An Unusual Letter With Cricket Associations 1854

 Previously having had the good fortune of acquiring two American cricket CDVs’, one of which pictures baseball’s Harry Wright (see blog posting dated March 7, 2025) I realized how little I knew of cricket, cricket’s origins and of its ties to baseball. In the last year and a half I have made a study of American and British cricket and happened across the letter which is the subject of this blog.

This ‘letter’, even with its cricket content, is more importantly a study of man’s ability to overcome life’s obstacles, no matter how great. A study in perseverance, in times that were indeed so much more difficult than today.

Richard Walker, a cricketer with no hands. At age twelve (1843) Richard Walker had an accident at Cornelius Nicholson’s Burnside Paper Mill, losing his hands between heavy rollers (Cumbria County Archives). He persevered in learning to write and draw and went further, to be able to play cricket.  

His handwritten letter reads:

“Written by Rd (Richard) Walker who lost both his hands at Burnside Paper Mill Aug 9^th 1843. Signed ‘Rd Walker, Sine Manibus (without hands) Aug 18^th 1854’. He continues, “R.W. can play at Cricket, is a very good Batsman and can Bowl very well, has occasionally partly shaved himself and has often Mowed a swaith in rank with other Mowers – and can do anything almost than anyone else can – And has taught the grammar school Haveley for 2 years. R.W.”

An unusual and thought provoking letter with sports associations.

Rare Tiffany Sterling Silver Football Themed Flask 1891/1892

 A wonderfully detailed, high relief, acid etched, Tiffany rugby football flask made in 1891/1892 for Dr. William Palmer Wesselhoeft. Wesselhoeft was a Harvard trained physician (MD in 1857) with ties to Boston University School of Medicine, where he and another four or five of his close Wesselhoeft relatives, who were also MDs, were working. This flask was presented to him before his planned world travels in 1893-1894, as inscribed on the flask. Also inscribed on the flask, translated from German “Travel around the world” and “Never full or never empty”. There are records of him in Rome and Venice and of having to abandon plans for going up the Nile in 1894.  

Interestingly, his son, William Fessenden Wesselhoeft (also a trained Harvard physician) played for the Harvard varsity football team in 1882 and 1884 according to The H Book of Harvard Athletics  and contemporary newspaper accounts. W.F. originally rowed crew but in 1882 "Harvard has taken its biggest boating men...and put them in training for the football team", and a football player he became. 

Tiffany’s craftsman, lacking familiarity with rugby football borrowed from contemporary publication’s illustrations. We have not done a serious search as yet, but should be able to identify the source of the etching on this flask. Publications such as The Century Illustrated Monthly magazine, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated New York Newspaper and Harper’s Weekly commonly had such illustrations, and would be the best place for us to start.

This flask is one of four football related flasks in our collection, and the second made by Tiffany (see post dated September 28, 2014). Also see posts dated November 6, 2022 (Walter Camp's personal flask) and June 15, 2015 (association football flask).

Oneida Football Monument / Boston Public Garden

 "So the Boston game became the Harvard game" 

                                                Morton Prince '75

The Oneida Monument in the Boston Public Garden, was one of a handful of places Jacob and I had on an unwritten bucket list. We combined a few of these, visiting the Oneida Monument, the Ether Monument and the Ether Dome, all in the same day.

We consider the Oneida Monument more of a monument to the Boston Game than to a single team playing this type of football, although its intent was to immortalize only one of the more successful teams that played the Boston game in the 1860s and it was funded by seven of the living members. The original plans for the monument featured a round rubber ball, correct for the game that had been played. It was felt later that this round ball would not be recognizable to people who were now, in the 1920s, accustomed to seeing an oblong shaped football and thus the newer style football was carved onto the monument.

The Boston Game was played from the late 1850s through the mid-1870s and it was the Boston Game specifically that kept Harvard from playing intercollegiate “football” games. In 1874 that was all to change.

In describing the Boston game and its significance in the history and development of American football I will borrow a small section from The H Book of Harvard Athletics that was written by Morton Prince (please see blog posting dated June 13,2015, The H.F.B.C. and the Foundations of Football: Beginnings of a Game: 1873 Membership Shingle).

“Harvard on the other hand played an entirely different game, one inherited, as we have seen, from the preparatory schools, with a long history behind it, and — though we may now smile — dear to the heart of this section of New England. One fundamental principle of our game, determining the whole character of the play, was, I may repeat, that a player was permitted to pick up the ball, run with it, throw it, or pass it. He could also seize and hold an adversary to prevent his getting the ball. Quite contrary to this by the Yale rules, which were essentially the same as those of Princeton, Columbia, and Rutgers, no picking up, carrying, or throwing the ball was allowed, nor was holding or pushing with the hands. The game was all foot work. On the other hand Harvard's game was based on the strategy of carrying, passing, and holding. The two styles of game were consequently vitally different, as different as Soccer football is from the present game. The principles underlying the play were essentially unlike. There could therefore be no compromise or modifications made that would harmonize the two styles of game. If Harvard entered the convention one or the other game would have to be given up. It was easy at the time to foresee which it would be. Harvard would have been outvoted four to one, and then we should have been morally bound to say " good-bye” to our beloved "Boston " football and to support the rules adopted by the convention, — the Association rules, as they were afterwards called.

When fall (1874) came we played McGill in Montreal. This return match, following the experience with the Rugby game the preceding spring, had unexpected consequences; for learning to play Rugby Harvard learned that there was another game besides its own which was worthy of being played. And with familiarity Harvard became weaned from her first love and a new taste was acquired for a better game which opened the door for the longed for match with Yale under rules which all American colleges were destined to adopt. Indeed the impression made upon the Harvard players by the Montreal experience was such that in the following spring we had, although the Rugby rules had not been formally adopted, gone so far that under them a match was arranged with Tufts, instead of under the "Boston" rules with which Tufts must have been more familiar.”

And so it was, the pivotal role of the Boston game on the path to our modern game of football. 

                      

                                                    Close up of the front of the monument

                                                            Jacob holding up the monument

                                        Reverse of the monument listing original members including Edward Bowditch, Harvard class of 1869. His son, also Edward Bowditch, played varsity football for Harvard in 1900, 1901, 1902 and 1903 (class of '03 and L.S.). He was a first team All-American in 1903. See blog entry dated July 27, 2023.

Posing at the back of the monument

                                               Original members in 1925 at the unveiling

      1863 Oneida game used rubber ball on display at Historic New England in Boston

Exceptionally Early Football Team Photo c. November 1875 / Harvard Class Of 1879 Football Team

 In their freshman year, in November of 1875, the ’79 class football team played Adams Academy at Quincy to a draw, one touchdown apiece. The roster included Cushing, Swift, Perry, Blanchard, Conant, Grant (Captain), Lincoln, Sheldon and (?).

Patrick Grant Jr. and William Conant of Harvard had been classmates at Adams Academy the year before.

Also in November of 1875, the class of ’79 played the class of ’78 on Holmes Field, ’79 winning by one goal. The roster of this game included Cushing, Swift, Perry, Nunn, Conant, Blanchard, Austin, Lincoln, Grant (Captain) and Houston.

Their next game was on May 22, 1876, “79 vs. the Tufts second eleven at Medford. At this point the roster was as follows: rushers – Cushing (Captain), Swift, Perry, Holmes, Nunn, Conant; Half-tends – Blanchard, Austin, Lincoln; Tends – Cowdin, Houston. Austin was injured in the game and was replaced by Harding. ’79 won the game by two goals.

It appears that they also lost a second game with Adams as well as a game with Philips Andover Academy.

Their sophomore year the ’79 played ’80 November 23, 1876 on Holmes Field winning an easy match by a score of more than 3 goals and 5 touchdowns. (see blog entry dated March 31, 2022, 1876 Harvard Freshman Football Team (Class of 1880)). '79 Roster: Cushing (Captain), Swift, Perry, Nunn, Conant. Half-tends: Blanchard, Austin, Lincoln. Tends: Sheldon, Houston.

The game was won by ’79 by “more than three goals and five touchdowns”.

Also in their sophomore year they played and won a game against the Boston Resolutes on Holmes Field. The Resolutes apparently had a good number of Harvard alumni playing for them. The listed '79 roster: Cushing (captain), Swift, Perry, Holmes, Nunn, Conant, Blanchard, Lincoln, Harding, Houston, Sheldon.

In the photo is Captain Patrick Grant (pictured with the ball) who left Harvard in 1877, going into business in Boston. Livingston Cushing (see blog entry dated August 25, 2013) took over the captaincy of the ’79 team in May of 1876. He also played for the varsity in 1876 through 1879, captaining the University Eleven in 1877 and 1878. Patrick Grant was the brother of Henry Rice Grant (see blog entry dated June 13, 2015) Harvard’s first varsity football captain, their father graduating from Harvard in 1828 and both brothers being from the father’s second marriage.

Of those listed as playing for the ’79 class team, a good number went on to play for the University Eleven:

 William Russel Austin (’79 and LS) played for the varsity in 1876, 1877, 1879 (front right on ground in photo)

Frederick Gardiner Perry played for the varsity in 1877, 1878

Livingston Cushing played for the varsity in 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879 (1877 and 1878 as captain)(back row second from the right in the photo)

Jireh Swift played for the varsity in 1877, 1878

Frank Augustine Houston (’79 and LS) played for the varsity 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881

Jabish Holmes played for the varsity 1877, 1878

George Rumsey Sheldon played for the varsity 1877

John Elliot Cowdin played varsity 1878 (back row center in the photo)

Benjamin Seaver Blanchard played varsity 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878

A true “White Whale”. One of the earliest photos of an American team, playing by rugby style football rules, taken less than 6 months after the Tufts – Harvard game and the year after the Harvard – McGill matches in 1874. One of the earliest American football photos we have come across. An important photo from the very beginnings of American football.

Photo is affixed to the back of the flyleaf, inside the front cover of a Victorian photo album. The front of the flyleaf page is inscribed “Aunt Susan, from Lillian, September 1878”.

 

Rare And Early Lawrence Football Team Photograph / 1881

In 1880, Phillips Andover Academy played Lawrence High School (Massachusetts) in football (abutting towns), one of the earliest accounts of a public High School fielding a football team. This contest was also recognized as one of the first football games played between private and public high schools in the country.

The teams met again in October of 1881 (the Lawrence team pictured), Andover once again coming away with a win. Both the 1880 and 1881 games were played as the American rugby game, both teams switching to the collegiate football game in 1882. Lawrence was playing only a couple of games a year at this time, common for any team in these formative years.

An interesting aspect to this photo is that many of the team’s players wore pillbox caps, quite rare to see in any early football photographs, and one of the main reasons we acquired the photo. Please see our blog entry dated August 9, 2022, for more on the pillbox cap.

A wonderful early and rare football photo. Photo without the mat measures  7 1/2” x 9 5/8”.

Research note: Another photo (not pictured), in the possession of  the Lawrence Public Library (Special Collections) is erroneously identified by them as an 1881 photo of the Lawrence High School football team. It is not labelled or identified as such and they believe that this dating information arose at the time it was donated. As there are several of the same team members in both photos and in the library's photo they are obviously older, we believe their photo to be a year or two later.

Turn Of The Century Princeton Hockey Team / Gresham Poe

 A turn of the century Princeton hockey team photo featuring Gresham Poe, Princeton '02, (middle row, second from the left) that we were lucky enough to pick up. Very similar photo but much larger in size to that used for our March 23, 2014 post, titled "Gresham Poe / Princeton Hockey 1902 / Northampton Hockey Trophy". Both photos share a number of the same players. Having recently added a most interesting comment to the 2014 post, I recommend re-reading that again if you have the time.

We have always had an interest in the six Poe brothers, all of whom played football for Princeton, and have a fair number of Poe related posts in this blog, including those dated: March 23, 2014. October 17, 2017, May 30, 2023, January 22, 2023, December 25, 2020, December 31, 2020, Nov 23, 2014, November 2, 2014, October 26, 2022, December 18, 2021 and February 13, 2014.

Photo measures 9 1/2" x 12". 

Harry Wright / W.F. Davis / Exceedingly Rare American Cricket Team CDVs / September 1868

 

 Once again we diverge from our primary interest of football to delve into other early sports memorabilia, which we pick up occasionally when it crosses our path and offers us a chance to do some research. In this case we post two American CDVs, taken in 1868, as it turns out the only year the photographer was located at the address stamped on the back of the photographs. Pictured are a portion of the “picked twenty-two” American cricket players that played the visiting “All England Eleven”.  We know of no less than 26 American players, inclusive of substitutes available to play the English at Riverside Trotting Park in Allston (Boston), in  late September of 1868. Only two players are identified, William Franklin Davis (played Harvard baseball in 1865 (class of ’67)) and Harry Wright, a well-known professional baseball player- both circled. Two members (George and Charles) of the Newhall clan of American cricket players, of which I believe there were eleven, and George Wright, Harry’s brother are listed on the roster and are likely also in the photos, however not being baseball researchers per se, we would have difficulty making a definitive identification of George Wright. These photos appear to be taken off Essex Street in Salem, in back of a rooming house where “rooms open every evening”.  Each CDV measures 3 7/8" x 2 3/8".

Early (1860s) American cricket team photographs are scarce.

                                  

                                                        Broadside for the Cricket Match