Protoball Refs to “Town Ball”, collected 6/9/07

Last Updated June 2007

Town Ball

Note: This list was derived from the version 8 of the full Protoball Chronology in June 2007. Additional relevant items may have been added to later versions of the full Protoball chronology. Readers are encouraged to suggest or perform updates. Send notes about omissions, mistakes, typos, etc, to Lmccray@mit.edu.]

1784.2 – Seymour Adverts to Evidence that Town Ball Exported to England

“Rounders not a serious game until 1889 in Britain. But at least close resemblance. Evidence Town Ball introduced by Amer. to Br. 1784 – between Rounders and Base Ball.”

Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Note: it would be good to find such evidence soon.

1790s.3 -- Britannica Dates Stickball to Late 18th Century

“Stickball is a game played on a street or other restricted area, with a stick, such as a mop handle or broomstick, and a hard rubber ball. Stickball developed in the late 18th century from such English games as old cat, rounders, and town ball. Stickball also relates to a game played in southern England and colonial Boston in North America called stoolball. All of these games were played on a field with bases, a ball, and one or more sticks. The modern game is played especially in New York City on the streets where such fixtures as a fire hydrant or an abandoned car serve as bases.”

Britannica Online search conducted 5/25/2005 by Larry McCray. Note: No sources are provided for this unique report of early stickball. It also seems unusual to define town ball as an English game.

1790s.4 -- 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. Note: 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.

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

At Moses Waddell’s “famous academy” established in Wilkington 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. Is “Wilkington” correct?

1820c.6 – Modified Version of Rounders Played in New England.

“About 1820 a somewhat modified version of the old English game of rounders was played on the New England commons, and twenty years later the game had spread and become “town ball.” In 1833 the first regularly organized ball club was formed in Philadelphia with the sonorous title of “The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia.” About 1850 the game came into vogue in New York.”

Barbour, R. H., The Book of School and College Sport [Pub’r?, Date?] page 143. Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Note: it is not clear from his notes whether Seymour is quoting, or summarizing, Barbour’s text. It seems to imply that town ball emerged first in New England. Do we have indications that the games played in MA England in the 1840s and in NY in the 1850s were called, or should be called, “town ball?”

1820s.10 – Philadelphians Play Ball

A group of Philadelphians who will eventually organize as the Olympic Ball Club begin playing town ball in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but are prohibited from doing so within the city limits by ordinances dating to Puritan times. A site in Camden, New Jersey is used to avoid breaking the laws in Philadelphia. ||34|| Note: this item, which first appeared in the Heitz/Thorn chronology, needs to be confirmed or dropped

1831.1 – Ball Club Forms in Philadelphia

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

Constitution of the Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia [private printing, 1838]. Parts reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 5-8. Note: Is it accurate to call this a “town ball” club? Sullivan dates this to 1837, while J. M. Ward [Ward’s Base Ball Book, page 18] sets 1831 as the date of formation. The constitution was revised in 1837, but the Olympic Club merged with the Camden Town ball Club in 1833, and that is regarded as the formation date of the Olympics. The story of the Olympics is covered in “Sporting Gossip” [by “the Critic”] in an unidentified photocopy found at the Giamatti Research Center at the HOF. What appears to be a continuation of this article is also at the HOF. It is “Evolution of Baseball from 1833 Up to the Present Time,” by Horace S. Fogel, and appeared in The Daily Evening Telegraph. I annotated this as “January 1921, I think,” but do not know how I deduced that. [LM] ||36|| Was the Camden Club truly called the “Camden Town Ball Club,” or is that a later construction?

1835.1 – Boy’s Book of Sports Describes “Base Ball” [Town Ball?].

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

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

For Text: David Block carries a page of text, and the field diagram, in Appendix 7, pages 282-283, of Baseball Before We Knew It. Note: is it sensible to call this game “base ball” or town ball?

1835.4 – A Ballplayer’s Progress: “Bound and Catch,” “Barn Ball,” “Town Ball”

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

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

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

1839.1 – Graves Letters of 1905 Say that Doubleday Invented Base Ball

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

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

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

Letters from Abner Graves to the Mills Commission, April 3, 1905 and November 17, 1905. ||44|| XXX Add full text. Note: how does the game of “town ball” that Graves remembers compare with the Philadelphia game?

1840s.16 – Future President Plays Town Ball, Joins Hopping Contests

"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, no date. Weik MSS. Per John Thorn, 7/9/04.

1840c.17 -- Town Ball and Ballmaking in OH

“Among the favorite games engaged in my the larger boys, special mention may be made of ‘Three Corner Cat,’ and of ‘Town Ball,’ the latter sport being a simple form of what has developed into the national game of baseball. Improvised playing-balls were made, not unusually, by winding strong woolen yarn tightly around a central mass of India-rubber, and covering the compact sphere with soft, tough leather cut to the proper shape by a shoemaker.”

W. H. Venable, A Buckeye Boyhood [publisher? Date?], page 126. Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809.

1840.19 -- Baseball Arrives in Saint John, New Brunswick

“The story of baseball in Saint John has a Spalding-Chadwick twist to it. As early as the year 1840, there have been mentions of the sport of baseball in the Port City. As D. R. Jack noted in his Centennial Prize Essay (1783-1883): ‘It was a common practice with many of the leading merchants of St. John to assemble each fine summer afternoon after the business day was over . . . where a fine playground has been prepared, and engage in a game of cricket or baseball. This practice was continued until about 1840.’ Whether of not this was actually the game of “Rounders” or “Town Ball” is debatable.’

Brian Flood, Saint John: A Sporting Tradition 1785-1985 [Henry Flood, 1985], pages 18-19.

1842c.7 -- Cricket and Town Ball Recalled in Philadelphia PA

“The first cricket I ever saw was on a field near Logan Station . . . about 1842. The hosiery weavers at Wakefield Mills [cf #1841.8 above] near by had formed a club under the leadership of Lindley Fisher, a Haverford cricketer. . . . [My brother and I] had played Town Ball, the forerunner of baseball today, at Germantown Academy, and our handling of the ball was appreciated by the Englishmen.

John Lester, A Century of Philadelphia Cricket [UPenn Press, Philadelphia, 1951], page 9. Lester does not provide a source here, but his bibliography lists: Wister, William Rotch, Some Reminiscences of Cricket I Philadelphia Before 1861 [Allen, Philadelphia, 1904].

1843.2 -- NY’s Washington Club:” Playing Base Ball Before the Knickerbockers?

“The honors for the place of birth of baseball are divided. Philadelphia claims that her ‘town ball’ was practically baseball and that it was played by the Olympic Club from 1833 to 1859. It is also claimed that the Washington Club in 1843 was the first to play the game. Certainly the New York Knickerbocker Club, founded in 1845, was the first to establish a code of rules.”

Reeve, Arthur B., Beginnings of Our Great Games, Outing Magazine, April 1910, page 49, per John Thorn, 19CBB posting, 6/17/05. Reeve evidently does not provide a source for the Washington Club claim . . . nor his assertion that it had no “code of rules.” John notes that Outing appeared from 1906 to 1911. Note: It would be good to have evidence on whether this club played the New York game or another variation of early base ball.

1845.1 – Knicks Adopt Club and Playing Rules on September 23

Led by Alexander Cartwright, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York City organizes and adopts twenty rules for baseball (six organizational, fourteen playing). This rule book is later seen as the basis for the game we now call baseball. The Knickerbockers are credited with establishing foul lines; abolishing the plug (throwing the ball at the runner to make an out); and instituting the tag and force-out. However, the Knickerbocker rules do not specify a pitching distance or a baseline distance. The distance from home to second base and from first to third base is set at forty-two paces. In 1845 the “pace” was understood either as a variable measure or as precisely two-and-a-half feet, in which case the distance from home to second would have been 105 feet and the “Cartwright base paths” would have been 74.25 feet. The “pace” of 1845 could not have been interpreted as the equivalent of three feet. [XXXXX Explain why?] The Knickerbocker rules provide that a winner will be declared when twenty-one aces are scored but each team must have an equal number of turns at bat; the style of delivery is underhand in contrast to the overhand delivery typical in town ball; balls hit beyond the field limits in fair territory (home run in modern baseball) are limited to one base. The Knickerbocker rules become known as the New York Game in contrast to the Massachusetts Game favored in and around the Boston area. ||54||

1846.9 – Town Ball in Rockford IL

“I came West 59 years ago, in 1846, and found “Town Ball” a popular game at all Town meetings. I do not recall an instance of a money bet on the game; but, at Town meeting, the side losing had to buy the ginger bread and cider.” [July]

“[Town Ball] was so named because it was mostly played at “Town Meetings.” It had as many players on a side as chose to play; but the principal players were “Thrower” and “Catcher.” There were three bases and a home plate. The players were put out by being touched with ball [sic] or hit with thrown ball, when off the base. You can readily see that the present game [1900’s baseball] is an evolution from Town Ball.” [April]

Letters from H. H. Waldo, Rockford IL, to the Mills Commission, April 8 and July 7, 1905.

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.

1849c.5 -- New Chapbook Names Several Games Played with Balls

Juvenile Pastimes; or Girls’ and Boys’ Book of Sports [New Haven, S. Babcock], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 212. In this 16-page book’s “Playing Ball” section is the observation that “[t]here are a great number of games played with balls, of which base-ball, trap ball, cricket, up-ball, catch-ball and drive ball are most common.” Note: “Up-ball?” “Drive ball?” No town ball?

1850.5 – “Boy’s Treasury” Describes Rounders, Feeder, Stoolball, Etc.

The Boy’s Treasury, published in New York, contains descriptions of feeder [p. 25], Rounders [p. 26], Ball Stock [p. 27], Stool-Ball [p. 28], Northern Spell [p. 33] and Trap, Bat, and Ball [p 33]. The cat games and barn ball and town ball are not listed. In feeder, the ball is pitched from a distance of two yards, and he is the only member of the “out” team. There is a three-strike rule and a dropped-third rule. The Rounders description says “a smooth round stick is preferred by many boys to a bat for striking the ball.” Ball Stock is said to be “very similar to rounders.” In stool ball, “the ball must be struck by the hand, and not with a bat.”

The Boy’s Treasury of Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations [Clark, Austin and Company, New York, 1850], fourth edition.

1852.7 -- San Francisco Plaza Again Active, This Time with “Town Ball;” Cricket Club Also Formed

“For the last two or three evenings the Plaza has been filled with full grown persons engaged very industriously in the game known as ‘town ball.’ The amusement is very innocent and healthful . . . . The scenes are extremely interesting and amusing.”

“Public Play Ground,” Alta California, January 14, 1852. Submitted by Angus McFarland. Note: In the prior year [see item #1851.2] the game at the Plaza had been called base ball in two news accounts, and town ball in none that we now have.

Angus also notes on 1/27/2007 that a cricket club was formed in SF in 1852.

1852.8 -- Adult Town Ball Seen in on a Sunday in IL

“[N]ot a great while ago, [I] saw a number of grown men, on a Sabbath morning, playing town-ball.”

Rev. E. B. Olmsted, The Home Missionary [Office of the American Home Missionary Society] Volume 24, Number 1 [May 1852], page 188

1853.4 -- School Reader has Updated Description of Bat and Ball

Sanders, Charles W., The School Reader; First Book [Newbergh, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, assorted pub’rs], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 215. Another Sanders reader (see entries above for 1840, 1841, 1846), this one with an illustration titled “Boys Playing at Bat and Ball” and having a full-page treatment of the game with new text. Note: Was there any text in the earlier versions? How does the game described compare to rounders, town ball, and the decade-old NY game?

DELETED ENTRY:

1853c.1 – Rounders Played at Phillips Exeter

Harold Seymour made notes of a report of the playing of a game of rounders at Exeter, as quoted in an account of the history of the school. The game description, which is brief, seems consistent with the game of town ball. The date 1853 appears prominently on the note.

Account by Dr. Wm A. Mowry, quoted by Bell [? -- looks like “Fuess” -- sic?] in History of Phillips Exeter [Pubr? Date?], page 450. Note: this account needs badly to be confirmed. The reading notes may be quite selective, and access to the original may be revealing. It is unclear whether the 1853 date refers to when the game was played or the date that Mowry wrote his account.

This account was replaced by information from George Thompson, who found the original source.

1855c.1 – “Massachusetts Run-Around” Recalled

“This [Massachusetts Run-Around] was ever a popular game with us young men, and especially on Town Meeting days when there were great contests held between different districts, or between the married and unmarried men, and was sometimes called Town Ball because of its association with Town Meeting day.”

“It was an extremely convenient game because it required as a minimum only four on a side to play it, and yet you could play it equally as well with seven or eight. . . . There were no men on the bases; the batter having to make his bases the best he could, and with perfect freedom to run when and as he chose to, subject all the time to being plugged by the ball from the hand of anyone. It was lively jumping squatting and ducking in all shapes with the runner who was trying to escape being plugged. When he got around without having been hit by the ball, it counted a run. The delivery of the ball was distinctly a throw, not an under-hand delivery as was later the case for Base Ball. The batter was allowed three strikes at the ball. In my younger days it was extremely popular, and indulged in by everyone, young and old.”

T. King, letter to the Mills Commission, November 24, 1905; accessed at the Giamatti Center, HOF.

1855.2 – Town Ball Played in South Carolina

A woman in South Carolina remembers: “The first school I attended with other pupils was in 1855. Our teacher was a kind man, Mr. John Chisholm. The schoolhouse was the old Covenanter brick church. We had a long school day. We commenced early in the morning and ended just before sundown. We had an hour’s intermission for dinner and recreation. The boys played town ball and shot marbles, and the few girls in school looked on, enjoyed, and applauded the fine plays.”

Remarks of Mrs. Cynthia Miller Coleman, Ridgeway, SC, at loc.gov oral history website. Note: need full URL.

1857.16 -- Early Use of “Town Ball” in NY Clipper

The article reported a “Game of Town Ball” in Germantown PA.

New York Clipper, September 19, 1857. Information posted by David Block to 19CBB 11/1/2002. David writes that this is the earliest “town ball” game account he knows of.

1858.7 – Town Ball is Played in Cincinnati OH

Town ball is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Gymnasts Town Ball Club “under their new code of bye laws, which are more stringent than the old rules.” The Gymnasts’ Club uses a rhomboid-shaped arrangement of five bases spaced sixty feet apart, plus a batsman’s goal that is sixty feet from the first corner and which is not counted as one of the five bases. A complete circuit of the five bases is thus 360 feet, the same as in the New York Game. ||69|| Note: Source?

1858.22 -- Newly Reformed Game of Town Ball Played in Cincinnati OH

Clippings from Cincinnati in 1858 report on the Gymnasts’ Town Ball Club match of July 22, 1858: “They played for the first time under their new code of bye laws, which are more stringent than the old rules.” The game has five corners, sixty feet apart, meaning 360 feet to score. Fly rule in effect.

Clippings in the Rankin Scrapbooks, read in the Mears Collection of the Cleveland Public Library in 1983 by John Thorn; submitted by John Thorn 1/26/2007.

1859.1 – First Intercollegiate [“Town Ball”] Game: Amherst 73, Williams 32

In the first intercollegiate baseball game ever played, Amherst defeats Williams 73-32 in 26 innings, played under the Massachusetts Game rules. The contest is staged in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a neutral site, at the invitation of the Pittsfield Base Ball Club.

Pittsfield Sun, July 7, 1859. Reprinted in Dean A. Sullivan, Compiler and Editor, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 [University of Nebraska Press, 1995], pp. 32-34. Also, Durant, John, The Story of Baseball in Words and Pictures [Hastings House, NY, 1947], p .10. Per Millen, note # 35. ||70||

The two schools also competed at chess that weekend.

Amherst Express, Extra, July 1 - 2, 1859 [Amherst, MA], per David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It, page 219. A two-page broadsheet tells of Amherst taking on Williams in both base ball and chess. Headline: “Muscle and mind!” Note: is it sensible to call this a game of “town ball?”

1860.13 – Town Ball Still Being Played in Philadelphia

Clipper, August 11, 1860, page 132. Per Seymour, Harold – Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Seymour’s note also says “Wiley Note says so too.” Note: “Wiley?”

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.

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