined with gusto in outdoor sports foot-races, jumping and hopping contests, town ball, wrestling . . . "  Source:  a limited online version of the 1997 book edited by Douglas L Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, Herndon's Informants (U of Illinois Press, 1997 or 1998). Posted to 19CBB on 12/11/2007 by Richard Hershberger. Richard notes that the index to the book promises several other references to Lincoln's ballplaying but [Jan. 2008] reports that the ones he has found are unspecific.. Note: can we chase this book down and collect those references?

Earlier versions of this find were submitted by Richard Hershberger (2007) and John Thorn (2004).  

Western New York

From an account that appeared 53 later, involving a 25-year-old who lived about 20 miles south of Buffalo NY:

"Mr. Wickham had a great taste for hunting, and he relates the incidents of a squirrel hunt that took place in Collins in 1830. Two sides were chosen, consisting of eight hunters on a side, and the party that scored the most points by producing the tails of the game secured, were declared the victors. . . . About 4 o'clock P.M. the hunters came in and the scores counted up and it was found that Timothy Clark's side were victorious by over one hundred counts and the day's sport wound up by an old fashioned game of .base ball, in which Timothy Clark's men again came off victorious."

Erasmus Briggs, History of the Original Town of Concord, Being the Present Towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia Erie County New York (Rochester, Union and Advertiser Company's Print, 1883), page 526. Submitted by David Nevard, 2/22/07.

Philadelphia

"I have spent an hour in a beautiful grove in this borough [West Chester PA] witnessing the sports of its denizens. All attorneys, editors, physicians, were engaged in playing ball, while the Judge of the County was seated calmly by, preserving an account of the game! I asked a very respectable gentleman to whom I had been introduced, who were the principal men in the town present; and he answered, that there were no principal men in the town all were equalized, or attained no superiority save that of exertions fro the public weal . . ."Adams Sentinel (Gettysburg PA; August 10, 1830), page 7, as taken from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Posted to 19CBB in October 2008 by John Thorn.

Youth

"I had many happy hours with the village boys in games of ball and I spy. " 

A. Andrews, ed., Christopher C. Andrews: Recollections: 1829-1922 (Arthur H. Clark, Cleveland, 1928), page 25. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 30. Tom notes that Andrews lived in the Upper Village of Hillsboro NH. 

The text of the Andrews book is not accessible via Google Books as of 11/15/2008.

Hillsboro NH is about 25 miles NW of Manchester NH.

US South

Town Ball

Youth, Adult

"Men as well as boys played the competitive games of 'Long Bullets' and 'Fives,' the latter played against a battery built by nailing planks to twenty-foot poles set to make the  'battery' at least fifty feet wide. The school boys played 'base,' 'bull-pen,' 'town ball' and 'shinny' too." 

Jessie Pearl Rice, J. L. M. Curry: Southerner, Statesman, and Educator (King's Crown Press, New York, 1949), pages 6-7.  Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), pages 31-32.

The full text of the Rice biography is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/15/2008. 

Long-bullets involved distance throwing, often along roadsides. Fives is a team game resembling one-wall hand-ball.

"Fives" seems to have been played in Beverly, WVa, around 1860. From Thomas J. Arnold's "Beverly in the Sixties":

"For amusement, the boys, young men, and a number of the middle-aged, late in the afternoon, would gather at the Courthouse - to the windows, of which, on the west side, where the Beverly Bank now stands, they had by public contribution placed shutters, and have a game of ball - different from any ballgame I have ever seen. It was called ball-alley, usually played by two or four to each side, the ball made of yarn wound over a small piece of rubber and covered with pig skin. The leader of one side would throw the ball against the side of the Courthouse - his opponents had to knock it back against the wall with open hand, either before it touched the ground or at the first bound from the ground, and hit the wall above the foundation, next play by opponent and so on, alternating. Failure to get the ball against the wall above the foundation scored. It was a good game and gave plenty of exercise. I don't know how many times the Court entered orders prohibiting the playing of ball against the Courthouse but the boys invariably over-ruled the Court - the latter finally quit making orders in disgust." The Beverly Heritage Center has one of these balls.

Curry's school was in Lincoln County GA, about 30 miles NW of Augusta.

Team hand-ball?  Really? Wasn't it usually a one-on-one game?

Youth

"Notwithstanding his studious habits as a boy [Clement Vallandigham] was fond of out-door sports, although never very fond of what the youngsters call playing. He much preferred going out gunning or fusing, to playing ball, or any of the other games so eagerly pursued as a general thing, by boys."

James L. Vallandigham, A Life of Clement L. Vallandigham (Turnbell Brothers, Baltimore, 1872), page 10. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 32. Clement Vallandigham was born in 1820 in Lisbon OH and grew up there. The biography, barren for our purposes was accessed 11/15/2008 via a "life of clement" Google Books search. 

College, Famous, Harvard College

Wicket, Cricket

You may think of Thomas Wentworth Higginson [b. 1823] as a noted abolitionist, or as the mentor of Emily Dickinson, but he was also a ballplayer and sporting advocate [see also #1858.17]. Higginson's autobiography includes several glimpses of MA ballplaying:

- at ten he knew many Harvard students - "their nicknames, their games, their individual haunts, we watched them at football and cricket [page 40]"

- at his Cambridge school "there was perpetual playing of ball and fascinating running games [page 20]".

- he and his friends "played baseball and football, and a modified cricket, and on Saturdays made our way to the tenpin alleys [page 36]".

- once enrolled at Harvard College [Class of 1841] himself, he used "the heavy three-cornered bats and large balls of the game we called cricket [page 60]." Note: sounds a bit like wicket?

- in his early thirties he was president of a cricket club [and a skating club and a gymnastics club] in Worcester MA. [Pages 194-195]

See also #1858.17. 

Source: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1898). Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), pages 33-34 and ref #29. Accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Books search for <cheerful yesterdays>.

Illinois

Town Ball

"The bull pen, town ball, and drop the handkerchief were among the sports indulged in on the school grounds, and the teacher usually joined in with the sports."

A. T. Strange, ed., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, Volume 2 (Munsell, Chicago, 1918), page 792. Contributed by Jeff Kittel, January 31, 2010. Accessed 2/5/10 via Google Books search ("town ball and drop). Jeff's comments: "The author is talking about the history of education in Montgomery County, IL, which is located south of Springfield and NE of St. Louis. It's tough to date this. He speaks of '75 or 80 years ago,' so it's probably the 1830s and 1840s."

Philadelphia

Cricket

"No city took to the sport [cricket] with more avidity than Philadelphia where the game had been played since the 1830s by the Union Club"

William Ryczek, Baseball's First Inning, McFarland, 2009), page 105. No source is cited. Ryczek goes on to say that Englishmen who moved to work in the city's wool industry was one root cause of cricket's success there.

"My son Roger is a rare lad . . . He can run like a deer, jump like a catamount, wrastle like a bear . . . . He can pitch quates like all creations, he can play ball like a cat o' nine tails, and throw a stone where you could never see it again."

"Parental Partiality. My Son Roger," Salem [MA] Gazette, May 7, 1830. Taken from the New York Constitution. Accessed via subscription search, April 9, 2009. Roger is described as 19 years old. Query: Any chance of discovering the name and residence of the author?

New England

Writing about 70 years later, William Davis considers the range of pastimes in his boyhood: "After the hoop came, as now, the ball games, skip, one old cat, two old cat, hit or miss, and round ball. We made our own balls, winding yarn over a core of India rubber, until the right size was reached, and then working a loop stitch all around it with good, tightly spun twine. Attempts were occasionally made to play ball in the streets, but the by-laws of the town forbidding it were rigidly enforced."

William T. Davis, Plymouth Memories of an Octogenarian (Memorial Press, Plymouth MA, 1906), page 104. Accessed 2/5/10 via Google Books search (plymouth octogenarian). Plymouth MA is about 35 miles SE of Boston on Cape Cod Bay.

Query: do we know the nature of the ball games of "skip" and "hit or miss?"

New England

Wicket

Recalling a genial local sheriff, the author writes: "We well remember the urbanity of his manner as he passed the students of Lenox Academy, always bowing to them and greeting them with a pleasant salutation, which tended to increase their self-respect . . . .As he drove by us when we were playing 'wicket' - the game of ball them fashionable - he did not drive his stylish horse and gig over our wickets, as many took a malicious pleasure in doing, but turned aside, with a pleasant smile . . . ."

J. E. A. Smith, The History of Pittsfield From the Year 1800 to the Year 1876 (C. W. Bryan & Co., Springfield MA, 1876), pp 401-402. Accessed 2/5/2010 via Google Books search <history pittsfield 1876>. 

Lenox Academy was in Lenox MA, about 7 miles S of Pittsfield, and about 35 miles SE of Albany NY. 

Caveat: It is difficult to estimate a date for this anecdote. 

The gentleman, Major Brown, lived in Pittsfield from 1812 to 1838. As the event seems to be the author's personal recollection, verifying if and when he attended the Lenox Academy may narrow the range of possibilities for the period he recalls playing.

Females, Fiction

Bat-Ball

Juvenile

Tom Altherr located a fictional story in The Child's Friend (January 1848) in which a mother recounts to her son, George, how she 'liked boys' playthings best' when she was a little girl and could 'drive hoop, spin top, bat ball, jump, and climb' as well as her brothers could."

The Child's Friend, January 1848.  Full citation needed.  Submitted by Deb Shattuck, May 2013.

It is, of course, difficult to specify a reasonable date for a fictional account like this one.

Long Ball (European baserunning game), Town Ball

Juvenile

"Here we played town ball, corner ball, sow ball and long ball.  Sometimes we would jump, to see how high we could leap; then it was hop, step and jump.  Once in a while we played ring, provided the girls would help, and generally they would..." 

Samuel Penniman Bates, Jacob Fraise, Warner Beers, History of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Containing a History of the County, its Townships, Towns, Villages, Schools, Churches, Industries, Etc; Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; Biographies; History of Pennsylvania, Statistical and Miscellaneous Matter, etc. (Chicago: Warner, Beers and Company, 1887), page 300.

This observation is attributed to John B. Kaufman, a teacher turned surveyor in Franklin County, PA , reflecting on his childhood spent in a log school house in  "50 odd years ago": Kaufman was born in 1827.  Find confirmed 10/9/2014 via search of <"john b. kaufman" "long ball">

Franklin County PA is in south central PA, on the Maryland border.  Its population in 1830 was about 35,000.

"Sow Ball?"

Pre-modern Rules

Base Ball

Youth, Adult

Ball Playing -- Old Boys at it!

Base-ball was a favorite game of the early settlers at the gatherings which brought men and boys together -- such as raisings, bees, elections, trainings, Fourth of Julys, etc., etc., and we are glad to see that the manly sport is still in vogue, at least in 'benighted Ashtabula.'  We learn by the Sentinel that a matched game came off at Jefferson on the 4th, fourteen selected players on each side, chosen by Judge Dann and Squire Warren.  The party winning the first hundred scores was to be the victor.  Judge Dann's side won the game by eleven scores.  The Sentinel says:

There were thirteen innings without a tally.  [This suggests that, at least by 1859, this game used one-out-side-out innings.] The highest number of scores was made by James R. Giddings, a young chap of sixty-four, who led the field, having made a tally as often as the club came to his hand. The game excited great interest, and was witnessed by a large number of spectators.  The supper was prepared by 'our host' at the Jefferson House.

Note:  Protoball's PrePro data base shows another reference to a group, including Giddings, playing this predecessor game in Jefferson; see http://protoball.org/In_Jefferson_OH_in_July_1859. 

Cleveland [Ohio] Daily Leader, Saturday July 9, 1859, First Edition.

See clipping at http://www.newspapers.com/clip/2414996/18590709_cleveland/.

We have assigned this to a date of ca. 1830 on the basis that players in their sixties seem to have played this (same) game as young adults.  Comments welcome on this assumption.  Were the southern shores of Lake Erie settled by Europeans at that date?

Ashtabula (1850 population: 821 souls) is about 55 miles NE of Cleveland OH and a few miles from Lake Erie.  The town of Jefferson OH is about 8 miles inland [S] of Ashtabula.

"The Sentinel" is presumably the Ashtabula Sentinel. 

Further commentary on the site and date of this remembered game are welcome.

Was the Ashtabula area well-settled by 1830?

NH

Base-ball

Adult

"Players consumed egg-nog 'between intervals of base-ball playing' on nearby Shapleigh's Island and taunted the temperance forces."  -- Tom Altherr

Charles W Brewster, Rambles Around Portsmouth, second series ((Portsmouth, John Melcher, 1869), pages 5-6.  Per Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball: Baseball and Baseball-Type Games in the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early American Republic.." Nine, Volume 8, number 2 (2000), p. 15-49.  Reprinted in David Block, Baseball before We Knew It – see page 244 and ref #68.

Antedated Firsts, Pre-modern Rules

Youth, Juvenile

"A Balk is a Base."--Any one having a remembrance of the ball games of his youth must recollect that in the game of base, if the tosser made a balk to entice the individual making the round from his post, the latter had the right to walk to the next base unscathed. Pity it is that the Hudson folks engaged in the late political movement in Columbia County did not remember that "a balk is a base" in the games of children of a larger growth." (Note: This led into a lengthy diatribe on local politics that I did not attempt to make sense of. - David Block)

Rondout Freeman , June 5, 1847:

Dating this remembered practice to the 1830s is somewhat arbitrary, as the writer's age in 1847 is unknown.  Locating the practice in NY State is also uncertain.

[] "Here is another early example of baseball terminology being used to illustrate a non-sports topic."

 

The text appeared in the June 5, 1847 issue of the Roundout Freeman (Roundout was a Hudson River community that has since been swallowed by the town of Kingston).

 

"I had always supposed that the balk rule was introduced by the crafters of the New York game, but this passage suggests it began to be practiced at some earlier time."

 

-- David Block, 11/12/2010

 

[] "I wrote in my book [R. Hershberger. Strike Four, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, page 37] that the balk rule seemed to be novel to the 1845 Knickerbocker rules. Evidently not. While this is two years later, it also is from [nearly] a hundred miles away in Kingston, NY, and presented as a homespun saying from the writer's youth." -- Richard Hershberger, 19CBB posting, 12/9/2020

 

[] John Thorn, email of 1/31/2023:  "This will testify to the antiquity of the balk rule and give a hint that it meant a feint."  -- John Thorn, 1/31/2023 

 

[] As of February 2023, Protoball has no other data on pre-1845 balk rules.  Richard Hershberger hasn't found any yet.

 

[] Added Local color:  "Rondout has been since 1870, an unincorporated hamlet within the city of Kingston (where I lived for decade; it was called "Rondout" because of its adjoining Roundout Creek, which fed into the Hudson River). The Rondout Freeman in its first incarnation may have indeed lasted till 1847 (founded 1845):https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86071034/.

"Hudson is a large city about 25 miles north of Kingston, on the other side of the Hudson River, in Columbia County.  Today a bridge connects my hometown of Catskill (west bank) with Hudson (east bank).  Taghkanic is the proper spelling of the tribe for whom today is named the  Taconic Parkway." 

-- John Thorn, email of 12/10/2020.

 

Is a balk rule -- or the  "stolen" base -- known in cricket or English Base Ball?   Or in any pre-1845 baserunning game?

Protoball welcomes further comment on the possible origin of the balk rule.

Pre-modern Rules

Town Ball

Youth

"Old Town Ball: Reminiscences of the Game by a Very Old Boy.

"I deem it probable that a description of the the game called 'Town Ball' fifty years ago, from which base ball of the present originated, will prove interesting to your readers.  I propose to give it to them as it comes back to me through the mental mist of half a century." 

As described, the old game used:

[] at least four players on a side, but the average team size was about eight.

[] a flipped paddle to determine first ups.

[] four bases, called "corners" and set about 50 feet apart

[] home was called "the holes."

[] the pitching distance was 30 feet.

[] the batting "paddle" was about two feet long and 4 inches wide, wielded with one or two hands

[] the ball was 2 inches in diameter, made of cork and rubber strips, wrapped yarn and then in a buckskin cover.

[] there was a balk rule, and fast pitching was disallowed.

[] There was a bound rule, and plugging.  Innings were all-out-side-out

[] A Lazarus rule allowed a side to earn a new inning if its last batter hit three straight  homers 

Players came from "Pipe Town, Hog Town, Scotch Hill, the Point and Bayard's Town.  Sligo and Allegheny" were often foes.

Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, May 2, 1883

Some portions of this image were indistinct, and some areas were clipped off.

Richard Hershberger:  "A hole was definitely a feature of very early baseball (and very early cricket, too). I expect this is a vestige of that practice, which had disappeared in most American baseball. It is the use of "holes" equating these with "home plate" that I wonder about. Were there more than one hole at home?

Note: Willughby, writing around 1650, describes a baserunning game (hornebillets) that used holes instead of bases, and that is similar to the old-cat game.  See Hornebillets.

Town Ball

Youth, Adult

The Carrolton (GA) Free Press, April 26, 1889, runs an item from Gainesville about how the old timers will play a game of town ball, a game they played in the 1820s, 30s and 50s. The item notes that younger people won't be invited to play, as they have no idea what the game is.

The item also claims that Town ball, bull pen and tip cat were commonly played in the antebellum South.

The Carrolton (GA) Free Press, April 26, 1889

Cat Ball

Juvenile

A letter writer to the Pittston Gazette in 1851 recalled as a schoolboy playing Cat Ball, "towns-ball" and corner ball.

The date of play is uncertain. The place isn't even certain.

Pittston Gazette, Feb. 28, 1851

Pre-modern Rules

Juvenile

Newspaper Coverage, Pre-Knicks NYC

Adult

The Plaindealer, New York, April 15, 1837.

David Block, 5/3/2021, on the idea that ballplaying clubs were though to be extinct in 1837:  "Not quite extinct."

Tom Gilbert, 5/4/2021: "We knew -- largely indirectly -- that there were adult bb clubs and a thriving bb scene in NYC in the 1830s and probably earlier, but it is great to see confirmation, and by a contemporary source. This also underlines the importance of Stevens's Elysian Fields in helping to preserve the incipient sport from being snuffed out by rapid urban development, in a sort of incubator.

Should our dating at circa 1835 be modified?

African Americans, Pre-modern Rules

Philadelphia

Town Ball, Old-Cat Games

Adult

The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia unites with a group of ball players based in Camden, NJ

Orem writes:  "An association of Town  Ball players began playing at Camden, New Jersey on Market Street in the Spring of 1831."

Orem says, without citing a source, that "On the first day but four players appeared, so the game was "Cat Ball," called in some parts of New England at the time "Two Old Cat."  Later accounts report that the club formed in 1833, although J. M. Ward [1888] also dated the formation of the club to 1831.  

Orem notes that "so great was the prejudice of the general public against the game at the time that the players were frequently censured by their friends for indulging in such a childish amusement."

* * *

In January 2017, Richard Hershberger reported (19CBB posting) that after more than five decades, the club disbanded in 1887 -- see Supplemental Text, below.

The Olympic Club played Town Ball until it switched to modern base ball in 1860.  See Chronology entry 1860.64.  

* * *

For a reconstruction of the rules of Philadelphia town ball, see Hershberger,  below. Games were played under the term "town ball" in Cincinnati as well as Philadelphia and a number of southern locations (for an unedited map of 23 locations with references to town ball, conduct an Enhanced Search for <town ball>.

* * *

The club is credited with several firsts in American baserunning games: 

[] 1833: first game played between two established clubs -- see Chronology entry 1833c.12.

[] 1837: first team to play in uniforms -- see Chronology entry 1837.14.

[] 1969: First interracial game -- See Chronology entry 1869.3.

* * *

[Orem, Preston D., Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts(self-published, Altadena CA, 1961), page 4.]

Constitution of the Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia [private printing, 1838]. Parts reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 5-8.

Richard Hershberger, "A Reconstruction of Philadelphia Town Ball," Base Ball, Volume 1 number 2 (Fall 2007), pp. 28-43.  Online as of 2017 at:

https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/a-reconstruction-of-philadelphia-town-ball-f3a80d283c07#.blta7cw82 

For a little more on the game of town ball, see http://protoball.org/Town_Ball.  

The "firsts" tentatively listed above are for the US play of baserunning games other than cricket.  Further analysis is needed to confirm or disconfirm its elements. 

Protoball would welcome an analysis of the US history of town ball and its variants.

It seems plausible that town ball was being played years earlier in the Philadelphia.  Newspaper accounts refer to cricket "and other ball games" being played locally as as early as 1822.  See Chronology entry 1822.3. 

Notes: 

Is it accurate to call this a "town ball" club? When was it formed?  Dean Sullivan dates it to 1837, while J. M. Ward [Ward's Base Ball Book, page 18] sets 1831 as the date of formation. The constitution was revised in 1837, but the Olympic Club merged with the Camden Town ball Club in 1833, and that event is regarded as the formation date of the Olympics. The story of the Olympics is covered in "Sporting Gossip," by "the Critic" in an unidentified photocopy found at the Giamatti Research Center at the HOF. What appears to be a continuation of this article is also at the HOF. It is "Evolution of Baseball from 1833 Up to the Present Time," by Horace S. Fogel, and appeared in The Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, March 22-23, 1908.

2 Are we certain that the "firsts" listed in this entry predate the initial appearance of the indicated innovations in American cricket?

Cricket

Horatio Smith, Festivals, Games and Amusements, Ancient and Modern [New York, Harper], p 330. Per Henderson ref 146. David Block notes that its comment, "The games and amusements of New England are similar to other sections of the United States. The young men are expert in a variety of games at ball - such as cricket, base, cat, football, trap ball . . . ," is the first known book reference to the play of "base" ball in the US. [David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 193-194.]

The cited lines were from an appendix to Smith's book on American games, written by Samuel Woodworth c. 1835. ][ba]

"Is it wonderful that the school-boy should so often prefer his ball-club to his book, and the rod of correction to his task."

The Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, Volume 2, Issue 1 [January 1831], page 31. Submitted by Bill Wagner 6/4/2006.

Holidays

Long Ball (European baserunning game), Cricket, Base

Juvenile

When the Massachusetts Legislature announced that Election Day would be moved from May to January, a protest was lodged in a newspaper, recalling:

". . then amusements were planned; then were hunting matches and fishing parties made; then was the quoit hurled in the air; then were cricket, base, and long-ball played; then were sports of every kind, appropriate to the season, sought after and enjoyed with particular zest."

'Lection Day, National Aegis (Worcester Massachusetts), June 15, 1831, page 1, as cited in  David Block, Polish Workers Play Ball at Jamestown, Virginia, Base Ball, volume 5, number 2 (Spring 2011), page 8. (The National Aegis credits the New York Constellation with the article, but David Block notes that the subject is clearly the lot of Massachusetts children not those in New York City.)

Philadelphia

Cricket

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04: Source is Chadwick Scrapbooks, Volume 20. Note: According to a Harold Seymour note, J. M. Ward's Baseball [p. 18] sets a date of 1831 for the beginning of regular club play in Philadelphia.

Pre-Knicks NYC, Pre-modern Rules

Base Ball

Adult

[A] "The history of the present style of playing Base Ball (which of late years has been much improved) was commenced by the Knickerbocker Club in 1845. There were two other clubs in the city that had an organization that date back as far as 1832, the members of one of which mostly resided in the first ward, the lower part of the city, the other in the upper part of the city (9th and 15th wards). Both of these clubs played in the old-fashioned way of throwing the ball and striking the runner, in order to put him out. To the Knickerbocker Club we are indebted for the present improved style of playing the game, and since their organization they have ever been foremost in altering or modifying the rules when in their judgment it would tend to make the game more scientific."

[B] John Thorn has added: "The club from lower Manhattan evolves into the New York Club (see entry 1840.5) and later splits into the Knickerbockers and Gothams. The club from upper Manhattan evolves into the Washington Club (see entry 1843.2) which in turn gives way to the Gothams."

William Wood, Manual of Physical Exercises. (Harper Bros., 1867), pp. 189-90. Per John Thorn, 6/15/04. Note: Wood provides no source.

Reported in Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pages 32 and 307.

Wood was only about 13 years old in 1832, according to Fred E. Leonard, Pioneers of Modern Physical Training (Association Pres, New York, 1915), page 121. Text provided by John Thorn, 6/12/2007.

Does the lineage from these two clubs to the Knickerbockers and Gothams (but not Magnolias) stem from common membership rolls?

Can we find additional sources on the two 1832 clubs? Do we have any notion of Wood's possible sources?

Trimmer, Sarah, Easy Lessons; or Leading Strings to Knowledge [Boston, Munroe and Francis], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 194

1832.7 - Playing Ball on the Prairie

Western New York

Nobody knows when baseball was first played in Buffalo. There is evidence to show it was played in some form at least as far back as 1832, the year the city was incorporated. Ordinance #19 of the first city charter reads as follows: 'The City Council shall have the authority to make laws regulating the rolling of hoops, flying of kites, playing at ball, or any other amusement having a tendency to annoy persons passing in the streets and sidewalks of the city, or to frighten teams of horses."

Overfield, Joseph, 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball (Partner's Press, Kenmore NY, 1985), page 17.

Bans

Oddball

"Be it ordained by the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the city of Norwich . . . That if any person or persons should play at ball, cat ball, or sky ball, or at ball generally . . . in any of the public streets of said city, the person or persons so offending shall forfeit and pay . . . the sum of two dollars; and when any minor or apprentice shall be guilty of a violation of this by-law, the penalty may be recovered from the parent or guardian." The fine also applied to bowling, kite-flying, and hoops. Norwich Courier, Volume 11, Issue 8 (May 16, 1832), page 1. Provided by John Thorn, email of 1/14/2008. Note: "Sky ball?"

Females

Cricket, Stool Ball

Adult

"On Friday the return game of Cricket was played between the workmen of Mr Hodd and Mr Paine in a meadow at the back of the former gentleman's house, and although the weather was very unfavourable, the game was played out.  Mr Hodd's men were the victors.  The same spirit of liberality was displayed on this as on the former occasion: the women also had recourse to their favourite game of stool ball, and the only drawback in the general amusement was the absence of the musician which obliged them to forego the merry dance." 

Brighton Guardian, October 10, 1832

See 1831.7 for an earlier  assembly involving the same two hosts. 

Base Ball

Breck, Joseph, The Young Florist: or, Conversations on the Culture of Flowers and on Natural History [Boston, Russell and Odiorne], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 196. Inexplicably, notes Block, this book "contains a lovely engraving of boys playing baseball. The image depicts a pitcher throwing overhand to a batter, who holds a slightly crooked bat, with a catcher standing behind."

Olney, J., The Easy Reader; or Introduction to the National Preceptor [New Haven, Durrie and Peck], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 195. Block on this reader's woodcut: "Three of the players in the image are shown attempting to catch a fly ball, while a fourth holds a strange curved bat."

Bat-Ball, Club-ball, Cat-and-Dog, Tip-cat

Unknown

David Block reports that in an 1833 book's short passage on cricket, "the author [William Maxwell] issues a criticism of theories raised by the historian Joseph Strutt in Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, published in 1801.

Maxwell scoffs at Strutt's comments that cricket originated from the ancient game of "club ball," and that the game of trap-ball predated both of these. Maxwell states that cricket is far older than Strutt acknowledged, and adds: 'The game of club-ball appears to be none other than the present, well-known bat-and-ball, which . . . was doubtless anterior to trap-ball. The trap, indeed, carries with it an air of refinement in the 'march of mechanism.' ' Maxwell suggests that a primitive rural game similar to tip-cat was actually the ancestor of cricket, a game that used a single stick for a wicket, another stick for a bat and a short three-inch stick for the ball. He is probably alluding the game of cat and dog, which other historians have credited as one of cricket's progenitors."

Maxwell, William, The Field Book: or, Sports and Pastimes of the British Islands [London, Effingham Wilson], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 195. 

Does Maxwell show evidence for his interpretation of cricket's progenitors?

The Picture Reader; Designed as a First Reading Book, for Young Masters and Misses [New Haven, S, Babcock] per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 195. Again, the woodcut by Anderson from Mary's Book of Sports, [item #1832.3 above] and again, no indication of any text on ball play.

"Who'll play at Ball/ I, says Jack Hall,/ I am nimble and tall,/ I'll play at Ball./ Here is Jack Hall, With his Bat and Ball."

A Pleasing Toy for Girl or Boy [New York, Mahlon Day], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 196. This eight-page book of children's pastimes includes an illustration of trap-ball.

Stories for Emma; or, Scripture Sketches [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 196. Block: "A chapbook that displays a tiny baseball woodcut on its front wrap."

A children's reader includes a short cautionary story about an indolent lad who just sucked his thumb while "the rest were playing ball." An illustration shows several lads appearing to reach for a fly ball, while another holds a crooked bat, having perhaps hit the fly.

Olney, J., The Easy Reader (Durrie and Peck, New Haven, 1833 - as noted in hand), pp. 59-60. From the Origins file at the Giamatti Center at the HOF. Note: our copy lacks page 60, onto which the story is continued.

Base Ball

"I suppose nowadays you play ball considerably. If I can judge by our condition up here, it is the time of year [March] to play ball. I think it was a great pity that we couldn't teach these lazy rascals to play that beautiful game - Base Ball."

Letter from Charles C. Cain to William Butler at Nathaniel Hall, Nathanial [sic] County PA, as reported in a syndicated column by Grantland Rice on July 7, 1949. Posted to 19CBB by John Thorn on 11/5/2007.

Richardson (TX) Echo, July 15, 1949

There is no such county as Nathanial County, PA. Nor was I able to find the named individuals in the 1830 census. [ba]

Holidays

As one of his several diary references to ballplaying [see also #1796.2 and #1806.4] Thomas Robbins D.D. in 1833 wrote this diary entry about Fast Day in Mattapoisett MA: "Fast. Meetings well attended . . . . A part of the people were off playing ball, according to their usual practice . . . . Am very much fatigued. The afternoon exercise was very long. Read."

On December 28, 1829 at Stratford CT, he wrote: "Last week the boys played ball." On May 28, 1839 [what was Abner Graves doing that day?] at Mattapoisett he wrote "Very pleasant. Thermometer rose to 70 [degrees]. Some playing ball."

Increase N. Tarbox, ed., Diary of Thomas Robbins, D.D. 1796-1854, Volume 2 (Beacon Press, Boston, 1887), pages 163, 302, and 527. Accessed 11/15/2008 via a Google Books "'robbins d. d.' diary" search. Searches of the text for cricket, wicket, and round-ball are unfruitful.

Mattapoisett is about 50 miles south of  Boston.

Town Ball

Adult

[A] In Philadelphia PA, the Olympic Club and an unnamed club merged in 1833, but only after they had, apparently, played some games against one another. "Since . . . there weren't any other ball clubs, either formal or informal, anywhere else until at least 1842, this anonymous context would have to stand as the first ball game between two separate, organized club teams anywhere in the United States." The game was a form of town ball.

[B] Richard Hershberger describes the Olympic's opponent as "a loose of collection of friends who had been playing (town ball) together for two years," and considers it a match game in that "both sides had existence outside of that game." He dates one of the games to July 4, 1833, as the Olympic club had been formed to play a game on the holiday.

[A] John Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia (McFarland, 2006), page 17.

[B] Richard Hershberger, "In the Beginning-- Olympics vs. Camden", Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 1-2.

Bat-Ball

Juvenile

A traveler to New Orleans views, on Sunday, "the boys were playing bat ball on a green or park opposite [the old Cathedral]."

The space is presumably the modern Jackson Square.

Indianapolis Journal, June 22, 1833

New England

Cricket

Rules for "'Base' or 'Goal Ball'" are published in Boston, in The Book of Sports by Robin Carver. Carver's book copies the rules for rounders published in England's "The Boy's Own Book" (see #1828.1 entry, above). A line drawing of boys "Playing Ball" on Boston Common is included. David Block in Baseball Before We Knew It, page 196-197, reports that this is the "first time that the name "base ball" was associated with a diamond-shaped infield configuration." As for the name of the game, Carver explains: "This game is known under a variety of names. It is sometimes called 'round ball.' But I believe that 'base' or 'goal ball' are the names generally adopted in our country." The bases are "stones or stakes." According to Carver, runners ran clockwise around the bases. Note: Do we have other accounts of clockwise baserunning?

Carver's Chapter 3 is called "Games with Balls." In an introductory paragraph, he explains that "The games with the bat and ball are numerous, but somewhat similar. I will mention some of them, which I believe to be the most popular with boys." [Page 37.] Other games describes are Fives, Nine-Holes, or Hat-Ball [a game with running/plugging but no batting], Catch-Ball [also a running/plugging game], Rackets, and Cricket.

Carver, Robin, The Book of Sports [Boston, Lilly Wait Colman and Holden, 1834], pp 37-40. Per Henderson ref 31. Reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825 - 1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], p.3ff

For Text:David Block carries a full page of text, and the accompanying field diagram, in Appendix 7, page 281, of Baseball Before We Knew It.

Fessenden, Thomas G., The Complete Farmer and Rural Economist [Boston, Lilly Wait and Co.], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 197. The only ball playing in this book is an ad for Carver's The Book of Sports (#1834.1 entry, above), and includes the Boston Common woodcut.

Deutsches A B C - und Bilder Buch fur Kinder (German ABC and picture book for children) [Cincinnati, Truman and Smith], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 197. The woodcut is lifted from Mary's Book of Sports (see #1832.3 entry above).

College

Philadelphia

Cricket

"The first cricket club of entirely native-born American youth was founded at Haverford College in PA. In a manuscript diary kept by an unknown student during the first two years of the existence of the college, under the date of 1834, occurs this entry: 'About this time a new game was introduced among the students called Cricket. The school was divided into several clubs or associations, each of which was provided with the necessary instruments for playing the game.'"

John A. Lester, ed., , A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [UPenn Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 11. Lester does not provide a source.

Wicket

The contest took three "ins." "Thus, it appears that the 'Bantam Players' 'barked up the wrong tree.' The utmost harmony existed, and every one appeared to enjoy the sport."

Connecticut Courant, volume 70, Issue 3618, page 3 (probably reprinted from the Hartford Times.) Submitted by John Thorn 9/29/2006.

An article on what appear to be Scottish games refers to the "report of the guns or the rattle of the ball-clubs," and concludes that shooting guns and some form a game with a ball-club are "both the principle sports of the day."

North American Magazine Volume 3, Issue 15, page 198. Submitted by Bill Wagner 6/4/2006. Note: It would be good to know more about this event. I think that the Caledonian games became popular in the US later in the century, and I don't recall that they typically include a batting game.

Hazard

Youth

"A young man named Geo. Goble, residing near Wilkes-barre PA, while playing ball, a few days since, accidentally received a blow from a ball club, from the effects of which he died in twenty four hours after."

Rhode Island Republican, vol. 25, number 3 (March 26, 1834), page 3, column 2. Provided by Craig Waff, 8/29/2007 email. The identical story appeared in the New York Sun, March 19, 1834, page 3 - per EBay sale accessed 6/12/2007.

Bans

Town Ball, Cricket, Old-Cat Games

"Any person who shall on the Sabbath day play bandy, cricket, cat, town ball, corner ball, over ball, fives, or any other game of ball, within the limits of the Corporation, or shall engage in pitching dollars, or quoits in any public place, shall on conviction thereof, be fined the sum of one dollar." 

Illinois Weekly State Journal, June 14, 1834.

Richard Hershberger writes: "If I recall correctly, the earliest known cites for "town ball" are reportedly from 1837, from local ordinances in Canton, IL and Indianapolis, IN.  This is a similar ordinance, from Springfield, IL, from 1834." 

Bans

Ball Playing

Adult

"It is ordained, by the Trustees of the Village of Plattsburgh, that no person shall, at any time after the 22d of April, 1834, play ball, either in Bridge-street or Margaret-street, in said Village, under a penalty of fifty cents for each offence, to be sued for and recovered with costs."

This ordinance was approved by the village board of trustees on 4/19/1834.

Plattsburgh Republican, April 19, 1834, page 3, column 5.

Plattsburgh NY (1840 population not ascertained) is about 70 miles S of Montreal Canada and on the western shore of Lake Champlain. It is about 25 miles S of the Canadian border.

Goal Ball, Base Ball, Base

Boy's Book of Sports: A Description of The Exercises and Pastimes of Youth [New Haven, S. Babcock, 1839], pp. 11-12, per Henderson, ref 21. David Block, in Baseball Before We Knew It, page 197-198, points out that the first edition appeared 4 years before the edition that Henderson cited.

In its section on "base ball," this book depicts bases in the form of a diamond, with a three-strike rule, plugging, and teams that take the field only after all its players are put out. The terms "innings" and "diamond" appear [Block thinks for the first time] and base running is switched to counter-clockwise.

This book also has a description of "Base, or Goal Ball," which described: "gentle tossing" by the pitcher, three-strike outs, a fly rule, counter-clockwise base-running in a circuit of four bases, and the plugging of runners, and all-out-side-out innings.

For Text: David Block carries a page of text, and the field diagram, in Appendix 7, pages 282-283, of Baseball Before We Knew It.

The text for "Base, or Goal Ball" appears in Preston Oren, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts (P. Oren, Altadena CA, 1961), pages 2-3.

Cashman, Richard, "Cricket," in David Levinson and Karen Christopher, Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present [Oxford University Press, 1996], page 87. Per John Thorn, 6/15/04: ORIGIN OF ROUND ARM BOWLING- Letter to editor of Forest and Stream by William Filmer: credited to John Wills of Kent, ca.1820; he attempted to use new style vs. Marylebone in 1822- rejected. Source: Chadwick Scrapbooks, Vol. 20.

Base Ball

W. H. Van Cott was one of the organizers of the Gothams in 1852 and was later President of the NABBP. He reported on a conversation with a somewhat forgetful senior citizen in 1905. This man was John Oliver, age 90, who recalled playing baseball in Baltimore in 1825 and seeing it in New York sometime after moving there in 1835.

"I and II. He played the first game of Ball when he was 14 years old, 70 years ago. Called Base Ball because of running from base to base, and the field was in the shape of a diamond; 4 bases in all, counting the place of starting as the last one. He believes that the name originated with the game. III. He played Two Old Cat game, but no other . . . . IV and V. He does not remember ever to have played Rounders, but VI. He has an indistinct recollection of the game. VII. He cannot remember any rules."

These reported recollections are somewhat at odds with those of Oliver’s friend and interviewer C. H. McDonald: “He remembers very distinctly having played the game of Base Ball when a boy, both before and after becoming an apprentice. He states that his earliest recollection of the playing of the game was when he was about ten years of age, and at that time the game was played in this manner: The batter held the ball in one hand and a flat stick in the other, tossed the ball into the air and hit on the return, and then ran to either one, two, or three bases depending on the number of boys playing the game. If the ball was caught on the fly or the batter hit with the ball while running the bases, he was out. These bases, so called, at that time, were either stones or pieces of sod was removed [sic], or bare places where grass was scraped off. He remembers seeing the game played frequently while an apprentice boy, but always in this manner, never with a pitcher or a catcher, but sometimes with sides. . . . [Then Oliver is quoted thus:] “I never saw the game played with stakes or poles used for bases instead of stones or sods. Never heard of a game of Rounders. One Old Cat, Two Old Cat, Three Old Cat have seen played, but never have taken part in it myself.” To my question as to what name this base game that he played was called, he said he remembered distinctly that it was known only as BASE BALL . He further stated that he never saw men play ball until he had been in New York a few years . . . [He moved to New York from Baltimore in 1835.]

W. H. Van Cott, Mount Vernon NY, Communication to the Mills Commission, September 22, 1905. Facsimile obtained from the Giamatti Research Center at the Hall of Fame, June 2009. Also, Mills Commission Papers under date of September 26, 1905. Jack M. Doyle, Albert Spalding Scrapbooks, BA SCR 42.

Barn Ball (House Ball), Town Ball

H. H. Waldo told the Mills Commission: "I commenced playing ball seventy years ago (1835). I was the only one in the game and it was called "Toss up and Catch," or "Bound and Catch." A few years later I played "Barn Ball." Two were in this game, one a thrower against the barn, and catcher on its rebound, unless the batter hit it with a club; if so, and he could run and touch the barn with his bat, and return to the home plate before the ball reached there, he was not out - otherwise he was.

"A few years later the school boys played what was called "Town Ball." That consisted of a catcher, thrower, 1^st goal, 2^nd goal and home goal. The inner field was diamond shape: the outer field was occupied by the balance of the players, number not limited. The outs were as follows: Three strikes," "Tick and catch," ball caught on the fly, and base runner hit or touched with the ball off from the base. That was sometimes modified by "Over the fence and out." [Note: this places Town Ball at about 1840 or so.]

Letter from H. H. Waldo, Rockford IL, to the Mills Commission, July 7, 1905.

Hiram Hungerford Waldo (1827-1912) was born in Elba, Genesee County, NY. He moved to Rockford in 1846 and became a member of that city's Forest City BBC.

Holidays

Base Ball

"The games of bat-and-ball in former years were various, but most popular were "four old cat" and base ball. The latter alone survives to this day [1883], and in a very changed condition. . . . A very large proportion of the students participated in the sport; and the old residents will readily recall with what regularity. Fast day used to be devoted to the base ball of the period."

Charles H. Bell, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire: A Historical Sketch (News Letter Press, Exeter NH, 1883), page 83. Caveat: The section in which this excerpt resides evidently games played half a century earlier, but other interpretations are possible.

The First Lie, or Falsehood Its Own Punishment [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 199. The illustration from Carver's The Book of Sports (see 1835 entry, above) reappears here, this time with the caption "the play ground of Mr. Watt's school."

Sports of Youth; a Book of Plays [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 200. It's that woodcut from the 1832 Mary's Book of Sports, explained as follows: "One of them stands ready to toss the ball - one to knock it, and two to run after it, if they fail to catch it." This game simply adds batting to the game called "Catch-Ball" in Carver [#1834.1 above].

Two Short Stories, for Little Girls and Boys [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 200. Hey, photography had only been invented five years earlier, so it was still the Age of Woodcuts, and Mary's Book of Sports (#1832.3 above) was the source again.

The Child's Song Book [Cincinnati, Truman and Smith], David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 199. Remember that woodcut so favored by S. Babcock in New Haven? The Cincinnatians got it next. Its debut had been in 1832, in Mary's Book of Sports. [See #1832.2 above]

Cricket

This eight-page book shows cricket and "bat and ball" being played in the backgrounds of pastoral views.

Happy Home [New York and Philadelphia, Turner and Fisher, ca 1835], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 199.

Are the players children?

Rose of Affection [New York and Philadelphia, Turner and Fisher], David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 199-200. This short chapbook shows a field with a one-handed bat, a trap, but also a pitched ball. "With a bound, see the ball go,/Now high in the air as hit it just so,/No catch is Jo.; oh, how he lingers,/He'll soon have the name of old butter fingers."

Block notes that the term was used for clumsy persons as far back as 1615.

As reported in 1886, a reunion of men who played together in East Granville MA held a reunion and reflected on their youthful play. The account, which first appeared in a CT paper, The Winsted Herald, noted:

"These old fellows were born before the era of the national game opened. They doubtless knew how to play one, two, and three old cat, and wicket, and the old fashioned kind of base ball when a foul was known as a tick; when a ball, which was not an instrument of torture as now, was thrown at a runner instead of to the baseman . . . "

The story is told in Genovese, Daniel L, The Old Ball Ground: The Chronological History of Westfield Baseball (2004), page 12. Genovese cites the Times and News Letter [City?], July 21, 1886, which had reprinted the Winsted Herald piece. Note: Can we obtain the original article? It seems difficult to distinguish the men's reflections from the notions of the 1886 reporter.

"BASE BALLS. Manner and Extent of the Manufacture in this Country - How they were Made Fifty Years Ago - Gradual Progress of the Business," Brooklyn Eagle, February 3^rd 1884.

"Half a century ago such base balls as are in use at the present time were entirely unknown. The balls then used were made of rubber and were so lively that when dropped to the ground for a height of six or seven feet they would rebound ten or twelve inches. A blow with the bat would not drive them so far as one of the balls now in use can be driven with the same force, but when they struck the ground they were generally much more difficult to stop on account of their bounding propensities. . . .

"Many balls then in use - in fact nearly all of them - were home made. An old rubber overshoe would be cut into strips a half inch wide and the strips wound together in a ball shape. Over this a covering of woolen yarn would be wound and a rude leather or cloth cover sewn over the yarn. Sometimes the strips of leather were put in a vessel of hot water and boiled until they became gummy, when they would adhere together and form a solid mass of rubber. This, after being would with yarn and covered with leather by the local shoemaker, was a fairly good ball and one that would stand considerable batting without bursting.

"In the lake regions and other sections of the country where sturgeon were plentiful, base balls were commonly made of the eyes of that fish. The eye of a large sturgeon contains a ball nearly as large as a walnut. . . . They made a lively ball, but were more like the dead ball of the present than any ball in use at that time."

Reference and article provided by Rob Loeffler, 10/21/2008. Note: The balls of 1835 were reportedly smaller and lighter [and commonly perceived, at least, to be softer] than regulation balls of the 1850's and later. They would thus "carry" less, and like a tennis ball today, lose more velocity when hit or thrown than a heavier ball.

Pre-Knicks NYC

New Jersey

A Trenton NJ commentator pauses to rue the destruction of a favorite old tavern, adding that in the last twenty years "[w]e have seen whole streets spring up as if by magic, The fields where we played ball are now filled with machinery."

"Local Items," Trenton State Gazette, August 16, 1853. Accessed via subscription search May 20, 2009.

Rounders

The memories aren't pleasant. "We endured hunger, cold, and cruelty." Exercise was taken mainly in gymnastics: "As there was no cricket-field, our amusements were much curtailed, a poor game of rounders being the only source of amusement in that line."

"Greenwich School Forty Years Ago," Fraser's Magazine Volume 10 (1874), page 246. Accessed 2/5/10 via Google Books search ("poor game of rounders").

Contemp. "Base Ball" usage

Base Ball

Youth

After buying a book that would hold his diary entries for the next year and beyond, 11 year old James Terry wrote in his first entry, dated April 4, 1835, "Then played base ball til noon, then went to get wintergreen . . . ." 

Two days later he wrote "got my dinner; then went to watch the boys play ball; then went to the store."  On June 1, 1836, he wrote that some local boys "went and played ball and I stood and looked on.  I then went up to my chamber and stayed there a while."   

Unpublished journal of James Terry, written near  what is now Thomaston CT.

Thomaston, CT is about 10 miles N of Waterbury CT and about 20 miles SW of Hartford.

James Terry, son of a prominent clock manufacturer,  later founded what became the well-known Eagle Lock Company.

Terry's initial diary entry April 4 entry begins "This morning I painted my stick: then thought I would begin to write a journal" just before recording his ballplaying.  He adds that he later "went and see-sawed. and then I painted my stick again, then ate supper."

Is it possible that the stick was his base ball bat?  Were painted bats common then?

Cricket, Base

Youth

["A  classics instructor and "great friend of school boys, he] "was a species of out-door Professor of Languages at the Academy; under him we were all Philosophers of the Peripatetic sect, walking constantly about the play grounds, and bestowing on Fives, Base, Cricket and Foot Ball the 'irreperabile tempus' due to the wise men of Greece.  -- Hence he was quite a troublous fellow to the in-door Professors.  They found nothing classical in his 'bacchant ar.'  They loved him not, and wished him far away."

[A] Long Island Farmer, and Queens County Advertiser [Jamaica, NY] , December 16, 1835, page 2, column 2.  [B] Also found by David Block in Long Island Star, December 31, 1835.

This reference can be taken as an indication that "base" was played years before 1835, possibly in the New York area, but the date it was played, and the location of play, is impossible to discern from this account.

Note: In the following paragraph, the man is called "Joseph Haywood". This is a reminisce of a fellow student in boyhood, Jos. Haywood, at a school where one Ephraim Johnson was the teacher. It is probably fictional. Haywood loved to spout Greek and Latin and inspired his fellow students to apply Greek and Latin phrases to their schoolboy games. I've searched both names and can't find anything suitable in NY.

David Block, 6/1/2021: An "article extolling fellow student at an unnamed school."

Is there any way we can zero in on the date and location of this pastime?

Do we know what was meant by "Foot Ball" in the early 19th Century?

Can we determine what "the Academy" was, and the ages of its students?

College

New England

"Baseball and foot ball did not, in those days, ensnare the athletic sympathies and activities of [p36/p37] college boys, but old-fashioned 'ball' and quoits were popular."

Asahel C. Kendrick, Martin B. Anderson: A Biography (American Baptist Publications Society, Philadelphia, 1895), pp 36-37. Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Seymour's note implies that the section heading in which this text appears is "(1836) "Ball" at Waterville [Later Colby College]." Sources found by John Thorn [email of 2/9/2008] and Mark Aubrey [email of 1/30/2008].

Werner, Johann A. L., Die reinst Quelle jugendlicher Freuden (The Purest Source of Joy for Youngsters) [Dresden and Leipzig, Arnoldi], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 200. This survey of 300 games, called "notably unoriginal" by Block, repeats Gutsmuths' (see entry #1796.1, above) material on base-ball, explaining "This game originates by way of England, where it bears the name base-ball, and it played there very frequently." Note: Is this last comment also derivative of the Gutsmuths text, or does it confirm "base-ball" play in England in the 1820s and 1830s?

Little Lessons for Little Learners [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 201. The trap hadn't disappeared from CT yet.

Base Ball

[Continuing a list of games that boys played:] " . . . various games of ball. These games of ball were much less scientific and difficult than the modern games. Chief were four old-cat, three old-cat, two old-cat, and base."

Hoar, George F., Autobiography of Seventy Years Volume 1 (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1905), page 52. Hoar was ten years old in 1836. Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

Adult

[A] "One day it occurred to me that . . . we might have a Game of ball . . . .  Well I had bats and a ball made, and we got up a sort of game; the next day some of the English found their way down to us and we have since had several games."

[B] In his March 1836 letter home, from Canton, China, the 23-year-old John Murray Forbes referred to playing ball with Englishmen there.  He asked his wife to imagine him "throwing the ball at this man, running like mad to catch it, or, when my innings come, running the rounds jumping breast high to avoid being hit, or falling down to the ground for the same purpose."  

He also noted: “We have been very steady at our ball exercise.  Is it not funny the idea of a parcel of men going out to play like schoolboys? [ . . .]  The English have one trait in which they differ widely from us; they keep up their boyish games through life.  [. . .] Cricket and Ball of all sorts is played in England by men of all ages.”

[C] In a passage from his 1899 memoir about the same incident, Forbes reminded readers who were no longer familiar with retiring baserunners by "plugging" them that a runner could be "pelted by the hard ball as he tried to run in, for it was then the fashion to throw at the runner, and if hit he was out for the inning."  

[A] David Block, Pastime Lost (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), page 237.  Block sites Brian Turner, Cogswell's Bat, pp 65-66 (source needed).

[B] Sarah Forbes Hughes, ed., Letters (Supplementary) of John  Murray Forbes [George H. Ellis Co., Boston, 1905] volume 1, page 25.

[C] Sarah Forbes Hughes, ed., Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes [Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1899] volume 1, page 86.

Submitted by John Bowman, 7/16/2004 and supplemented by Brian Turner, 7/23/2013.

John Bowman adds: "Forbes was a Massachusetts man, and one supposes that when he played baseball at the Round Hill school in Northampton (see item #1823.6 above) , 'soaking' or 'plugging' was then a routine aspect of the game."

Can we clarify what game Forbes played (rounders? round ball?). 

 Reader Reply: I would suggest that this is reasonably persuasive evidence that Brits and Yanks were playing effectively the same game, under whatever name. No mention of rules disputes or confusion arises; and one gets the distinct impression, in parallel with ca. 1830s rules descriptions, that both national contingents set to without fuss and that there was little if any difference between English "rounders" and American "X-ball." --WCHicklin (date unspecified).

College

Youth

In a letter to a friend in 1836, a Georgetown Student wrote, "the Catholics think it no harm to play Ball, Draughts, or play the Fiddle and dance of a Sunday . . . "

Cited in Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, see page 241, cited as follows: Georgetown Student Letter, August 27, 1836, quoted in Betty Spears and Richard Swanson, History of Sport and Physical Activity in the United States, Second Edition (William C. Brown, Dubuque, 1983), page 85.

Oddball

"'The Ball Paces' was formerly much played, but is now almost extinct. In this game a square was formed; and each angle was a station where one of the party having the innings was posted. A hole was dug in the ground, sufficient to hold the ball, which was placed on a bit of wood, rising about six inches above the ball. The person at the hole struck the point of this with his bat, when the ball rose; and in its descent [p116/p117] was struck with the bat to as great a distance as possible. Before the ball was caught and thrown into the batman's station, each man at the four angles ran from one point to another, and every point counted one in the game." George Penny, Traditions of Perth (Dewar & Co., Perth, 1836), pp 116/17... Provided by David Block, email of 5/17/2005.

David's accompanying comment: "From the description it appears to be a remarkable hybrid of trap-ball and the multiple goal version of stool-ball described by Strutt. . . . This is the first trap-ball type game I've ever come across that features baserunning." Penny also mentions cricket: "Cricket was never much practiced in Scotland, though much esteemed by the English. It was lately introduced here; several cricket clubs established; and is now becoming popular." Ibid, page 117.

Bans

New England

In June the town wrote new by-laws:

"Section Eighth: No person shall play at ball, fly a kite, or slide down hill upon a sled, or play at other game so as to incommodate peaceable citizens or passengers, in any street, lane, or public place in this town, under a penalty not exceeding one dollar for each offence."

"By-Laws of the Town of New Bedford," New Bedford [MA] Mercury, September 30, 1836. Accessed via subscription search May 5, 2009. Note: See #1821.6 above: this by-law simply adds "public places," and doubles the penalty, for the rule made 15 years earlier.

"In April 1892 the Milwaukee [WI] Old Settler's Club received a ball from a Mr. E. W. Edgerton which the young men used to play ball in 1836. The ball was made of yarn wound on a rubber center. The cover was cut in quarters. Mr. Edgerton stated he made the ball himself, and the cover was sewed on by Mrs. Edward Wiesner, wife of the first shoemaker in Milwaukee. Edgerton gave the names of some of his fellow 1836 players, some familiar in Milwaukee's early history."

Posting to the 19CBB listserve by Dennis Pajot, January 3, 2010. In 1946 a journalist speculated that the N-old-cat games were what was likely played in 1836 Dennis cites the April 19, 1892 issues of the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel.

Plugging, Pre-modern Rules

NJ

Base Ball

Youth

From John Thorne, July 28, 2015:

"This just in from Ben Zimmer, a Facebook friend who writes for the Wall 
Street Journal. Important, I think.

'You might be interested in another early baseball example -- it's from the Jersey Journal from Jersey City (where I live!), written in 1871 but recalling a protoball club of the 1830s:'


"While here let me say to the Champion Base Ball Club, for their information, that in eighteen hundred and thirty-six and seven we had a base ball club that could not be beaten. It was composed of such men as Jerry O'Meara, Peter Bentley, J.C. Morgan, Jos. G. Edge, &c.  I acted as the spare pitcher to the first nine.  In those days the game was played by throwing the ball at the man running the bases, and whoever was hit was out. if he could not jump to the base from where he was hit. I would rather get hit by any member of the club than by Bentley, for he was a south-paw or left-hander, and he used to strike and throw an unmerciful ball."

"Recollections of a Jersey City Boy, No. 3.," Jersey City Evening Journal, Dec. 13, 1871, p. 1, col. 3

John Zinn: It feels to me that the author is conflating a number of different things (his role, for example) into a club that played in the late 1830's.  However even if he is off by 10 years, a club of some kind in the late 1840's would be something new and, as John Thorn suggests, important.

Peter Bentley later became the town's mayor.

John Zinn: The article in question is the third in a series that appeared in the Evening Journal late in 1871.  I've been able to find the first two (it's not clear if there were any more) and this is the only reference to base ball.  

John Zinn, "Base Ball Before the Knickerbockers", October 1, 2015: "[I]nformation provided in the articles about the author's life and activities was so specific as to positively identify him as Stephen Quaife, an English immigrant, whose family moved to Jersey City in 1827 when he was only one.  Identifying Quaife, however, immediately ruled out his claim of having "acted as the spare pitcher on the first nine," since he was only about 10 at the time.  Quaife's name did, however, ring a vague bell and a look at Jersey City's first base ball clubs finds him listed as a pitcher in a box score of a July 11, 1855 inter squad game of the Pioneer Club, founded that June.  Clearly Quaife was conflating his own brief base ball career with whatever he knew or thought he knew about another club 20 years earlier. 

"This 1871 account of a club some 35 years earlier has the same problem as other descriptions of pre-New York games in New Jersey, they are all retrospective, none come from contemporary sources. . . . 

"There is, however, some further evidence of pre-New York base ball in Jersey City.  The July 12, 1855 Jersey City Daily Telegraph article describing the game Quaife did play in, clearly states there were 11 on a side and that five games were played in one day . . ."

"Quaife's account further supports the idea that young men in New Jersey were in the field with bats and balls well before the state's first clubs were formed in 1855."

See https://amanlypastime.blogspot.com/2015/10/base-ball-before-knickerbockers.html.  

Pre-modern Rules

Base Ball Predecessor

Adult

"While here let me say to the Champion Base Ball Club, for their information, that in eighteen hundred and thirty-six and seven we had a base ball club that could not be beaten.  It was composed of such men as Jerry O'Meara, Peter Bentley, J. C. Morgan, Jos. G. Edge, &c.  I acted as a spare pitcher for the first nine.  In those days the game was played by throwing the ball at the man running the bases, and whoever got hit was out, if he could not jump to the bases from where he was hit.  I would rather get hit by any other member of the club than by Bentley, for he was a south-paw or left-hander, and he used to strike and throw an unmerciful ball.  The ball ground was a portion of the time Nevins and Townsend's block, in front of St. Matthew's Church .  .  .  . "

Jersey Journal, December 13, 1871, page 1, column 3 -- "Recollections of a Jersey City Boy, No. 3."

There is considerable uncertainty as to the dating of this item at c1836..

John Zinn further researched the players named in the 1871 account, and wrote on 7/28/2015:  "It feels to me that the author [whom John identifies as John W. Pangborn] is conflating a number of different things (his role, for example) into a club that played in the late 1830's. However even if he is off by 10 years, a club of some kind in the late 1840's would be something new and, as John [Thorn] suggests, important." John Zinn also reported 7/28/2015 that Bentley was 31 years old in 1836, and that Edge was 22; John W. Pangborn, the suspected 1871 author, was born in 1825 so was only 12 in 1837.

Further commenting on the credibility of this 1871 account, Richard Hershberger [19cbb posting, 7/28/2015] adds: "Going from general trends of the day, the [1871 author's] use of the word "club" is very likely anachronistic.  Organized clubs playing baseball were extremely rare before the 1840s in New York and the 1850s everywhere else.  On the other hand, informal play was common, and local competition between loosely organized groups is well attested.  My guess is that this was some variant or other. As for plugging, its mention increases the credibility of the account.  Even as early as 1871, plugging was being forgotten in the haze of the past.  Old-timers describing the game of their youth therefore routinely mentioned plugging as a distinctive feature. So putting this together, this looks to me like a guy reminiscing about quasi-organized (at most) play of his youth, using the anachronistic vocabulary of a "club." 

If dated correctly, this find would seems to be a very early use of "south-paw" to denote a left-hander, although it is not explicitly claimed that the term had been used in 1836.  One source (Dickson. Baseball Dictionary, 3rd ed., page 791) indicates that the first use of "south-paw" in a base ball context was in 1858, although a 2015 web search reveals that the term itself dates back to 1813.

Shinty

Shinty was played at the NYC Highland games in 1836.

The first mention of Shinty was in Scotland in 1589. For more mentions of Shinty in the U.S., see Chronologies 1839.8; Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, Nov. 15, 1848; Albany Evening Journal, Jan. 25, 1853

Albion Weekly Gazette, Oct. 1, 1836

Martel, "On the Origin of Hockey" points out that in Canada and elsewhere, "shinty" referred to what would be labeled today ice hockey. Essentially in the early 1800s shinty was a generic term for field or ice hockey games--though field is clearly referred to in the sources above.

Pre-Knicks NYC

NYC

Base Ball, Old-Cat Games

Adult

William R. Wheaton, who would several years later help found the Knickerbockers [and write their playing rules], described how the Gothams were formed and the changes they introduced. "We had to have a good outdoor game, and as the games then in vogue didn't suit us we decided to remodel three-cornered cat and make a new game. We first organized what we called the Gotham Baseball Club. This was the first ball organization in the United States, and it was completed in 1837.

"The first step we took in making baseball was to abolish the rule of throwing the ball at the runner and ordered instead that it should be thrown to the baseman instead, who had to touch the runner before he reached the base. During the [earlier] regime of three-cornered cat there were no regular bases, but only such permanent objects as a bedded boulder or and old stump, and often the diamond looked strangely like an irregular polygon. We laid out the ground at Madison Square in the form of an accurate diamond, with home-plate and sand bags for bases."

" . . . it was found necessary to reduce the new rules to writing. This work fell to my hands, and the code I them formulated is substantially that in use today. We abandoned the old rule of putting out on the first bound and confined it to fly catching."

"The new game quickly became very popular with New Yorkers, and the numbers of clubs soon swelled beyond the fastidious notions of some of us, and we decided to withdraw and found a new organization, which we called the Knickerbocker."

See Full Text Below

Brown, Randall, "How Baseball Began, National Pastime, 24 [2004], pp 51-54. Brown's article is based on the newly-discovered "How Baseball Began - A Member of the Gotham Club of Fifty Years Ago Tells About It, San Francisco Daily Examiner, November 27, 1887, page 14.

See also:  Randall Brown, "The Evolution of the New York Game," Base Ball Journal, Volume 5, number 1 (Special Issue on Origins), pages 81-84.

Note that while Wheaton calls his group the "first ball organization," in fact the Philadelphia club that played Philadelphia town ball had formed several years earlier.

"Wheaton's 1837 Gotham rules may have resembled the Knickerbocker rules forged 8 years later.  He said, in 1887,  that "the code I then formulated is substantially that in use today" -- after a span of 5 decades.  (In the meantime, however, the Knicks went back to using the bound rule.)"

Note: Brown knows that the unsigned article was written by Wheaton from internal evidence, such as the opening of the article, in the voice of an unnamed reporter: “An old pioneer, formerly a well-known lawyer and politician, now living in Oakland, related the following interesting history of how it originated to an EXAMINER reporter: ‘In the thirties I lived at the corner of Rutgers street and East Broadway in New York. I was admitted to the bar in ’36, and was very fond of physical exercise….’”

Wheaton wrote that the Gotham Club abandoned the bound rule . . . but if so, the Knickerbockers later re-instituted it, and it remained in effect until the 1860s.

Wheaton also recalled that the Knickerbockers at some point changed the base-running rule, which had dictated that whenever a batter "struck out" [made an out, we assume, as strikeouts came later], base-runners left the field.  Under a new interpretation, runners only came in after the third out was recorded. 

Equipment, Females, Fiction

Base Ball

For Text: David Block carries three paragraphs of text from this story in Appendix 7, page 283, of Baseball Before We Knew It.

Captured by Native Americans, a youth sees them playing a game of ball. The "ball" was part of a sturgeon's head covered with deerskin strips, the club was of hickory, some number of safe-haven bases were formed by small piles of stones, and there was plugging.

"Their principal object seemed to be to send the ball as far as possible, in order for the striker of it, to run around the great space of ground, which was comprised within the area formed by the piles of stones."

There is no mention of a pitcher, and if a batter-runner was put out, he would replace the fielder who made the putout. Some games would last for days.

Female Robinson Crusoe, A Tale of the American Wilderness [J. W. Bell, New York, 1837], pp 176-178. Per RH ref 58.

Reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825 - 1908, University of Nebraska Press, 1995, pp. 4-5.

College

New England

"[March 1837, New Haven CT] It is about time now for playing ball, and the whole green is covered with students engaged in that fine game: for my part, I could never made a ball player. I can't see where the ball is coming soon enough to put the ball-club in its way."

Whitney, Josiah D., letter to his sister, March 1837, reprinted in E. T. Brewster, Life and Letters of Josiah Dwight Whitney [Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1909. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, ref # 50.

Females

Walker, Donald, Games and Sports; Being an Appendix to Manly Exercises and Exercises for Ladies [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 201. Most of this text covers gymnastic routines, but trap-ball is also included. Note: Is this an early use of the term "manly" in sports?

Gallaudet, Edward, The Jewel, or, Token of Friendship [New York, Bancroft and Holley], page 90, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 201. One sentence appears in a story called The Barlow Knife: "Just then, two of his playmates coming along with a ball, Dick put his knife in his pocket, and went to join them in a game of 'one-old-cat.' Block's comment is that "[t]he brief mention in this story is noteworthy because, despite the game's reputed popularity during the first decades of the nineteenth century, no other reference to the name can be found before 1850. One-old-cat was a form of scrub baseball that required as few as three players and may have been played in America as early as the colonial era."

Pre-modern Rules

Philadelphia

Base Ball

Adult

The constitution does not shed light on the nature of the game played. Membership was restricted to those above the age of twenty-one. One day per month was set for practice "Club day". Note: Sullivan dates the constitution at 1837, but notes that it was printed in 1838. 

The constitution specifies that the club recorder shall act as "umpire", to settle disputes.

Constitution of the Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia [Philadelphia, John Clark], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 223.

Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825 - 1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 5-8. 

Bans

Illinois

Cricket

Section 36 of the Canton IL ordinance passed on 3/27/1837 said:

"any person who shall on the Sabbath day play at bandy, cricket, cat, town-ball, corner-ball, over-ball, fives, or any other game of ball, in any public place, shall . . . " [be fined one dollar].

http://www.illinoisancestors.org/fulton/1871_canton/pages95_126.html#firstincorporation, as accessed 1/1/2008. Information provided by David Nevard 6/11/2007. See also #1837.8, below. Canton IL is about 25 miles SW of Peoria.

On January 31, 2010, Jeff Kittel indicated that he has found the text in another source: History of Fulton County, Illinois (Chapman & Co., Peoria, 1879), pp 527-528. Accessed 2/6/10 via Google Books search ("history of fulton" 1879). Jeff, noting that the ban appeared just 37 days after Canton was incorporated, adds:

"It seems that they had a lively community of ballplayers in Fulton County. Obviously, if they're passing laws against the playing of ball, ball-playing is so widely prevalent, and there is such a variety of ball games being played, then pre-modern baseball had been played in the community for some time. It's fascinating that one of the first things they did, upon incorporation, was ban ball-playing on the Sabbath."

Bans

Illinois

Cricket

Section 34 of an Indianapolis IN ordinance said:

"Any person who shall on the Sabbath day play at cricket, bandy, cat, town ball, corner ball, or any other game of ball within the limits of the corporation, or shall engage in pitching quoits or dollars in any public place therein, shall on conviction pay the sum of one dollar for each offense."  [See the very similar #1837.7, above.] 

Richard pointed out in 2008 that these very similar regulations give us the earliest citation for the term "town ball" he knows of, but in 2014 he found the very similar 1834 prohibition on Springfield IL at 1834.9. 

Indiana Journal, May 13, 1837.

Note: A dollar fine for "pitching dollars?"

Pre-Knicks NYC

Adult

"Young men that go to Hoboken to play ball must not drink too much brandy punch. It is apt to get into their heads. Now it is a law in physics that brandy in a vacuum gets impudent and big."

New York Herald (April 26, 1837), page? Posted to 19CBB by John Thorn, 10/27/2008.

New England

"One of the most interesting places in New England for the beauty of its scenery the extent of its manufactories, and the industry of its inhabitants, is the town of Haverhill Mass. At Haverhill more shoes are made, Lynn excepted, than at any place in this country. Nine-tenths of the mechanics, not long since, in consequence of the hard times, were thrown out of employ. The assembled together, laughed at their misfortunes, marched through the streets, played ball for a day and as soon as possible exchanged the shoe-shop for the farm house."

"New England Girls and Young Men," Jamestown [NY] Journal, July 19, 1837. This story is evidently based on a report in the Haverhill Gazette. Accessed via subscription search May 20, 2009. Haverhill MA is about 30 miles north of Boston and near the NH border. A serious recession gripped the US economy in 1837.

"[O]n one memorable occasion . . . in July, 1837, Mr. Ward proposed, as a method of equalizing the Gentlemen and Players, that the former should defend [three] wickets of twenty-seven by eight inches; the latter [defend] four stumps thirty-six by twelve [inches]. This was called the "Barn-door Match," or "Ward's Folly," and notwithstanding the great odds against them, the Players won in a single innings by ten runs."

Robert MacGregor, Pastimes and Players (Chatto and Windus, 1881), page 17. Accessed 2/7/2010 via Google Books search (macgregor pastimes).

Pre-Knicks NYC

Base Ball

On July 3, 2009, David Dyte posted the following account on the 19CBB listserve:

"In 1894, the Brooklyn Eagle published an article recounting the various games played by Colonel John Oakey, a former A.D.A., when he was a child growing up in Brooklyn and Flatbush [NY]. From 1837 he attended the Erasmus Hall Academy, and told this story:

'Erasmus Hall academy had a fine play ground surrounding it. Here John Oakey and his school fellows played many a game of three base ball. The boys who played were called binders, pitchers, catchers, and outers, and in order to put a boy out it was necessary to strike him with the ball. On one occasion John Oakey threw the ball from second base and put another boy out. The boy said he did not feel the ball and therefore he had not been put out. John made up his mind that the next time he caught that chap between the bases he would not say afterward that he did not feel the ball. It was only a few days after that an opportunity occurred. John let the ball go for all he was worth and caught the boy in the back. He went down in a heap, but instantly sprang to his feet and cries out, "It didn't hit me; it didn't hit me." But John Oakey and all the boys knew better. For a week after that boy had a lame back, but he would never acknowledge that the ball did it.'"

See also 1840c.26

Base Ball

Unknown

An entry for "base-ball" in an 1837 English-to Greman dictionary uses the definition "s. dass Ball-spiel mit Freistätten."  {n(oun) the ball-play with free places (safe havens?")}

J. H. Kaltschmidt, A New and Complete Dictionary of the English and German Languages, Leipsic [sic], 1837, page 53.

Retrievable 7/14/2013 via <kaltschmidt base-ball> search.

Richard Hershberger notes on 7/14/2013 that "[u]nfortunately, the second volume of German to English is not available on Google Books."

Is it possible that this entry reflects the 1796 report by Gutsmuths that English and German forms of base-ball coexisted?  Protoball wonders if the 1837 book mistakenly dropped a word following the term "mit" (with).  Gutsmuths called English game "ball "mit freystaten." The Protoball entry for Gutsmuths is at 1796.1

Is there a way to locate the German-to-English version of this 1837 book?

Club Constitutions/Bylaws, Equipment

Philadelphia Town Ball

Adult

“In 1833, a group of Philadelphia players formed a team, the Olympics. By 1837, the team had a clubhouse at Broad and Wallace Streets, a constitution, records of their games, and uniforms - dark blue pants, a scarlet-trimmed white shirt, and a white cap trimmed in blue.”

Murray Dubin, "The Old, Really Old, Ball Game Both Philadelphia and New York Can Claim As the Nation's First Team," The Inquirer, October 28, 2009.

See http://articles.philly.com/2009-10-28/sports/25272492_1_modern-baseball-baseball-rivalry-cities, accessed 8/16/2014.   (Login required as of 2/20/2018.)

The article does not give a source for the 1837 description of the Olympic Club uniform.

Richard Hershberger adds, in email of 2/20/2018:

"The entry lacks a source for the Olympic uniform.  I don't have a description, but the club's 1838 constitution mentions the uniform several times:  the Recorder, who is to have the pattern uniform, and duty of the members to provide themselves with said uniform, with a fine of 25 cents a month for failure to do so, with the Recorder noting these on the month Club Day."  

What is the original documentation of this uniform specification?

Do we know if earlier cricket clubs in the US used club uniforms?  In Britain?  Are prior uniforms known for other sports?

Pre-Knicks NYC

"Mr. Charles Bost [DeBost- LMc.] the catcher and captain of the Knickerbockers, played baseball on Long Island fifty years ago, (i.e., in 1838) and it was the same game the Knickerbockers afterward played."

As told by Knickerbocker captain Charles DeBost in 1888, covered at Henderson, p. 150, no ref given. Note: Henderson puts these words in quotation marks, but does not indicate whom he is quoting.

Pre-Knicks NYC

Cricket

The St. George Cricket Club of New York City is formed, composed of English-born American residents. Its professional player was Sam Wright, father of baseball notables Harry and George Wright.

Per John Thorn, 6/15/04: Source is Chadwick Scrapbooks, Volume 20.

For more on this club see https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/among-the-cricketers-7cff9af66dc0

Fiction, Famous

Western New York

"'Do you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effington? . . . Why, sir, I believe they have always played ball in that precise locality.'

He called out in a wheedling tone to their ringleader, a notorious street brawler. 'A fine time for sport, Dickey; don't you think there would be more room in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose our ball so often in the shrubbery?'

'This place will do, on a pinch,' bawled Dickey, 'though it might be better. If it weren't for the plagued house, we couldn't ask for a better ball-ground. . . '

'Well, Dickey . . . , there is no accounting for tastes, but in my opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball in than this lawn . . . There are so many fences hereabouts . . . It's true the village trustees say there shall be no ball-playing in the street [see item #1816.1 above - LM], but I conclude you don't much mind what they say or threaten.'"

Thus James Fenimore Cooper, in his novel Home As Found, describes the return of the Effingham family to Templeton and their ancestral home in Cooperstown, NY. The passage is thought to be based on a similar incident in Cooper's life in 1834 or 1835. In an unidentified photocopy held in the HOF's "Origins of Baseball" file, the author of A City on the Rise, at page 11, observes that "Cooper was the first writer to connect the game with the national character, and to recognize its vital place in American life." Another source calls this "the first literary ball game:"

http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/cooperstown/baseball.html. Caveat: In a 1/24/2008 posting to 19BCC, Richard Hershberger writes: I believe the consensus on the Cooper reference is that it likely was something more hockey-like than baseball-like."

James Fenimore Cooper, Home as Found [W.A. Townsend and Co., New York 1860] Chapter 11. The 1838 first edition was published by Lea and Blanchard in Philadelphia - data submitted by John Thorn, 7/11/2004.

Canada

Base Ball

Residents of Oxford County gather near Beachville, Ontario, to play the first recorded game of baseball in Canada (reported only in 1886). The Canadian version uses five bases, a three strikes rule and three outs to a side. Foul lines are described.

Ford, Dr. Adam E., Sporting Life, May 5, 1886. Reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 9-11. For more historical data on this event, see Nancy B. Bouchier and Robert Knight Brown, "A Critical Examination of a Source on Early Ontario Baseball: The Reminiscences of Adam E. Ford," Journal of Sport History, volume 15 [Spring 1988], pp. 75-87. This paper concludes that the New York game reached Ontario no earlier than 1849.

Caveat: Richard Hershberger, email of 1/14/2008, expresses the possibility that aspects of the Ford account are the result of a "confused recollection, with genuine old features and modern features misremembered and attributed to the old game." One problem is that the foul territory as described in 1886 is hard to fathom; Richard also notes that use of the 3-out-all-out rule would make this game the only non-NYC game with three-out innings. Ford also implies that games were then finished at the end of an agreed number of innings, not by reaching an agreed number of scores. He also states that older players in the 1838 game had played a like game in their youth. Adam Ford was seven years old in 1838.

For full text of Dr. Ford's 1886 letter, see the supplemental text.

College, US cricket clubs

United States

Cricket

"Games and gymnasiums as a regular part of college work, and hence regular organizations of students for athletics, were unknown at that time. Athletics and games there were indeed a plenty, but as purely spontaneous expressions of abounding vitality. I was light, active, and fleet of foot, and became very expert in gymnastics and as a player of town-ball, for baseball and cricket had not yet evolved." [LeConte writes of his college years at the University of Georgia in Athens. He entered as a freshman in January 1838.]

LeConte, Joseph. The Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte (D. Appleton & Company, New York, 1903), page 46. Provided by John Thorn, email of 7/9/04

The Poetic Gift; or Alphabet in Rhyme [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 202. Another chapbook. Mister Babcock again dusts off that baseball woodcut from the 1832 Mary's Book of Sports (see item #1832.3 item above).

Rounders

Montague, W., The Youth's Encyclopedia of Health: with Games and Play Ground Amusements [London, W. Emans], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, pages 202-203. This book covers trap-ball, listing the ways that a batter could be put out. But then, there's "squares."

Reports Block: "a short passage describ[es] a game called squares, which was nearly identical to early baseball and rounders. The text depicts four bases laid out in a square, although it is ambiguous as to whether home plate was one of the four bases or a separate location. The bases are described as being a 'considerable distance' apart, which suggests that the dimensions may have been larger than other versions of early baseball. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only instance of the name 'squares' being used as a pseudonym for baseball or rounders. The author was obviously not impressed with the pastime, concluding . . . : 'There is nothing particular[ly] fascinating in this game.'" Note: follow up to reflect games covered.

For Text: David Block carries a paragraph of text in Appendix 7, page 284, of Baseball Before We Knew It.

"Walter Colton Abbott, of Michigan, sends to The Gazette a copy of what he believed to be the first verse of rhyme inspired by the national game. It was published in the New York News and Courier about the year 1838, and is as follows:

"Then dress, then dress, brave gallants all,/ Don uniforms amain;/ Remember fame and honor call/ Us to the field again/ No shrewish tears shall fill our eye/ When the ball club's in our hand,/ If we lose we will not sigh,/ Nor plead a butter hand./ Let piping swain and craven jay/ Thus weep and puling cry,/ Our business is like men to play,/ Or know the reason why."

National Daily Baseball Gazette, April 20, 1887. Submitted by John Thorn 8/9/2002 Note: Assuming the date is recalled correctly [help?] this rhyme is notable for the reference to uniforms, for the notion that the "national game" was in full swing in 1838, and for the emphasis on manly demeanor. "A butter hand" refers to the butterfingers jibe. A later letter to the Gazette's editor stated that the verse was adapted from William Motherwell's "Song of the Cavalier."

Bass Ball

"The males are also engaged at bowls, quoits, bass ball, fishing, fancy painting, walking dancing, reading, swinging, and throwing the ring."

"Lady Manners", "Moral Management of the Insane," The Friend: a Religious and Literary Journal, Volume 11, Number 38 (June 23, 1838), page 303. Submitted by John Thorn.

This was originally from the report of the McLean Asylum in Charlestown, MA, published in the Boston Messenger, March 9, 1837.

Do we know a location for this report?

Pre-Knicks NYC

Cricket

[A] "It was in the fall of 1838 that we remember the first cricket match played in Brooklyn. The game of course, was a great novelty to the Brooklyn people of the time, except to such portion of them as wren of English birth. . . . The contestants were Nottingham men and Sheffielders." Sheffield won, 167 to 44.

 [B] Ryczek's Baseball-s First Inning (page 101) calls this contest the "first widely-reported 'modern' cricket match."

"Sporting Reminiscences," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 16, 1873.

William Ryczek, Baseball's First Inning (McFarland, 2009), page 101.

Philadelphia

Town Ball

"Messrs Editors - Feeling desirous the other day of breathing air somewhat purer [than Philadelphia PA's, I took the ferry to Camden]. I took up a stroll into the bordering woods; it being a lovely day, all nature seemed to be in vegetation. A small distance from the woods, I beheld a party of young men (the majority of whom I afterwards distinguished to be Market street merchants) and who styled themselves the "Olympic Club," a title well answering to its name by the manner in which the party amused itself in the recreant pleasure of town ball, and several other games. In my estimation, there is much benefit to be derived from a club of this nature. Young men who are confined to the daily toils of business, and who can get away . . . should avail themselves of the opportunity to become associated with the "Olympic Club." Signed, H.M.O.

Public Ledger(Philadelphia PA) May 14, 1838. Posted by Richard Hershberger to the 19CBB listserve, April 1, 2009. Subscription search. Richard notes that this becomes the earliest Philly ref to town ball, and pushes back from 1858 the earliest contemporary account of the Olympics. 1838 is also the reported date of the Club's constitution. Note: The writer and editor obviously expected readers to be familiar with town ball, and the name town ball.

Antedated Firsts

Canada

"P. H. Moor, a stage-driver, was killed in Lower Canada on the 29^th ult. by Fisher Ames by a blow given with a bat in a passion, during a game of ball play. He was taken up." (Newark Daily Advertiser (NJ), pg. 2, September 8, 1838.)

Newark Daily Advertiser (NJ), pg. 2, September 8, 1838.

A more detailed newspaper account says that Fisher Ames' 12-year-old son, who was playing "ball" with some other boys, threw a ball at Moor, who then attacked the boy. The father rushed over and split Moor's skull with a "club."

Fisher Ames (1800-85) beat the murder rap. The son was probably Charles Ira Ames. [ba]

Bill Humber furnished the following account, from a local doctor: "Hazleton Moore.... was drunk and joined in the game of ball in front of the store. Something Ames said or did provoked him and instead of throwing the ball to him he threw it at him, when Ames rushed towards him and struck him with the club in the head. He ... died the next day. The inquest... resulted in the acquittal of Ames on my evidence, that the blow need not have been fatal had M's skull not been extraordinarily thin."

Another account, from 1890: "It was in 1837 that Hazleton Moore was killed. I was there at the time. Ames was a very passionate man, and his first blow might be excused on that ground, but he struck him twice, the second blow when he was lying insensible on the ground. The Americans.... bribed Moore's wife to say away, and her absence at the trial helped to get Ames off. She acted badly."

Nicholson's 1838 Map of Public Squares and Parks in New York City (online) gives maps of all the public spaces on Manhattan Island at that time. Baseball could be played at most of these, and in the future would be played at several. They included: The Battery (known, at the southern tip of Manhattan) Duane Park, at Hudson and Duane (too small) City Hall Park--see Protoball fields Hudson Square--bounded by Hudson, Beech, Varick. About where the Holland Tunnel circle is today Washington Square--4th/6th Sts. and 5th Ave. Tompkins Square--7th/10th Sts, Aves. A/B Union Place--14th/17th Sts and Union Square Stuyvesant Square--15th/17th Sts and Lexington Bloomingdale Square--53rd/57th Sts between 8th and 9th Aves. Gramercy Park--20th/21st Sts and Lexington (small) Madison Square--see Protoball fields Hamilton Square--see Protoball fields Manhattan Square--77th/81st Sts, 8th/9th Ave Observatory Place--89th/94th Sts., between 4th/5th Aves. Mount Morris--See Protoball fields.

Of course not all these public parks were suitable for, or allowed, baseball.

In Upper Manhattan Island, Jones' Wood and Conrad's Yorkville Park were later picnic venues. Central Park was started in the 1850s, but its commissioners didn't allow organized baseball match games until 1868.

Nicholson's 1838 Map of Public Squares and Parks in New York City

This entry is intended as a guide to tracing baseball in NYC.

See also French's 1860 NY State Gazetteer, p. 423, for a description of the parks.

Pre-modern Rules

Western New York

Town Ball

Juvenile

[A] Abner Doubleday, who was to become a Civil War notable, is much later (1905) said to have "invented" baseball at Cooperstown, New York, according to the findings of the Mills Commission (1905-1907), a group of baseball magnates appointed by the American and National League Presidents to investigate the origins of baseball. The Commission bases its findings almost entirely on letters received from Abner Graves, a resident of Cooperstown in his childhood. The Commission's findings are soon discredited by historians who proclaim the "Doubleday Invention" to be entirely a myth.

The Doubleday game, according to Graves' offerings, retained the plugging of runners, eleven players per team, and flat bats that were four inches wide. Graves sees the main improvement of the Doubleday game that it limited the size of teams, while town ball permitted "twenty to fifty boys in the field."

Graves believed that Abner Doubleday was 16 or 17 years old when he saw him lay out his improved game [in fact, Doubleday was 20 in 1839, and at West Point]. Graves himself declined to fix a year to the Doubleday plan, suggesting that it might have occurred in 1839, 1840, or 1841. In choosing 1839, the Commission rested its story on the memory of a boy who was then 5 years old.

 [B] Mark Pestana provides a scenario of this game, which he considers more likely to have taken place in 1840.

[C] As Pestana does, Hugh MacDougall wonders if Graves was confusing (General) Abner Doubleday with his younger cousin, Abner D. Doubleday, who was closer to Graves' age and was in Cooperstown at the time.

[A] Three Letters from Abner Graves -- two letters to the Mills Commission, April 3, 1905 and November 17, 1905 and one of unknown details. To read them, go here.

[B] Mark Pestana, "The Legendary Doubleday Game", Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 3-5

[C] Hugh MacDougall, Abner Graves: The Man who Brought Baseball to Cooperstown, 2011. 

Bans

On May 8, the New York City By-laws and Ordinancesprohibit ball playing: "No person shall play at ball, quoits, or any other sport or play whatsoever, in any public place in the City of New York, nor throw stones nor run foot races in or over or upon the same, under the penalty of five dollars for each offence."

Source is By-Laws and Ordinances of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonality of the City of New York. Revised 1838-1839 [William B. Townsend, New York, 1839], page 215.

College, Famous

In a May 13 letter to his brother, the future President observed: "Playing ball is all the fashion here now and it is presumed that I can beat you at that if not at chess."

Williams, C. R., ed., Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States volume 1 [Ohio State Archeological and Historical Society, Columbus OH, 1922], page 33. 

Rounders

The Saturday Magazine [London], number 430, March 16, 1839, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 203. "Games with a Ball" treats stool-ball, trap-ball, tip-cat, among other games, and owes much to Strutt (see 1801 entry, above). The writer advises, "[Stool-ball] differs but very little from the game of rounders which is much played at the present day at the west of England." Block observes: "It is curious that the author equates rounders and stool-ball, since the former utilized a bat while Strutt's sketch of stool-ball stated that the ball was struck by the bare hand."

Cricket

"Besides New York City and Boston, early organized cricket teams appeared in Albany, Troy and Schenectady, New York in 1839."

Spirit of the Times, September 5, 1839, page 246. As cited in Gelber, Steven M., "'Their Hands Are All Out Playing:' Business and Amateur Baseball, 1845-1917," Journal of Sport History, Vol. 11, number 1 (Spring 1984), page 14. Caveat: John Thorn questions the accuracy of this article, noting that the Spirit had covered cricket in Albany, Schenectady and Troy in 1838 [email of 2/9/2008].

Pre-Knicks NYC

Base Ball

"Adams, known to all as 'Doc,' began to play baseball in 1839. "I was always interested in athletics while in college and afterward, and soon after going to New York I began to play base ball just for exercise, with a number of other young medical men. Before that there had been a club called the New York Base Ball Club, but it had no very definite organization and did not last long. Some of the younger members of that club got together and formed the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club . . . . The players included merchants, lawyers, Union Bank clerks, insurance clerks, and others who were at liberty after 3 o'clock in the afternoon."

From John Thorn, "Doc Adams" in the SABR Biography Project. See http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=639&pid=16943, accessed 12/5/2008. The source for the quoted material, offered when Adams was 81years old, is "Dr. D. L. ADAMS; Memoirs of the Father of Base Ball; He Resides in New Haven and Retains an Interest in the Game," The Sporting News, February 29, 1896. Caveat: the year that Adams began playing is not clear. We know that he finished medical school in Boston in 1838, and he recalls that he next began to practice and that "soon after going" to NYC he began to play. [Email from John Thorn, 2/9/2008.]

Holidays, Newspaper Coverage

"bat and ball"

Youth, Adult

. . . we must be permitted to say, when we see boys six feet high and thirty years old,  desecrating the very hours of public worship to ‘bat and ball,’ or some other idle game, we  feel  pained that principle has fallen so low that even decorum is not preserved.

For fuller text, see Supplemental Text, below

Newburyport Herald, Thursday, March 28, 1839

The text does not mention Fast Day explicitly.

Newburyport MA (1840 population about 7000) is near the northeastern corner of the state, and 35 miles NE of Boston.  As of 2020, this is the 6th pre-1840 reference to Newburyport in Protoball.

Shinty

The New York Morning Herald, Sept. 10, 1839 reports on the 4th annual gathering of the Highland Society in Hoboken, featuring outdoor Scottish games. "Shinty was played exceedingly well." Goes on to explain that Shinty is what the Irish call Hurling.

For more on Shinty in the U.S., see the Lancaster (PA) Daily Evening Express, Feb. 2, 1860 and the Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 26, 1857. A Hurling Club was formed in Buffalo, NY in 1860. See the Buffalo Courier, June 11, 1860.

The New York Morning Herald, Sept. 10, 1839

Pre-Knicks NYC

Adult

D.L. Adams plays a game in New York City that he understands to be base ball, "...with a number of other young medical men. Before that there had been a club called the New York Base Ball Club, but it had no very definite organization and did not last long." The game played by Adams was the same as that played by the men who would become the Knickerbockers. The game was played with an indeterminate number of men to the side, although eight was customary.

Adams, Daniel L, "Memoirs of the Father of Base Ball," Sporting News, February 29, 1896. Per Sullivan, p.14. Reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 13-18. Note: the Sullivan extract does not mention 1840; it there another reference that does? John Thorn - email of 12/4/2008 - suggests that the game employed a four-base configuration, not the five bases and square configuration in other games. "The polygonal field sometimes ascribed to the later pre-Knickerbocker players was the likely standard prior to 1830."

Base Ball

"I am now in my eighty-third year, and I know that seventy years ago (i.e., in 1840) as a boy at school in a country school district in Erie County, PA, I played Base Ball with my schoolmates; and I know it was a common game long before my time. It had just the same form as the Base Ball of today, and the rules of the game were nearly the same as they are now. One bad feature of the old game, I am glad to say, is not now permitted. The catchers, both the one behind the batter and those on the field, could throw the ball and hit the runner between the bases with all the swiftness he could put into it - "burn him," it was said.

Letter from Andrew H. Caughey to New YorkTribune, 1910. From Henderson, p. 150-151, no reference given.

Philadelphia

Cricket

Per Rader, p. 90; [no citation given.] Caveat: recent research does not support this assertion. Caution: the evidence for this needs to be obtained.

College

New England

"Apart from rowing and track, baseball was the only other intercollegiate sport to generate much interest prior to 1869. Boys from the eastern academies introduced a version of baseball to college campuses in the 1840s and 1850s."

Benjamin Rader, American Sports (Prentice-Hall, 1983), page 74: no citation given. Caveat: Recent research calls this assertion into some question, as we now have many prior references to college ballplaying, including cricket and wicket. See http://retrosheet.org/Protoball/Sub.College.htm.

Pre-Knicks NYC

At a later time, Henry Chadwick, the first baseball publicist, writes . . ."New York Game originated in 1840...."

Henderson, Robert W., Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origins of Ball Games [Rockport Press, 1947], p. 161-162. No reference given.

Pre-Knicks NYC

Base Ball

Adult