Famous

Last Updated December 1, 2008

Prominent Figures and Ballplaying up to 1861

A Chronology

Note: This list was derived from version 10 of the full Protoball Chronology, which was uploaded in December 2008. (Search terms: Negro, black, colored, slaves.) Additional relevant entries may have been added to any later versions of the full Chronology; not all entries on this subchronology are necessarily identical to those on the most recently updated full Chronology. Readers are encouraged to suggest or perform updates. Please send notes about omissions, mistakes, typos, etc, to lmccray@mit.edu.

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President John Adams

1745c.1 -- John Adams Recalls Youthful Bat and Ball Play

Saying that his first fifteen years “went off like a fairy tale,” John Adams [1735-1826] wrote fondly “of making and sailing boats . . . swimming, skating, flying kites and shooting marbles, bat and ball, football, . . . wrestling and sometimes boxing.”

David McCullough, John Adams [Touchstone Books, 2001], page 31. Submitted by Priscilla Astifan, 11/17/06.

1790.5 -- John Adams Refers to Cricket in Argument about G. Washington’s New Title

“Cricket was certainly known in Boston as early as 1790, for John Adams, then Vice-President of the United States, speaking in the debate about the choice of an appropriate name for the chief officer of the United States, declared that ‘there were presidents of fire companies and of a cricket club.’” John Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [UPenn Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 5.

American Novelist Samuel Hopkins Adams

1827.2 – Adams Story Places Baseball in Rochester NY

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.

This 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 out could be made on fouls.

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

1828c.3 –Author Samual. H. Adams Carries Clipping of Ball Game in Rochester

“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.”

Letter from Frederick L. Rath, Jr., to the Editor of the New York Times, October 5, 1990. Note: other accounts use different dates for this story.

Novelist Jane Austen

1798.1 – Jane Austen Mentions “Baseball” in Northanger Abbey.

Jane Austen mentions “baseball” in her novel Northanger Abbey, written in about 1798 but published in 1818, after her death. “Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books . . . . But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; so read all such works as heroines must read. . . “

Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey [London, 1851], p.3. Note: The 2008 “Masterpiece” TV version of this novel included a brief scene in which Catherine, at the age of about 17, plays a baseball-like game [rounders-based, arguably] involving posts with flags as bases. It would be interesting to know how the screenwriter arrived at this depiction.

Massachusetts Governor William Bradford

1621.1 – Some Pilgrims “Openly” Play “Stoole Ball” on Christmas Morning in Massachusetts, So Bradford Clamps Down

Governor Bradford describes Christmas Day 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, MA, “most of this new-company excused them selves and said it wente against their consciences to work on ye day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye street at play, openly; some at pitching ye barr, and some at stoole-ball and shuch like sport. . . . Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.”

Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation, [Harvey Wish, ed., Capricorn Books, 1962], pp 82 – 83. Henderson cites Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1856. See his ref 23. Full text supplied by John Thorn, 6/25/2005.

Flemish Artist Pieter Bruegel

1565.1 -- Bruegel’s “Corn Harvest” Painting Shows Meadow Ballgame

“We had paused right in front of [the Flemish artist] Bruegel the Elder’s “Corn Harvest” (1565), one of the world’s great paintings of everyday life . . . .[M]y eye fell upon a tiny tableau at the left-center of the painting in which young men appeared to be playing a game of bat and ball in a meadow distant from the scything and stacking and dining and drinking that made up the foreground. . . . There appeared to be a man with a bat, a fielder at a base, a runner, and spectators as well as participants in waiting. The strange device opposite the batsman’s position might have been a catapult. As I was later to learn with hurried research, this detain is unnoted in the art-history studies.”

From John Thorn, "Play's the Thing," Woodstock Times, December 28, 2006. See thornpricks.blogspot.com/2006/12/bruegel-and-me_27.html, accessed 1/30/07.

American Poet William Cullen Bryant

1800c.7 -- William Cullen Bryant Remembers Base-Ball

“I have not mentioned other sports and games of the boys of that day -- which is to say, of seventy or eighty years since - such as wrestling, running, leaping, base-ball, and the like, for in thee there was nothing to distinguish them from the same pastimes at the present day.”

William Cullen Bryant, “The Boys of my Boyhood,” St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks, December 1876, page 102. Submitted by David Ball 6/4/06

English Writer John Bunyan

1666.1 -- John Bunyan is Very Seriously Interrupted at Cat

Bunyan, John, Grace abounding to the chief of sinners [London], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 173. From the autobiography of the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress: “I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike the second time a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my soul which said, ‘Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven or have thy sins and go to hell?’” David notes on 5/29/2005 that this reference was originally reported by Harold Peterson, but that Peterson had attributed it to Pilgrim’s Progress itself.

Vice President John C. Calhoun

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

“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, 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.

Lord Chesterfield

1740.3 – Lord Chesterfield Nods Approvingly at Cricket

“If you have a right ambition you will desire to excell all boys of your age at cricket . . . as well as in learning.”

Per Steel and Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 8-9, who footnote the piece as “i, p. 107. Letter xxi.” Steel and Lyttelton introduce this quotation as follows: “When once the eighteenth century is reached cricket begins to find mention in literature. Clearly the game was rising in the world and was being taken up, like the poets of the period, by patrons.” Note: It would be good to understand who Chesterfield addressed his comment to, and why. We also need a full citation.

Chinese Emporer Ching Tsung

824.1 -- 15-Year-Old Chinese Emperor Criticized for Excessive Ball-playing

Ching Tsung, was the new Chinese emperor at the age of 15. “As soon as he could escape from the morning levee, the young Emperor rushed off to play ball. His habits were well known in the city, and in the summer of 824 someone suggested to a master-dyer named Chang Shao that, as a prank, he should slip into the Palace, lie on the Emperor’s couch and eat his dinner, ‘for nowadays he is always away, playing ball or hunting.’” The prank was carried out, but those prankful dyers . . . well, they died as a result.

Waaey, Arthur, The Life and Times of Po Chu-I, 772-846 [Allen and Unwin, London, 1949], page 157. Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

Christopher Columbus

1494c.1 -- Christopher Columbus and the Coefficient of Restitution

“When Christopher Columbus revisited Haiti on his second voyage, he observed some natives playing with a ball. The men who came with Columbus to conquer the Indies had brought their Castilian windballs to play with in idle hours. But at once they found that the balls of Haiti were incomparably superior; they bounced better. These high-bouncing balls were made, they learned, from a milky fluid of the consistency of honey which the natives procured by tapping certain trees and then cured over the smoke of palm nuts. A discovery which improved the delights of ball games was noteworthy.” 350 years later, after Goodyear discovered vulcanization [1839], “India rubber” balls were to be identified with the New York game of baseball.

Holland Thompson, “Charles Goodyear and the History of Rubber,” at http://inventors.about.come/cs/inventorsalphabet/a/rubber_2.htm, accessed 1/24/2007. Note: We need better sources for the Columbus story. And: what were “Castilian windballs?”

Novelist James Fenimore Cooper

1838.3 – Cooper Novel Home as Found Mentions Ballplaying in Cooperstown

“’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.

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.

US Senator William H. Crawford

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

Novelist [Two Years Before the Mast] Charles Henry Dana

1829.3 – Small Cambridge MA Schoolground Crimps Base and Cricket Play

14 year old Charles Henry Dana, later the author of Two Years Before the Mast and a leading abolitionist, found the playing grounds at 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.”

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.

King Edward III

1300s.2 – Edward III Prohibits Playing of Club-Ball.

“Citizens so club-ball conscious Edward III issued a solemn proclamation forbidding playing club-ball.” Edward III lived from 1327 to 1377.

Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Note: David Block argues that, contrary to Strutt’s contention [see 1801, below], club ball may not be the common ancestor of cricket and other ballgames. See David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, pages 105-107 and 183-184.

American Writer Ralph Waldo Emerson

1840.20 -- Base and Cricket as Experimental Astronomy?

“Bat and Ball -- Toys, no doubt, have their philosophy, and who knows how deep is the origin of a boy’s delight in a spinning top? In playing with bat-balls, perhaps he is charmed with some recognition of the movement of the heavenly bodies, and a game of base or cricket is a course of experimental astronomy, and my young master tingles with a faint sense of being a tyrannical Jupiter driving sphere madly from their orbit.”

Journal entry from June 1, 1840] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson 1820-1876 [Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1911] Volume 5, page 410. Submitted by Wendy Knickerbocker 11/30/2005 posting to 19CBB; citation submitted 1/7/2007.

Benjamin Franklin

1754.1 – Ben Franklin Brings Copy of Cricket Rules Back to U.S.

Several sources, including the Smithsonian, magazine, report that “The rules of the game on this side of the Atlantic were formalized in 1754, when Benjamin Franklin brought back from England a copy of the [ten year old – LMc] 1744 Laws, cricket’s official rule book.” Simon Worrall, “Cricket, Anyone?” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2006. The excerpt can be found in the seventh paragraph of the article [as accessed 10/19/2008] at:

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/october/cricket.php:

Lester adds this: “Benjamin Franklin was sufficiently interested in the game [cricket] to bring back with him from England a copy of the laws of cricket, for it was this very copy which was presented to the Young America Club . . .on June 4, 1867.” Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket (U Penn, 1951), page 5. Caveat: we have not located a contemporary account of the Franklin story.

US Statesman’s Uncle, Benjamin Franklin

1660c.2 -- Ben Franklin’s Uncle Recalls Ballplaying On an English Barn

“That is the street which I could ne’er abide,/And these the grounds I play’d side and hide;/ This the pond whereon I caught a fall,/ And that the barn whereon I play’d at ball.”

The uncle of U.S. patriot Benjamin Franklin, also named Benjamin Franklin, wrote these lines in a 1704 recollection of his native English town of Ecton. The uncle lived from 1650/1 to 1727. Ecton is a village in Northamptonshire.

Loring, J. S., The Franklin Manuscripts. The Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America (1857-1875), Volume 3, issue 1, January 1859, 4 pages. Submitted by John Thorn, 4/24/06.

Galileo Galilei

1661.1 – Galileo Galilei Discovers . . . Backspin!

The great scientist wrote, in a treatise discussing how the ball behaves in different ball games, including tennis: “Stool-ball, when they play in a stony way, . . . they do not trundle the ball upon the ground, but throw it, as if to pitch a quait. . . . . To make the ball stay, they hold it artificially with their hand uppermost, and it undermost, which in its delivery hath a contrary twirl or rolling conferred upon it by the fingers, by means whereof in its coming to the ground neer the mark it stays there, or runs very little forwards.” Galileo Galilei, Mathmatical Collections and Translations. “Inglished from his original Italian copy by Thomas Salusbury” (London, 1661), page 142.

Provided by David Block, email of 2/27/2008. David further asks: “could it be that this is the source of the term putting “English” on a ball?”

Poet Thomas Gray

1747.1 – Poet Thomas Gray: “Urge the Flying Ball.”

“What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,

Or urge the flying ball?”

Thomas Gray, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” lines 28-30. Accessed 12/29/2007 at http://www.thomasgray.org. “Rolling circle” had been drafted as “hoop,” and thus does not connote ballplay. Cricket writers have seen “flying ball” as a cricket reference, but a Gray scholar cites “Bentley’s Print” as a basis for concluding that Gray was referring to trap ball in this line. Steel and Lyttelton note that this poem was first published in 1747. Note: is it fair to assume that Gray is evoking student play at Eton in this ode? Do modern scholars agree with the 1747 publication date?

Publisher Horace Greeley

1820s.20 -- Horace Greeley Lacks the Knack, Fears Getting Whacked

“Ball was a common diversion in Vermont while I lived there; yet I never became proficient at it, probably for want of time and practice. To catch a flying ball, propelled by a muscular arm straight at my nose, and coming so swiftly that I could scarcely see it, was a feat requiring a celerity of action, an electric sympathy of eye and brain and hand . . . . Call it a knack, if you will; it was quite beyond my powers of acquisition.

Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (J. B. Ford, New York, 1869), page 117. 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 places the time as the early 1820s. Greeley, born in New Hampshire in 1811, was apprenticed a Poultney VT printer in about 1825. His book was accessed 11/15/2008 via Google Books search “greeley recollections owen.” Poultney VT is on the New York border, about 70 miles NNW of Albany NY. Greeley does not mention the game of wicket or round ball.

President Benjamin Harrison

1848c.9 -- Young Benjamin Harrison Plays Town Ball, Baste in OH

[As a teenage student at Farmer’s College, near Cincinnati OH, Harrison] “[w]hile closely applying himself to study, always standing fair in his classes, respected by instructors and popular with his associates, prompt in recitation and obedient to rules, nevertheless he found time for amusement and sport, such as snow-balling, town-ball, bull-pen, shinny, and baste, all more familiar to lads in that day than this.”

Life and Public Services of Hon. Benjamin Harrison [Sedgewood Publishing Company, 1892], page 53.

President Rutherford B. Hayes

1839.3 – Rutherford Hayes Plays Ball as Student at Kenyon College, OH

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. Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004.

English Poet Robert Herrick

1648.1 -- Short Herrick Poem Proposes a Wager on Stool-ball Game

“At Stool-ball, Lucia, let us play,” offers the poet, then proposing that if he wins, he would “have for all a kisse.”

Herrick, Robert, Hesperdes: or, the Works Both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq. [London], page 280, per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 171.

Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1829c.1 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Plays Ball as a Harvard student.

Krout, John A, Annals of American Sport [Yale University Press, New Haven, 1929], p. 115. Per Altherr 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. Note: We still need the original source. Holmes graduated in 1829; the date of play is unconfirmed. Holmes was the father of the famous Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1824.6 – Great Jurist Recalls Schoolboy Baseball and Phillips Academy

“[At Phillips] Bodily exercise was not, however, entirely superseded by spiritual exercises, and a rudimentary form of base-ball and the heroic sport of foot-ball were followed with some spirit.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “Cinders from the Ashes,” The Works of Oliver Wendel Holmes Volume 8 (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1892), page 251; and Atlantic Monthly volume 23, January 1869, page 120. He went on to recollect visiting the school in 1867, when he “sauntered until we came to a broken field where there was quarrying and digging going on, -- our old base-ball ground.” Ibid, page 255.

US General Joseph Hooker

1830.3 – Union General Joseph Hooker Plays Baseball as a Boy

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.

President Thomas Jefferson

1785.1 – Thomas Jefferson: Hunting is More Character-building Than Ballplaying

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

Thomas Jefferson 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. Per Altherr ref # 55.

President Andrew Johnson

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

[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.” Letter from Neal Brown, July 15, 1867, in Johnson Mss., Vol. 116, No. 16,106. [Publisher?] Submitted by John Thorn, 6/6/04

Lexicographer Samuel Johnson

1755.1 -- Johnson Dictionary Defines Stoolball – Oddly -- and Trap

Stoolball is simply defined as “A play where balls are driven from stool to stool,” and trap is defined as “A play at which a ball is driven with a stick.”

Johnson, Samuel, A dictionary of the English language [London, 1755], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 179. Note: could the great lexicographer have meant “stobball?”

Duchess of Kent

1858.34 – Amusements at Duchess’ Birthday Party Includes Base Ball

August 17 was the 72^nd birthday of the Duchess of Kent, celebrated at Windsor. Church bells rang. Royal tributes were fired. And, “amusements principally consisted of cricket, dancing, archery, football, trap and base ball, swinging, throwing sticks for prizes, etc.”

“Birthday of the Duchess of Kent,” Times of London, Issue 23073 (August 18, 1858), page 7 column A. Image provided by John Thorn, email of 6/11/2007. Note: given the absence of the term “base ball” in this period, one may ask whether “trap and base ball” was a variant of “trap ball.” In fact, the phrase appears in an 1862 in a description of a fete held in August 1859, presumably near Windsor, where, after a one-innings cricket contest, “archery, trap and base ball [and boat races] were included in the diversions. Gyll, Gordon W. J., History of the Parish of Wraysbury, (H. G. Bohn, London, 1862), page 55. Available on Google Books [google "trap and base ball”].

General Robert E. Lee

1851.5 – Robert E. Lee Promotes Cricket at West Point?

A twenty-one year old cricket enthusiast visited West Point from England, and remarked on “the beautiful green sward they had and just the place to play cricket. . . . The cadets played no games at all. . . . It was the first time that I had a glimpse of Colonel Robert E. Lee [who was to become Superintendent of West Point]. He was a splendid fellow, most gentlemanly and a soldier every inch. . . .

“Colonel Lee said he would be greatly obliged to me if I would teach the officers how to play cricket, so we went to the library. . . .Lieutenant Alexander asked for the cricket things. He said, ‘Can you tell me, Sir, where the instruments and apparatus are for playing cricket?’ The librarian knew nothing about them and so our project came to an end.” “The Boyhood of Rev. Samuel Robert Calthrop.” Compiled by His Daughter, Edith Calthrop Bump. No date given. Accessed 10/31/2008 at http://www-distance.syr.edu/SamCalthropBoyhoodStory.html. Note: Lee is reported to have become Superintendent of West Point in September 1852; and had been stationed in Baltimore until then; can Calthrop’s date be rationalized?

Earl of Leicester

1500s.2 – Queen Elizabeth’s Dudley Plays Stoolball at Wotton Hill?

According to a manuscript written in the 1600s, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and his “Trayne” “came to Wotton, and thence to Michaelwood Lodge . . . and thence went to Wotton Hill, where hee paid a match at stobball.”

Note: Is it possible to determine the approximate date of this event? Queen Elizabeth I named her close associate [once rumored to be her choice as husband] Dudley to became Earl of Leicester in the 1564, and he died in 1588. The Wotton account was written by John Smyth of Nibley somewhere in his Berkeley Manuscripts. He have no citation for that work. Smyth’s association with Berkeley Castle began n 1589, and the Manuscripts were written in about 1618, so it it not a first-hand report. Caveat: “Stobbal” is usually used to denote a field game resembling field hockey or golf; thus, this account may not relate to stoolball per se.

President Abraham Lincoln

1830s.16 – Future President Plays Town Ball, Joins Hopping Contests

James Gurley 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. 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.” 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?

The 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”

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.

1860.20 -- Lincoln Awaits Nomination, Plays Town Ball

“During the settling on the convention Lincoln had been trying, in one way and another, to keep down the excitement . . . playing billiard a little, town ball a little, and story-telling a little.”

Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen [Current Literature Publishing, 1907], page 292.

A story circulated that he was playing ball when he learning of his nomination: “When the news of Lincoln’s nomination reached Springfield, his friends were greatly excited, and hastened to inform ‘Old Abe’ of it. He could not be found at his office or at home, but after some minutes the messenger discovered him out in a field with a parcel of boys, having a pleasant game of town-ball. All his comrades immediately threw up their hats and commenced to hurrah. Abe grinned considerably, scratched his head and said ‘Go on boys; don’t let such nonsense spoil a good game.’ The boys did go on with their bawling, but not with the game of ball. They got out an old rusty cannon and made it ring, while the [illegible: Rail Splitter?] went home to think on his chances.” Richard Hershberger and others doubt the veracity of this story.

“How Lincoln Received the Nomination,” [San Francisco CA] Daily Evening Bulletin vol.10 number 60 (Saturday, June 16, 1860), page 2 column 3. Provided by email of 7/18/07 by Craig Waff. Craig adds that the piece may be a reprint of an Eastern article.

A political cartoon of the day showed Lincoln playing ball with other candidates. It can be viewed at http://www.scvbb.org/images/image7/. Thanks to Kyle DeCicco-Carey for the link.

1861c.3 – Town Ball in Maryland: Mr. Lincoln Faces Friendly Fire

“We boys, for hours at a time, played “town ball” [at my grandfather’s estate] on the vast lawn, and Mr. [Abe] Lincoln would join ardently in the sport. I remember vividly how he ran with the children; how long were his strides, and how far his coat-tails stuck out behind, and how we tried to hit him with the ball, as he ran the bases.” Recollection [c.1890?] of Frank P. Blair III, as carried in Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 2 (Lincoln Memorial Association, New York, 1900), page 88.

Blair, whose grandfather was Lincoln’s Postmaster General, lived in MD just outside Washington. Note: We need to establish a date for this reported event. Blair [ibid.] says Lincoln’s visits happened “during the war,” occurred “frequently,” and took place when he was seven or eight years old. We know his older brother James was born in 1854, but not when he showed up on earth.

Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1824.1 – Longfellow Reports Popularity of Ballplaying at Bowdoin

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, then a student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, writes: “This has been a very sickly term in college. However, within the last week, the government seeing that something must be done to induce the students to exercise, recommended a game of ball now and then; which communicated such an impulse to our limbs and joints, that there is nothing now heard of, in our leisure hours, but ball, ball, ball.”

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, letter to his father Stephen Longfellow, April 11, 1824, in Samuel Longfellow, ed., Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with Extracts from His Journals and Correspondence [Ticknor and Company, Boston 1886],volume 1, p. 51. Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

Reprinted in Andrew Hilen, ed., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 1 1814 - 1836 [Harvard University Press, 1966], page 87. Submitted by George Thompson, 7/31/2005.

Poet “James Love” [James Dance]

1744.4 – Poet: “Hail Cricket! Glorious Manly, British Game!

Writing as James Love, the poet and actor James Dance [1722-1774] penned a 316-line verse that extols cricket. The poem, it may surprise you to learn, turns on the muffed catch by an All England player [shades of Casey!] that, I take it, allows Kent County to win a close match. Protoball’s virtual interview with Mr. Dance:

Protoball: Are you a serious cricket fan?

Dance:" Hail, cricket! Glorious manly, British Game! / First of all Sports! be first alike in Fame!” [lines 13-14]

PBall: Isn’t billiards a good game too?

Dance: “puny Billiards, where, with sluggish Pace / The dull Ball trails before the feeble Mace” [lines 40-41]

PBall: But you do appreciate tennis, right?”

Dance: “Not Tennis [it]self, [cricket’s] sister sport can charm, /Or with [cricket’s] fierce Delights our Bosoms warm".[lines 55-56] . . . to small Space confined, ev’n [tennis] must yield / To nobler CRICKET, the disputed field.” [lines 60-61]

PBall: But doesn’t every country have a fine national pastime?

Dance: “Leave the dissolving Song, the baby Dance, / To Sooth[e] the Slaves of Italy and France: / While the firm Limb, and strong brac’d Nerve are thine [cricket’s] / Scorn Eunuch Sports; to manlier Games [we] incline” [lines 68-71]

PBall: Manlier? You see the average cricketer as especially manly?

Dance: “He weighs the well-turn’d Bat’s experienced Force, / And guides the rapid Ball’s impetuous course, / His supple Limbs with Nimble Labour plies, / Nor bends the grass beneath him as he flies.” [lines 29 – 32]

James Love, Cricket: an Heroic Poem. illustrated with the Critical Observations of Scriblerus Maximus(W. Bickerton, London, undated)” The poet writes of a famous 1744 match between All England and Kent [#1744.3, above.] Thanks to Beth Hise for a lead to this poem, email, 12/21/2007. John Thorm, per email of 2/1/2008, located and pointed to online copy. Note: Are we sure the versified game account is from the 1744 Kent/England match -- not 1746, for example?

Novelist Mary Russell Mitford

1828.9 -- Mitford Story Centers on Cricket, Touches on Juvenile Baseball

“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.

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.”

Note: See also Protoball entry #1824.3 and #1830s.13.

Assorted Princes of Wales

1299.1 – Prince of Wales Plays “Creag,” Seen By Some as a Cricket Precursor

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.

1751.2 -- Cricket Lore: Ball Kills the Prince of Wales?

RIP, sweet Prince. [The prince was the father of King George III.]

Per John Ford, Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835 [David and Charles, 1972], page 17: “Death of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, as a result of a blow on the head from a cricket ball.” Ford does not give a citation.

Others attribute the Prince’s death to a tennis incident; neither theory seems fully credible, as death was not immediate, and “an abscess” of the lung was thought to be the proximal cause of death.

Poet Alexander Pope

1741c.1 – Does Alexander Pope “Sneer” at Cricket in Epic Poem?

“The judge to dance his brother serjeant call,

The senator at cricket urge the ball”

Pope, “The Dunciad,” per Steel and Lyttelton, Cricket, (Longmans Green, London, 1890) 4^th edition, page 9. Steel and Lyttelton date the writing to 1726-1735. Their remark: “Mr. Alexander Pope had sneered at cricket. At what did Mr. Pope not sneer?”

Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Complete in Four Books, According to Mr. Pope’s Last Improvements (Warburton, London, 1749), Book IV, line 592, page 70. Note; This fragment does not seem severely disparaging. Is it clear from context what offense he gives to cricketers? It is true that this passage demeans assorted everyday practices, particularly as pursued by those of high standing. Book IV, the last, is now believed to have been written in 1741. Note: Other entries that employ the “urge the ball” phrasing are #1747.1, #1805c.7, #1807.3, and #1824.4.

Novelist Sir Walter Scott

1819.2 – Scott’s Ivanhoe Mentions Stool-ball

[The Jester speaks] “I came to save my master, and if he will not consent, basta! I can but go away home again. Kind service can not be checked from hand to hand like a shuttle-cock or stool-ball. I’ll hang for no man . . . .”

Scott, Walter, Ivanhoe; A Romance (D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1904), page 257. Reference provided by John Thorn 6/11/2007.

US Jurist Samuel Sewell

1713.1 – Boston Magistrate Finds Trap Ball Clogging a Gutter

“I went on the Roof, and found the Spout next Slater’s stopped . . . . Boston went up . . . came down a Spit, and clear’d the Leaden-throat, by thrusting out a Trap-Ball that stuck there.”

Thomas, M. H., ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewell 1674 – 1729, Volume II, 1710 – 1729 [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973], p. 718. Per Altherr ref # 18. Sewall is known as the “Salem Witch Judge.”

1725c.1 – Wicket Played on Boston Common

“March, 15. Sam. Hirst [Sewall’s grandson, reportedly, and a Harvard ’23 man] LMc] got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the (Boston) Common to play at Wicket. Went before any body was up, left the door open; Sam came not to prayer; at which I was most displeased.

”March 17^th. Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he could not lodge here practicing thus. So he lodg‘d elsewhere. He grievously offended me in persuading his Sister Hannam not to have Mr. Turall, without enquiring of me about it. And play’d fast and loose in a vexing matter about himself in a matter relating to himself, procuring me great Vexation.”

Diary of Samuel Sewall, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Published by the Society, Boston, 1882) Volume VII – Fifth Series, page 372.

Note: Further comment on this entry is welcome, especially from wicket devotees; after all, this may be the initial wicket citation in existence (assuming that $1700c.2 is cannot be documented and that #1704.1 above is not ever confirmed as wicket).

William Shakespeare

1600c.2 -- Shakespeare Mentions Rounders? Pretty Doubtful

“Shakespeare mentions games of “base” and “rounders. Lovett, Old Boston Boys, page 126.”

Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Caveat: We have not yet confirmed that Lovett or Shakespeare used the term “rounders.” Gomme [page 80], among others, identifies the Bard’s use of “base” in Cymbeline as a reference to prisoner’s base, which is not a ball game. John Bowman, email of 5/21/2008, reports that his concordance of all of Shakespeare’s words shows has no listing for “rounders” . . . nor for “stoolball,” for that matter [see #1612c.1, below], ‘tho that may because Shakespeare’s authorship of Two Noble Kinsmen is not universally accepted by scholars..

1612c.1 -- Play Attributed to Shakespeare Cites Stool-ball

A young maid asks her wooer to go with her. “What shall we do there, wench?” She replies, “Why, play at stool-ball; what else is there to do?”

Fletcher and Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen [London], Act V, Scene 2, per W. W. Grantham, Stoolball Illustrated and How to Play It [W. Speaight, London, 1904], page 29. David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 170, gives 1634 as the publication date of this play, which was reportedly performed in 1612, and mentions that doubts have been expressed as to authorship, so Shakespeare [1564-1616] may not have contributed. Others surmise that The Bard wrote Acts One and Five, which would make him the author of the stoolball reference. Note: can we find further specifics? Russell-Goggs, in “Stoolball in Sussex,” The Sussex County Magazine, volume 2, no. 7 (July 1928), page 320, notes that the speaker is the “daughter of the Jailer.”

Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant

1659.1 -- Stuyvesant: No Tennis, Ball-Playing, Dice on Fast Day

“We shall interdict and forbid, during divine service on the [fasting] day aforesaid, all exercise and games of tennis, ball-playing, hunting, plowing and sowing, and moreover all unlawful practice such as dice, drunkenness . . .” proclaimed Peter Stuyvesant.

Manchester, Herbert, Four Centuries of Sport in America [Publisher?, 1931]. Note: Can we determine what area was affected by this proclamation?

Sir Philip Sydney

1586.1 – Sydney Cites Stoolball

“A time there is for all, my mother often sayes/

When she with skirts tuckt very hie, with gyrles at stoolball playes”

[Sir Philip?] Sydney, Arcadia: Sonnets [1622], page 493. Note: citation needs confirmation.

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau

1830c.2 – Thoreau Associates “Fast Day” with Base-Ball Played in Russet Fields

“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.

President George Washington

1778.4 – Ewing Reports Playing “At Base” and Wicket at Valley Forge -- with the Father of his Country

George Ewing, a Revolutionary War soldier, tells of playing a game of “Base” at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: “Exercisd in the afternoon in the intervals playd at base. Caveat: It is unknown whether this this was a ball game, rather than prisoner’s base.

Ewing also wrote: "[May 2d] in the afternoon playd a game at Wicket with a number of Gent of the Arty . . . .“ And “This day [May 4, 1778] His Excellency [i.e., George Washington] dined with G Nox and after dinner did us the honor to play at Wicket with us."

Ewing, G., The Military Journal of George Ewing (1754-1824), A Soldier of Valley Forge [Private Printing, Yonkers, 1928], pp 35 [“base”] and 47 [wicket]. Also found at John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. Volume: 11. [U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1931]. page 348. Submitted by John Thorn, 10/12/2004. The text of Ewing’s diary is unavailable at Google Books as of 11/17/2008.

Also note:

“Q. What did soldiers do for recreation?

“A: During the winter months the soldiers were mostly concerned with their survival, so recreation was probably not on their minds. As spring came, activities other than drills and marches took place. “Games” would have included a game of bowls played with cannon balls and called “Long Bullets.” “Base” was also a game – the ancestor of baseball, so you can imagine how it might be played; and cricket/wicket. George Washington himself was said to have took up the bat in a game of wicket in early May after a dinner with General Knox! . . . Other games included cards and dice . . . gambling in general, although that was frowned upon.”

From the website of Historic Valley Forge; see --

http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/youasked/067.htm, accessed 10/25/02. Note: it is possible that the source of this material is the Ewing entry above, but we’re hoping for more details from the Rangers at Valley Forge. In 2008, we’re still hoping.

1779.4 – French Official Sees George Washington Playing Catch “For Hours”

Chase, E. P., ed., Our Revolutionary Forefathers: The Letters of Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois during his Residence in the United States as Secretary of the French Legation 1779 – 1785 [Duffield and Company, NY, 1929], p. 114. Per Altherr ref # 32.

Senator Daniel Webster

1797.1 – Daniel Webster Writes of “Playing Ball” While at Dartmouth

Daniel Webster, in private correspondence, writes of “playing ball,” while a student at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Webster, Daniel, Private Correspondence, Fletcher Webster, ed. [Little Brown, Boston 1857], volume 1, p. 66. Per Altherr, ref # 45. Altherr [p. 27] puts this date “at the turn of the century.” On 7/31/2005, George Thompson added that “Volume 17, page 66 of the National Edition of his Writings and Speeches is supposed to have a reference by one Hotchkiss to Webster playing ball at Dartmouth.”

Lexicographer Noah Webster

1788.2 – Noah Webster, CT Ballplayer?

“Connecticut lexicographer and writer Noah Webster may have been referring to a baseball- type game when he wrote his journal entry for March 24-25, 1788: ‘Take a long walk. Play at Nines at Mr Brandons. Very much indisposed.’”

Thomas L. Altherr, “A Place Leavel Enough to Play Ball,” reprinted in David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It; see page 241. Altherr cites the diary as Webster, Noah, “Diary,” reprinted in Notes on the Life of Noah Webster, E. E. F Ford, ed., (privately printed, New York, 1912), page 227 of volume 1. Note: “Nines seems an unusual name for a ball game; do we find it elsewhere? Could he have been denoting nine-pins or nine-holes?

Republican Party Leader Thurlow Weed

1825c.1 – Thurlow Weed Plays Base-Ball in Rochester NY

“A baseball club, numbering nearly fifty members, met every afternoon during the ball playing season. Though the members of the club embraced persons between eighteen and forty, it attracted the young and old. The ball ground, containing some eight or ten acres, known as Mumford’s meadow . . . .“ Weed goes on to list prominent local professional people, including doctors and lawyers, among the players.

Weed, Thurlow, Life of Thurlow Weed [Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1883], volume 1, p. 203. Per RH ref # 159

The Duke of Wellington

1842.4 – Duke of Wellington Requires Cricket Ground for Every Military Barrack.

Wisdon’s history of cricket [1966].

Poet Walt Whitman

1846.6 – Walt Whitman Sees Boys Playing “Base” in Brooklyn: “Glorious”

In July of 1846 a Brooklyn Eagle piece by Walt Whitman read: “In our sun-down perambulations of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing “base,” a certain game of ball. We wish such sights were more common among us. In the practice of athletic and manly sports, the young men of nearly all our American cities are very deficient. Clerks are shut up from early morning till nine or ten o’clock at night . . . . Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms . . . the game of ball is glorious.”

“City Intelligence,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat, vol. 5 number 177 (July 23, 1846), page 2, column 3. Reprinted in Herbert Bergman, ed., Walt Whitman. The Journalism. Vol. 1: 1834 - 1846. (Collected Works of Walt Whitman) [Peter Lang, New York, 1998], volume 1, page 477. Full Eagle citation submitted by George Thompson, 8/2/2004. . Full citation and image provided by Craig Waff, 4/30/2007.

1855.9 -- Whitman Puts “Good Game of Base-Ball” Among Favorite Americana

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass [Brooklyn, Rome Bros], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 216. In a review of good American experiences, including “approaching Manhattan” and “under Niagara”, Whitman puts this line: “Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs or a good game of base-ball . . . “

1858.25 -- Your Base Ball Stringer, Mr. W. Whitman

Reporter Whitman wrote a workmanlike [all-prose] account of a game [Atlantic 17, Putnam 13] for the Brooklyn Daily Times in June 1858.

Walt Whitman, “On Baseball, 1858,” in John Thorn, ed., The Complete Armchair Book of Baseball [Galahad Books, New York, 1997; originally published 1985 and 1987] pp 815-816.

King William III

1688.1 – New Royals Reportedly Watch Stoolball

“It is reported that William III watched the game soon after he landed at Torbay, and that subsequently Queen Anne was an interested spectator.”

M. S. Russell-Goggs, page 320. Note: we need to locate the full citations for this and all other Russell-Goggs references; short of this, we need to confirm the date of the Torbay landing. A cursory Google search does not reveal confirming evidence of this anecdote.

Poet William Wordsworth

1802.2 – Wordsworth Seems to Laud “Englishness” of Cricket

“The cock that crows, the smoke that curls, that sound/Of bells, those boys that in yonder meadow ground/In white-sleev’d shirts are playing by the score,/And even this little River’s gentle roar,/All, all are English . . .”

From Wordsworth’s sonnet “composed in the valley near Dover,” 1802.

According to Bateman, this reference is shown to be cricket because Wordsworth’s sister’s diary contains a reference to white-shirted players at a cricket match near Dover. He does not give the diary entry’s date. See Bateman, Anthony,“’More Mighty than the Bat, the Pen . . . ;‘ Culture,, Hegemony, and the Literaturisaton of Cricket,” Sport in History, v. 23, 1 (Summer 2003), page 33, note 20: he cites the diary entry as The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, vol. 2, E. de Selincourt, ed., (London, 1941), page 8. Note: we need a reference to the poem itself, and perhaps a look at the date and context of the diary account.

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