1842.11

Rounders Reported at Swiss School

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags
Location
City/State/Country:	Bern, Switzerland
Modern Address
Game	RoundersRounders
Immediacy of Report	Contemporary
Age of Players	YouthYouth
Holiday
Notables
Text	An 1842 reference indicates that rounders was played at an international agricultural school near Bern. "During a general game, in which some of the masters join (rounders I think the English boys called it) I have observed . . . "
Sources	Letters from Hofwyl by a Parent on the Educational Institutions of De Fellenberg, (Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, London, 1842), page 90. Accessible on Google Books 11/14/2013 via <letters from hofwyl> search.
Warning
Comment	From David Block: "Unless I'm forgetting something, this may be the earliest example we have of baseball or rounders being played outside of Britain or North America. (I don't count the 1796 description of English baseball by J.C.F. Gutsmuths because there is no evidence that the game was actually played in Germany.) Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Was the game dissimilar from the European "battingball games" reported by Maigaard? Can we determine whether the players were youths or juveniles? Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:\|left\|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by	David Block
Submission Note	Email of 11/13/2013
Has Supplemental Text

Comments