1787.1

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Tom Altherr Dedication

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Ballplaying Prohibited at Princeton - Shinny or Early Base Ball?

Salience Noteworthy
Tags Bans, College, Pre-Knicks NYC
Immediacy of Report Contemporary
Age of Players Youth
Text

"It appearing that a play at present much practiced by the smaller boys . . . with balls and sticks," the faculty of Princeton University prohibits such play on account of its being dangerous as well as "low and unbecoming gentlemen students."

 

Sources

Quoted without apparent reference in Henderson, pp. 136-7. Sullivan, on 7/29/2005, cited Warnum L. Collins, "Princeton," page 208, per Harold Seymour's dissertation.

Wallace quotes the faculty minute [November 26, 1787] in George R. Wallace, Princeton Sketches: The Story of Nassau Hall (Putnam's Sons, New York, 1894), page 77, but he does not cite Collins. The Wallace book was accessed 11/16/2008 via Google Book search for "'princeton sketches.'" The college is in Princeton NJ.

Warning

Caveat: Collins - and Wallace -believed that the proscribed game was shinny, and Altherr makes the same judgment - see Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," Base Ball, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), pages 35-36.

Comment

Note: Princeton was known as the College of New Jersey until 1896.

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Query

Can we determine why this "shiny" inference was made?

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Comments

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