Chronology:US South

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1609.1 Polish Origins of Baseball Perceived in Jamestown VA Settlement

Location:

US South, VA

Game:

Xenoball

Age of Players:

Adult

"Soon after the new year [1609], [we] initiated a ball game played with a bat . . . . Most often we played this game on Sundays. We rolled up rags to make balls . . . Our game attracted the savages who sat around the field, delighted with this Polish sport."

A 1975 letter from Matthew Baranski letter to the HOF said:

"For your information and records, I am pleased to inform you that after much research I have discovered that baseball was introduced to America by the Poles who arrived in Jamestown in 1609. . . . Records of the University of Krakow, the oldest school of higher learning in Poland show that baseball or batball was played by the students in the 14th century and was part of the official physical culture program."

 

Sources:

The 1609 source is Zbigniew Stefanski, Memorial Commercatoris [A Merchant's Memoirs], (Amsterdam, 1625), as cited in David Block's Baseball Before We Knew It, page 101. Stefanski was a skilled Polish workingman who wrote a memoir of his time in the Jamestown colony: an entry for 1609 related the Polish game of pilka palantowa(bat ball). Another account by a scholar reported adds that "the playfield consisted of eight bases not four, as in our present day game of baseball." If true, this would imply that the game involved running as well as batting.

1975 Letter:  from Matthew Baranski to the Baseball Hall ofFame, March 23, 1975.  [Found in the Origins file at the Giamatti Center.]  Matthew  Baranski himself cites First Poles in America1608-1958, published by the Polish Falcons of America, Pittsburgh, but  unavailable online as of 7/28/09.  We have not confirmed that sighting. 

See also David Block, "Polish Workers Play Ball at Jamestown Virginia: An Early Hint of Continental Europe's Influence on Baseball," Base Ball (Origins Issue), Volume 5, number 1 (Spring 2011), pp.5-9.

 

Comment:

Per Maigaard's 1941 survey of "battingball games" includes a Polish variant of long ball, but does not mention pilka palantowa by name. However, pilka palantowa may merely be a longer/older term for palant, the Polish form of long ball still played today.

The likelihood that pilka palantowa left any legacy in America is fairly low, since the Polish glassblowers returned home after a year and there is no subsequent mention of any similar game in colonial Virginia

Year
1609
Item
1609.1
Edit

1709.1 A Form of [Two-man and Four-man] Cricket Played in Virginia

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

In an April 25, 1709 diary entry, William Byrd, owner of the Virginia plantation Westover, wrote: "I rose at 6 o'clock and said my prayers shortly. Mr. W-l-s and I fenced and I beat him. Then we played at cricket, Mr. W-l-s and John Custis against me and Mr. [Hawkins], but we were beaten. I ate nothing but milk for breakfast . . ."

On May 6 of the same year he noted: "I rose about 6 o'clock and Colonel Ludwell, Nat Harrison, Mr. Edwards and myself played at cricket, and I won a bit [presumably an eighth of a Spanish dollar]. Then we played at whist and I won. About 10 o'clock we went to breakfast and I ate some boiled rice." Another undated entry showed that cricket was not just an early-morning pastime: "About 10 o'clock Dr. Blair, and Major and Captain Harrison came to see us. After I had given them a glass of sack we played cricket. I ate boiled beef for my dinner. Then we played at shooting with arrows...and went to cricket again till dark."

Wright, Louis B., and Marion Tinling, eds., The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover 1709-1712 [Dietz Press, Richmond, 1941], pages 25-26 and 31. We have no page reference for the third mention of cricket, which appears in a short article on Smithsonian.com, as accessed 1/20/2007. Thanks to John Thorn for reference data [email of 2/1/2008].

Year
1709
Item
1709.1
Edit

1737.2 Doctor Writes of North Carolina Game Resembling Ireland's Trap Ball

Location:

US South

Brickell, an Irishman, writes of NC Indians: "They have [a] game which is managed with a Battoon, and very much resembles our Trap-ball."

Brickell, John., The Natural History of North Carolina [James Carson, Dublin, 1737], p. 336. Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, ref # 20.

Year
1737
Item
1737.2
Edit

1737.3 Cricket Played in Georgia Town Square

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

Georgia planter William Stephens: "Many of our Townsmen, Freeholders, Inmates, and Servants were assembled in the principal Square, at Cricket and divers other athletick Sports."

A Journal of the Proceedings in Georgia, II, page 217, as cited in Lester, ed., A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [U Penn, 1951], page 4. Lester cites this account as the first mention of American cricket.

Year
1737
Item
1737.3
Edit

1750s.2 Town Ball and Cat Played in NC Lowlands?

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

"Of formalized games, choices for males [in NC] appear to have been 'town-ball, bull-pen,' 'cat,' and 'prisoner's base,' whatever exhibitions of dexterity they may have involved." 

-- Biographer C. G. Davidson, on local pastimes in North Carolina

 

 

 

Sources:

Chalmers G. Davidson, Piedmont Partisan: The Life and Times of Brigadier-General William Lee Davidson (Davidson College, Davidson NC, 1951), page 20. 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.

Warning:

This is a very early claim for town ball, preceding even New England references to bat-and-ball,  roundball or like games. It would be useful to examine C. Davidson's sources on town ball and cat.  Are we content that these games were found in NC in the 1750s?

Comment:

 

Prisoner's base is not a ball game, and bull-pen is not a safe-haven game.

Query:

Note: Can we determine what region of NC is under discussion here? Text of the biography is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/15/2008. 

Decade
1750s
Item
1750s.2
Edit

1773.3 Ball-Playing by Slaves Is Eyed in SC

Location:

US South

"We present as a growing Evil, the frequent assembling of Negroes in the Town [Beaufort, SC] on Sundays, and playing games of Trap-ball and Fives, which is not taken proper notice of by Magistrates, Constables, and other Parish Officers."

Tom Altherr, Originals, Volume 2, Number 11 (November 2009), page 1. Tom sees this reference as "possibly the earliest which refers to African Americans, slaves or also possibly a few free blacks, playing a baseball-type game [although it is not clear if it involved any running], and playing frequently. Beaufort SC is about 40 miles NE of Savannah GA, near the coastline.

Year
1773
Item
1773.3
Edit

1785.1 Thomas Jefferson: Hunting is Better for Character-building Than Ballplaying

Tags:

Famous

Location:

US South

"Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind."

 

Sources:

Thomas Jefferson [VA]. letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785, in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson [Princeton University Press, 1953], volume 8, p. 407.  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 241.

 

Year
1785
Item
1785.1
Edit

1790s.4 Southern Pols Calhoun and Crawford: Ballplaying Schoolmates?

Tags:

Famous

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

"These two illustrious statesmen [southern leaders John C. Calhoun and William H. Crawford], who had played town ball and marbles and gathered nuts together . . . were never again to view each other except in bonds of bitterness."

J. E. D. Shipp, Giant Days: or the Life and Times of William H. Crawford [Southern Printers, 1909], page 167. Caveat: Crawford was ten years older than Calhoun, so it seems unlikely that they were close in school. Both leaders had attended Waddell's school [in GA] but that school opened in 1804 [see #1804.1] when Crawford was 32 years old, so their common school must have preceded their time at Waddell's.

Decade
1790s
Item
1790s.4
Edit

1795.2 Survey Reports Cricket in New England, Playing at Ball in TN

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

Winterbotham, William, An Historical, Geographical, Commercial and Philosophical View of the American United States [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 180. Coverage of New England [volume 2, page 17] reports that "The healthy and athletic diversions of cricket, foot ball, quoits, wrestling, jumping, hopping, foot races, and prison bars, are universally practiced in the country, and some of them in the most populous places, and by people of almost all ranks." The Tennessee section [volume 3, page 235] mentions the region's fondness for sports, including "playing at ball." Block notes that Winterbotham is sometimes credited with saying that bat and ball was popular in America before the Revolutionary War, and that adults played it, but reports that scholars, himself included, have not yet confirmed such wording at this point.

Year
1795
Item
1795.2
Edit

1797.3 Fayetteville NC Bans Sunday Ballplaying by African-Americans

Location:

US South

Gilbert, Tom, Baseball and the Color Line [Franklin Watts, NY, 1995], p.38. Per Millen, note # 15.

Year
1797
Item
1797.3
Edit

1797.5 In NC, Negroes Face 15 Lashes for Ballplaying

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Adult

A punishment of 15 lashes was specified for "negroes, that shall make a noise or assemble in a riotous manner in any of the streets [of Fayetteville NC] on the Sabbath day; or that may be seen playing ball on that day."

Sources:

North-Carolina Minerva (March 11, 1797), excerpted in G. Johnson, Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History (Chapel Hill NC, 1937), page 551; as cited in 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 29.

Year
1797
Item
1797.5
Edit

1801.4 Cricket Challenge in GA

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

A New York paper copies a cricket challenge from a Savannah paper that notes "no legs before wickets."

New YorkGazette and General Advertiser, March 18, 1801, page 3. Submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2005.

Year
1801
Item
1801.4
Edit

1802c.1 South Carolina Man Lists Ball-Playing Among Local Amusements

Location:

US South

"[A]musements are few: consisting of dancing, horse racing, ball playing and rifle shooting."

Sources:

Drayton, John, A View of South-Carolina, As Respects Her Natural and Civil Concerns [W. P. Young, Charleston SC, 1854], p. 88. Per Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball before We Knew It, page 247 ref #87.

Query:

Can we determine the SC location recalled, why Tom dated it as circa 1802, or what form the ballplaying took? 

Circa
1802
Item
1802c.1
Edit

1804.1 SC School Opens, Students Play Town Ball and Bull Pen

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

At Moses Waddell's "famous academy" established in Willington, SC in 1804, "instead of playing baseball or football, boys took their recreation in running jumping, wrestling, playing town ball and bull pen."

Meriwether, Colyer, History of Higher Education in South Carolina[Washington GPO, 1889], chapter II, page 39. Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Note: The terminology in this source appears more current than 1804, and it would be wise to consider whether it accurately depicts 1804 events. In addition, Seymour's note does not make clear whether the play described occurred at the time of the establishment of the academy, or later in its history.

Year
1804
Item
1804.1
Edit

1804.3 A "Match at Ball" in Northwest Louisiana?

Location:

US South

In a listing of articles in North Louisiana History, we spy this citation: Morgan Peoples, "Caddoes Host 'Match at Ball," Volume 11, Number 3 (Summer 1980), pp. 353-36. Query: Can we retrieve the actual article and discover the particulars? Caddo Parish is just northwest of Shreveport LA. It appears that Caddo tribe was in this area, and we might speculate that the hosted games were Indian ballgames.

Year
1804
Item
1804.3
Edit

1805.6 In SC, Some Slaves Use Sundays for Ballplaying

Location:

US South

"The negroes when not hurried have this day [Sunday] for amusement & great numbers are seen about, some playing ball, some with things for sale & some dressed up going to meeting."   -- Edward Hooker

 

Sources:

Edward Hooker, Diaries, 1805-1830: MS 72876 and 72877, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford CT; 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 29-30. Tom [ibid, page 29] describes Hooker as a recent Yale graduate who in 1805 was a newly-arrived tutor in Columbia, SC. 

Comment:

Tom Altherr says "this may be the first recorded evidence of slaves [see p29/30] playing ball.

Query:

How about the evidence in 1797.5?

Year
1805
Item
1805.6
Edit

1807.3 Lost Poet Remembers College Ballplay, Maybe in Baltimore

Tags:

College

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Youth

Garrett Barry wrote in his sentimental verse "On Leaving College:"

"I'll fondly tract, with fancy's aid,/The spot where all our sports were made./ . . .

The little train forever gay,/With joy obey'd the pleasing call,/And nimbly urged the flying ball."

 

Sources:

Barry, Garrett, "On Leaving College," in Poems, on Several Occasions (Cole and Co., Baltimore, 1807), no page given: Citation from Thomas L. Altherr, "A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball," reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, see pages 240. 

Comment:

2008 update: John Thorn [email of 2/3/2008] discovers that others have been unable to determine exactly who the poet was, as there were three people with the name Garrett Barry in that area at that time. One of the three, who died at thirty in 1810, attended St. Mary's College in Baltimore.

Query:

Can we determine from biographical information where and when Barry attended college? Is it significant that Barry reprises the phrase "urge the flying ball," seen as a cricket phrase in Pope [see #1730.1] and Gray [#1747.1]? Did Barry live/play in MD?

Year
1807
Item
1807.3
Edit

1812c.1 Young Andrew Johnson Plays Cat and Bass Ball and Bandy in Raleigh NC

Tags:

Famous

Location:

US South

Game:

Bass Ball

Age of Players:

Juvenile

[At age four] "he spent many hours at games with boys of the neighborhood, his favorite being 'Cat and Bass Ball and Bandy,' the last the 'choyst' game of all."

Sources:

Letter from Neal Brown, July 15, 1867, in Johnson Mss., Vol. 116, No. 16,106.[Publisher?]

Query:

Listed Source seems incomplete or garbled.  Help?

Circa
1812
Item
1812c.1
Edit
Source Text
Source Image

1812.2 Soldier Van Smoot's Diary Notes Playing Catch at New Orleans LA

Tags:

Military

Location:

US South

Peter Van Smoot, an Army private present at the Battle of New Orleans, writes in his diary: "I found a soft ball in my knapsack, that I forgot I had put there and started playing catch with it."

Note: Citation needed. John Thorn, 6/15/04: "I don't recognize this one"

Year
1812
Item
1812.2
Edit

1815c.7 New Englander Writes of Ballyards in Virginia

Location:

US South

"I saw a young man betted upon, for five hundred dollars, at a foot race. Indeed every thing is decided by a wager . . . . What would a northern man think, to see a father, and a sensible and respected one, too, go out with a company, and play marbles? At some cross-roads, or smooth shaven greens, you may a wooden wall, high and broad as the side of a church, erected for men to play ball against."

"Arthur Singleton" (Henry Cogswell Knight), "Letters from the South and West," Salem [MA] Gazette, July 30, 1824. This paper extracted portions of a new book, which had been written between 1814 and 1819, by Knight, who was reared in Massachusetts and graduated from Brown in 1812. Online text unavailable 2/3/10. Query: The ballplaying facility as described seems uncongenial for cricket or a baserunning game, unless it was a form of barn-ball. Isn't a form of hand-ball a more likely possibility? Was handball, or fives, common in VA at this stage?

Circa
1815
Item
1815c.7
Edit

1818.4 Cricket Reported in Louisville KY?

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

"It is not unreasonable to speculate that as the immigrants came down the Ohio River . . . they brought with them the leisure activities hat had already developed in the cities along the Atlantic coast. There are reports of a form of cricket being played in the city as early at 1818."

 

Sources:

Bailey, Bob, "Beginnings; From Amateur Teams to Disgrace in the National League," [1999], page 1. Bob (email, 1/27/2013), further quotes Dean Sullivan's master's thesis, Ball-oriented Sport in a Southern City: A Study of the Organizational Evolution of Baseball in Louisville (George Mason University): "Ball-oriented sports had been reported in Kentucky as early as 1818, when travelers stumbled upon a primitive game of cricket."

Comment:

Note: The original source of the 1818 reference may have been lost. Bob reports that Dean Sullivan thesis cited Harold Peterson's The Man Who Invented Baseball (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), page 24. However, Peterson gives no source. A dead end?

Query:

Are there other sightings of this 1818 cricket account?

Year
1818
Item
1818.4
Edit

1821.2 Cricket Not New in South Carolina

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

Age of Players:

Adult

"The members of the old cricket club are requested to attend a meeting of [sic?] the Carolina Coffee House tomorrow evening."

 

Sources:

Charleston Southern Patriot, January 23, 1821, per Holliman, American Sport 1785 - 1835, page 68.

Year
1821
Item
1821.2
Edit

1825c.4 John Oliver Plays Base Ball in Baltimore

Location:

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.

Comment:

See also 1825.15, 1827.9, 1835.3

Circa
1825
Item
1825c.4
Edit

1825c.6 Cricket Played at Southern Outings

Location:

US South

Game:

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.

Circa
1825
Item
1825c.6
Edit

1827.9 Baltimore MD Bans Ballplaying on Sundays and within City Limits

Tags:

Bans

Location:

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:

Comment:

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

Year
1827
Item
1827.9
Edit

1828.15 1828 Advertisement for the Cricket Club in New Orleans

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

Age of Players:

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."

Sources:

The New Orleans Louisiana Advertiser, Feb. 27, 1828

Year
1828
Item
1828.15
Edit

1830s.20 In GA, Men Played Fives, Schoolboys Played Base and Town Ball

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

Age of Players:

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." 

Sources:

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. 

Comment:

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.

Query:

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

Decade
1830s
Item
1830s.20
Edit

1840c.23 Old-Fashioned Ballgame Noted in Antebellum GA

Location:

US South

Game:

Base Ball

"A number of gentlemen are about to form another base ball club, the game to be played after the fashion in the South twenty years ago, when old field schools were the scenes of trial of activity, and rosy cheeked girls were the umpires"

Macon Daily Telegraph, March 2, 1860. Posted to 19CBB by John Thorn, 9/11/2007.

Circa
1840
Item
1840c.23
Edit

1840.24 Unusual Georgia Townball Described in Unusual Detail

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

Age of Players:

Juvenile

Richard Hershberger located [and posted to 19CBB on 8/29/2007] a long recollection of "Old Field Games in 1840" including townball. The account, a reprint of an earlier document, appears in James S. Lamar, "Pioneer Days in Georgia," Columbus [GA] Enquirer, March 18, 1917, [page?].

"Townball" used a circular area whose size and number of [equidistant] bases varied with available space and with number of players [no standard team size is given, but none of the forty boys in school need be left out]. Instead of a diamond, a circle of up to 50 yards in diameter marked the basepaths; thus, a batter would cover on the order of 450 feet in scoring a run. There was a three-strike rule, and a batter could decide not to run on a weak hit unless he had used up two strikes. A member of the batting side pitched, and not aggressively. The ball was small [the core had a 2-inch diameter and was consisted of tightly-would rubber strips, often wound around a lead bullet]. The core was buckskin and the ball was very bouncy. Bats might be round, flat, or paddle-shaped. A ball caught on the fly or first bound was an out. There was plugging. Stealing was disallowed, and leading may have been. Innings were all-out-side-out. There is no mention of backward hitting or foul ground. "If young people want to play ball, Townball is the game. If they simply want to see somebody else play ball, then Baseball may be better"

Full text was accessed at http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/georgiabooks/id:gb0361 on 10/22/2008, and is available here. Note: Lamar's text dates the game at 1840, when he was 10 to 11 years old. One can not tell when the text was written; the last date cited in the text is 1854, but the townball section seems to compare it with baseball from a much later time. The Digital Library of Georgia uses a date of "19—." See: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/meta/html/dlg/zlgb/meta_dlg_zlgb_gb0361.html. Lamar died in 1908; other sources say 1905.

Sources:

James S. Lamar, "Pioneer Days in Georgia,"

Comment:

Lamar was writing about his school in Muscogee County (near Columbus) in 1840.

Year
1840
Item
1840.24
Edit
Source Text

1840s.32 Ballplaying by Slaves is Part of a Normal Plantation Sunday in GA

Location:

US South

"The slaves had finished the tasks that had been assigned to them in the morning and were now enjoying holiday recreations. Some were trundling the hoop, some were playing ball, some were dancing at the sound of the fiddle . . . In this manner the Sabbath is usually spent on a Southern plantation." Emily Burke, Pleasure and Pain: Reminiscences of Georgia in the 1840s (Beehive Press, Savannah, GA, 1991), pages 40-41. Originally published in Ohio in 1850. Text unavailable 11/08 on Google Books.

-- Emily Burke, northerner schoolteacher

 

 

Sources:

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.

Decade
1840s
Item
1840s.32
Edit

1840c.33 Future University Head Plays Two Types of Ball in NC

Location:

US South

Game:

Oddball

Kemp Battle (1831-1919), who moved to Raleigh NC at age 8, and who would stay to become President of the University of North Carolina, wrote later of two forms of local ballplaying. The first involved high and low pitching to the batter's taste, leading and stealing, plugging - the ball was loosely wrapped—the bound rule, a three-strike rule, and one-out-side-out innings. [The absence of foul ground, team size, and nature/spacing of bases are not mentioned.] The second form, "known as old hundred or town ball" used all-out-side-out innings, with the last batter able to revive vanquished team members with certain feats.

W. Battle, ed., Memories of an Old-Time Tar Heel (U of NC Press, Chapel Hill NC, 1945), pages 36 and 57. 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 31. The text of the Battle book is unavailable via Google Books as of 11/15/2008.

Circa
1840
Item
1840c.33
Edit

1840s.36 VA Lad Plays Chermany at Recess

Location:

US South

Game:

Oddball

"Our recess games were chiefly chermany and bandy ("hockey").

Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography: Memories and Experiences (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1905), page 35. Accessed via Google Books 12/16/2008, search "conway autobiography." The recesses were enjoyed at a school in Fredericksburg VA, which Conway attended from about 1842 to 1847, ages 10 to 15. Chermany has been described as a "variety of baseball" played in Virginia and perhaps elsewhere in the South: Frederic Gomes Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, Dictionary of American Regional English (Harvard University Press, 1985), page 604. Fredericksburg is about 55 miles north of Richmond and about 55 miles SW of Washington DC. Thanks to Tom Altherr for the lead to "chermany" [email of 12/10/2008].

Decade
1840s
Item
1840s.36
Edit

1841.15 New Orleans Reprints Article on Wicket, Barn Ball, Base

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Juvenile, Youth, Adult

"Who has not played 'barn ball' in boyhood, 'base' in his youth and 'wicket' in his adulthood?"

 

Sources:

New Orleans Picayune, 1841. This cite is found in Tom Melville, The Tented Field: A History of Cricket in America (Bowling Green State U Press, Bowling Green, 1998), page 6. He attributes it, apparently, to Dale Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans (LSU Press, Baton Rouge, 1972), page 48.

Warning:

It is not clear that this article reflects actual wicket play, or interest, in New Orleans in 1841.

The text appears have been 'borrowed' from a Cleveland paper: See 1841.17

However, 1844.13 shows that a New Orleans wicket club did call a meeting in 1844.

Comment:

Note: Melville is willing to identify the sport as the one that was played mostly in the CT-central and MA area . . . but it is conceivable that the writer intended to denote cricket instead? 

From Bruce Allardise, December 2021: The original article is in the New Orleans Times Picayune, May 31, 1841, which references a reminisce in a {April 1841} Cleveland OH newspaper article.  [bsa]

Query:

Do we have any other references to wicket in LA before 1844?  Could the Picayune simply have copied an article from a distant newspaper.

Can we learn how broadly barn ball was played n the US?  In other nations?

Year
1841
Item
1841.15
Edit

1841.18 Louisiana Editor Endorses Formation of Clubs for Ballplaying

Location:

US South

Playing off the Cleveland Daily Herald defense of ballplaying [#1841.17], a New Orleans editor challenged the people of Louisiana: "[T]hose who desire now and then to spend a day in freedom and pleasure, adding powerfully both to physical and mental vigor, can never do better than to dash away into some of the commons in the vicinity of our own Crescent City and choose sides for an old fashioned game of ball. We have 'clubs' and 'societies' for almost every other purpose ever thought of. Who will first move the formation of a club to indulge in the manly and refreshing sport of ball-playing?"

"Playing Ball," The Daily Picayune [New Orleans] , Volume 5, number 101 (May 25, 1841), page 2. 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 40-41.

Year
1841
Item
1841.18
Edit

1844.13 Wicket Play in New Orleans LA?

Location:

US South

Game:

Wicket

Age of Players:

Adult

"The members of the New Orleans Wicket Club, are requested to meet at the Field, This Day, Thursday at 5 o'clock, PM, precisely."

 

Sources:

Times Picayune, November 7, 1844. Accessed via subscription search, March 27, 2009. Contributed by Richard Hershberger, March 8, 2009.

Query:

Adult play is suggested by choice of late-day meeting.

Year
1844
Item
1844.13
Edit

1845c.25 Early Cricket Clubs in the South

Location:

US South

Game:

Cricket

Tom Melville, "A History of Cricket in America," p. 15: "Cricket clubs were also appearing in other areas of the country, such as Charleston, South Carolina (where the local club seems to have been associated with that city's prestigious Jockey Club)... Natchez, Mississippi... and in Macon, Georgia by 1845."

Sources:

Tom Melville, "A History of Cricket in America," p. 15

Circa
1845
Item
1845c.25
Edit

1847.11 Curling is "Bass Ball," or "Goal," or "Hook-em-Snivy," on the Ice?

Location:

US South

Game:

Oddball

In response to an article from the Alabama Reporter belittling the sport of curling, the Spirit of the Times writer attempts to describe curling to Southerners like this: "What is 'Curling,' eh? Why, did you ever play 'bass ball,' or 'goal,' or 'hook-em-snivy,' on the ice? Well, curling is not like either. In curling, sides are chosen; each player has a bat, one end of which is turned up, somewhat like a plough-handle, with which to knock a ball on ice without picking it up as in the game of foot-ball, which curling resembles." Provided by David Block, email of 2/27/2008. "

 

Sources:

The Alabama Reporter, as reprinted in Spirit of the Times,  January 16, 1847, page 559. 

Comment:

David Block explains, 2/27/2008: "Clearly, the writer had curling confused with ice hockey, which was itself an embryonic sport that the time." Or maybe he confused it with ice-hurling, which actually employs a ball. 

From Richard Hershberger, 12/8/09: "What makes this so interesting is that the response speaks of "bass ball" played on ice. This is a decade before such games were commonly reported, suggesting that the [later] practice by organized clubs was borrowed from older, informal play on ice."

Query:

Could gentle readers please enlighten Protoball on the nature and fate of "hook-em-snivy," in AL or the South or elsewhere? I asked Mister Google about the word, and he rather less helpfully and rather more cryptically than usual, said this: "My Quaker grandmother, born in Maryland in 1823, used [the word] in my hearing when she was about seventy years old. She said that it was a barbarism in use among common people and that we must forget it.

Year
1847
Item
1847.11
Edit

1850s.1 Accounts of Ballplaying by Slaves

Location:

US South

Game:

Base Ball

Age of Players:

Unknown

Sources:

Wiggins, Kenneth, "Sport and Popular Pastimes in the Plantation Community: The Slave Experience," Thesis, University of Maryland, 1979. Per Millen,  notes #26-29.

Comment:

Note: the dates and circumstances and locations of these cases are unclear in Millen. One refers to plugging.

Query:

Can we find out details on the content of the Wiggins monograph>?

Decade
1850s
Item
1850s.1
Edit

1850s.4 New Orleans LA: Clubs Formed by German and Irish immigrants to play Base Ball

Location:

US South

Game:

Base Ball

"Beginning in the 1850's, the Germans and the Irish took up the sport [baseball] with alacrity. In New Orleans, for example, the Germans founded the Schneiders, Laners, and Landwehrs, and the Irish formed the Fenian Baseball Club. . . . Baseball invariably accompanied the ethnic picnics of the Germans, Irish, French, and, later, Italians."

 

Sources:

Per Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Spectators [Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1983], page 93. No source provided.

Comment:

I've checked New Orleans newspapers 1855-1860 and found no mention of these asserted clubs, let alone that they played baseball. The first mention of a Landwehr BBC I've found is in 1884. The Fenian was formed in 1875. It is possible the source refers to a Squirrel Tales BBC headed by captains Schneider and Lauer. [ba]

Query:

Can we now determine when the these clubs formed, and details on their play and durability?  Do we see ethnic clubs in other cities in the 1850s?

Decade
1850s
Item
1850s.4
Edit

1850s.13 Trap Ball, Stool Ball, Well Established in Louisville KY

Location:

US South, Kentucky

Game:

Stoolball

Age of Players:

Unknown

"Other forms of bat and ball games, like trap-ball and stool-ball, became well established in Louisville in the decade preceding the Civil War."

 

Sources:

Bob Bailey, "Chapter 1 - Beginnings: From Amateur Teams to Disgrace in the National League (mimeo, 1990)', page 1.  Bob (email, 1/27/2013) notes that his source for this observation is The Boy's Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of all the Diversions, Athletic, and Recreative, of Boyhood and Youth (Louisville, Morton and Griswold, 1854), page 67.

Query:

Can we obtain original sources?

Decade
1850s
Item
1850s.13
Edit

1850s.37 Near Richmond VA, Games of Round Cat and Chermany

Location:

US South

"There was a big field near his old home where he and the other boys, black and white, had played "round cat" and "chermany" in the summers before the war and had set their rabbit-traps in seasons of frost and snow."

 

Sources:

Armistead C. Gordon, "His Father's Flag," Scribner's Magazine Volume 62 (1917), page 443. This fictional story of the son of a Confederate soldier killed during the Civil War is set near Dragon Swamp.  (There are two VA places called Dismal Swamp; one is about 85 miles SE of Richmond.  The other is about 50 miles E of Richmond.)

The two games named are known as ballgames played in the south. Accessed 2/10/10 via Google Books search (scribners "volume lxii").

Decade
1850s
Item
1850s.37
Edit

1858.46 New York Game Arrives in Baltimore MD

Location:

US South

Game:

Base Ball

Age of Players:

Adult

"Mr. George Beam, of Orendorf, Beam and Co., Wholesale Grocers . . . visiting New York City in 1858, was invited by Mr. Joseph Leggett [a NYC grocer] to witness one of the games of the Old Excelsior Base Ball Club, of New York City. Mr. Beam became so much enthused, that on his return to Baltimore City . . . it resulted in the organization of the Excelsior B.B. Club. The first meeting was held in 1858. . . . The almost entire membership of the club was composed of business men. . . . [p 203/204] The score book of the club having been lost, and the old members having no recollection of any games played in 1859, except with the Potomac Club of Washington D.C., it is quite probable that the time was devoted to practice." In 1860 they played the NY Excelsiors along Madison Avenue in NY.

Griffith also notes that "[T]he ball used in the early sixties was about one-third larger, and one-third heavier, than the present one, than the present [1900] one, and besides was what is known as a 'lively ball,' and for those reasons harder to hold." Ibid, page 202.

Griffith implies, but does not state, that this was the first Baltimore club to play by NY rules. This journal article appears to be an extract of pages 1-11 of Griffith's The Early History of Amateur Baseball in the State of Maryland 1858-1871 (John Cox's Sons, Baltimore, 1897).

Sources:

William Ridgely Griffith, "The Early History of Amateur Base Ball in the State of Maryland," Maryland Historical Magazine, Volume 87, number 2, Summer 1992), pages 201-208. 

Year
1858
Item
1858.46
Edit

1861.1 Chadwick Wants to Start Richmond VA Team, but the Civil War Intervenes

Location:

US South

Game:

Base Ball

Age of Players:

Adult

Bill Hicklin notes (email of Feb 4, 2016) that "Chadwick visited his wife's family frequently and was disappointed that, as of the verge of the Civil War, there appeared to be no base ball clubs there at all."

See discussion (by Chadwick?) of forming a bbc in Richmond, to play at the Fair Grounds, in New York Clipper, March 30, 1861. [ba]

Sources:

Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History [Knopf, 1994], p.12, no ref given. 

Schiff, Millen, and Kirsch also cite Chadwick's attempt, but do not give a clear date, or a source.

Comment:

Tom Gilbert, 10/5/2020, notes "Henry Chadwick had close Richmond connections. His wife was from a wealthy and prominent Virginia family and he himself traveled to Richmond and was involved in early attempts to found a NYC- style baseball club there. Antebellum New Yorkers vacationed in Virginia in the 1850s and baseball clubs played there even before the famous Excelsiors tours."

To be more exact, Chadwick's wife was the daughter of Alexander Botts, or a prominent VA family, though Alexander and his family had moved to NYC. Her uncle was Congressman John Minor Botts, her first cousin was Confederate Colonel Lawson Botts, and her mother was a Randolph, one of Virginia's First Families (FFVs). [ba]

For more on Richmond base ball, see 1859.73

Query:

Is there a primary source for this claim?

Yes, NYC 3-30-61. [ba]

Year
1861
Item
1861.1
Edit

1861.18 Confederate Base Ball Players Finds Field "Too Boggy" in VA

Location:

US South

Game:

Base Ball

Age of Players:

Adult

"Confederate troops played townball as well as more modern versions of the game in their army camps. In November 1861 the Charleston Mercury of South Carolina reported that Confederate troops were stuck in soggy camps near Centreville, Fairfax County, [northern] Virginia. Heavy rains created miserably wet conditions so that 'even the base ball players find the green sward in front of the camp, too boggy for their accustomed sport.'" Centreville is adjacent to Manassas/Bull Run. 40,000 Confederate troops under Gen. Johnson had winter quarters there [the town's population had been 220] in 1861/62.

 

Sources:

Charleston Mercury, November 4, 1861, page. 4, column 5. Mentioned without citation in Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray (Princeton U, 2003), page 39. PBall file: CW-6

Year
1861
Item
1861.18
Edit

1861.20 Confederate Soldier's Diary Reports on Town Ball Playing, 1861-1863

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

Age of Players:

Adult

December 1861 (Texas?): "There is nothing unusual transpiring in Camp. The boys are passing the time playing Town-Ball."

January 1862 (Texas?): "All rocking along finely, Boys playing Town-Ball"

March 1863 (USA prison camp, IL?): The Rebels have at last found something to employ both mind and body; as the parade ground has dried up considerably in the past few days, Town Ball is in full blast, and it is a blessing for the men."

March 1863 (USA prison camp, IL?): "Raining this morning, which will interfere with ball playing, but the manufacture of rings 'goes bravely on,' and I might say receives a fresh impetus by the failure of the 'Town-ball' business."

 

Sources:

W. W. Heartsill, Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army: A Journal Kept by W. W. Heartsill: Day-by-Day, of the W. P. Lane (Texas) Rangers, from April 19th 1861 to May 20th 1865. Submitted by Jeff Kittel, 5/12/09. Available online at The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries Database, at http://solomon.cwld.alexanderstreet.com/. PBall file: CW10.

Comment:

Heartsill joined Lane's Texas Rangers early in the War at age 21. He was taken prisoner in Arkansas in early 1862, and exchanged for Union prisoners in April 1863. He then joined Bragg's Army in Tennessee, and was assigned to a unit put in charge of a Texas prison camp of Union soldiers. There are no references to ballplaying after 1863.

Query:

manufacture of rings?

POWs commonly fashioned hair or bone rings to while away the time [ba].

Year
1861
Item
1861.20
Edit

1861.79 14th NY Company D plays Intersquad game

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Adult

Ticknor's Nine of Co.D, 14th NY beat Brown's Nine of Co. D 17-10 on the 22nd in DC. See the New York Sunday Mercury, June 30, 1861.

Year
1861
Item
1861.79
Edit

1861.80 Left and Right Wings of 9th NY Play

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Adult

 . Right and left wings of the 9th NY play. Sgt.Major Burtis, an old member of the
Gotham club, pitchers the left wing to a 40-6 victory. Gives a box score.

Sources:

New York Sunday Mercury, Oct. 13, 1861

Year
1861
Item
1861.80
Edit

1862.71 Confederate Surgeon encourages ball-playing

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Adult

In his "Manual of Military Surgery" for CS surgeons, noted Dr. Julian Chisolm recommended that the army encourage "gymnastic exercises" to relieve the soldier's boredom: 

'"`UNIQ--pre-00018903-QINU`"'
Sources:

Chisolm book. See also Kirsch book, p. 31.

Year
1862
Item
1862.71
Edit

1862.81 VA Artillerymen play town ball

Location:

US South

Game:

Town Ball

Age of Players:

Adult

Walbrook Swank, "Confederate Letters" p. 70 prints a letter from Charles T. Shelton (1839-63), a UVA grad who served in Virginia's Botetourt Artillery: 
Our company is engaged in a game of town Ball..."

From the online snippet it is unclear where/when the letter was written. The unit was transferred to East Tennessee in 1862, and in late 1862 was sent with Stevenson's division to defend Vicksburg, MS. He mentions the game was familiar from his days in school.

Sources:

Walbrook Swank, "Confederate Letters" p. 70

Year
1862
Item
1862.81
Edit

1863.94 Army Chaplain Plays ball in the Army of the Cumberland

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Adult

The Boston Daily Advertiser, Nov. 5, 1863, picks up a Chicago Evening Journal article on Army chaplains in the Army of the Cumberland (then stationed around Chattanooga, TN), saying a chaplain of an Illinois regiment has been seen "dressing a wound... playing ball, running a race, as well as heard him making a prayer and preaching a sermon."

Sources:

The Boston Daily Advertiser, Nov. 5, 1863

Year
1863
Item
1863.94
Edit

1863.125 115th NY soldier Plays Ball

Location:

US South

Age of Players:

Adult

From auction catalog on www.invaluable.com, March 30, 2018, the 1863 Civil War Diary of David L. Mann:

Description: Manuscript diary of Private David L. Mann, New York 115th Infantry, Company E. Mann was a POW at Harper's Ferry in 1862 and notes he returned to Harper's Ferry, as well as Gettysburg, several times. A small selection from the diary, April 17th, "Boys are playing ball." June 13, "Attacked. Hold the enemy 1800 strong in check until the train is out of danger." June 14th, "Skirmished all day." Further discussions of metal caskets for dead soldiers, fighting, scouting, picketing, a drunken captain sounding a false alarm to saddle up. About 40% written in. 

[the location is not given, but is probably VA]

Year
1863
Item
1863.125
Edit