Straight Town

{{Game |Term=Straight Town |Game Family=Baseball |Game Eras=1800s |Invented Game=No

|Description=

19th-century reflections from essays by schoolboys in rural Virginia: 

[William Ayers Dyer essay:] "I was born May 10, 1880 at Stratton, Dickenson County, Virginia and started to school to Johnson Skeen at the Buffalo School in 1885 when I was 5 years old... The games we played at the Buffalo were straight town, round town, base, bull pen and antnee over." (Bull pen was dodgeball, but played with a baseball. Ouch!)

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 [Hampton Osborne (b. 1894) essay: "'Round-town' and 'straight-town' were popular games. Round-town had four bases in a circle, as baseball does today. If the batter was caught or crossed-off both ways, he was out. Straight-town had four bases in a row and you used the same rules as round-town."There were three or four base games, but 'Stink-base' was the most popular..." (describes game effectively identical to prisoner's base, which we take to be a form of capture-the-flag)

|Sources=

Dennis Reedy, ed., School and Community History of Dickenson County, Virginia

|Comment=

Found by Bill Hicklin, email of February 6, 2016.

|Has Supplemental Text=No