1862.104

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Ballplaying Featured on 1862 Letterhead for Camp Doubleday

Salience	Peripheral
Tags	Drawing, FamousDrawing, Famous
Location	WashingtonWashington
City/State/Country:	Washington, DC, United States
Modern Address
Game
Immediacy of Report	Contemporary
Age of Players	AdultAdult
Holiday
Notables
Text	[A]  John Thorn: "Abner Doubleday has become a joke among us baseball folks. "He didn't invent baseball; baseball invented him." This letterhead, from 1862 ,may give pause even to hardened skeptics."  John also notes  that the game depicted does not resemble base ball, or wicket, or cricket. [B]David Block: The 1862 letters of Lester Winslow, of the 76th NY, at the National Archives, feature stationary printed with the heading "Camp Doubleday -- 76th New York" and show soldiers playing a  bat-ball game. On this David Block writes: "In the foreground of the illustration two soldiers face each other with bats, one striking a ball. Since no other players are involved, the only game that seems to correlate to the image is, in fact, drive ball.  If not for Abner Doubleday's association, we would pay this little heed, but it is a matter of curiosity, if not amusement, to place baseball's legendary noninventor in such close proximity to a game involving a bat and ball."
Sources	[A]  John Thorn, tweet (showing the letterhead) on 2/2/22.  [B] David Block, Baseball before We Knew It (U Nebraska, 2005), page 198. See also the brief Protoball Glossary entry on the game of Drive Ball.
Warning	This coincidence is not taken as evidence that Abner Doubleday "invented" base ball.
Comment	Camp Doubleday is described in an 1896 source as "just outside Brooklyn city limits."  See: https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/unit-history/artillery/5th-heavy-artillery-regiment/prison-pens-south; Other sources locate it on Long Island, NY. A third source locates Camp Doubleday in Northwest Washington DC:  https://www.northamericanforts.com/East/dc.html#NW So which location is depicted on this letterhead? [1] From John Thorn email, 2/5/2022;  "Camp Doubleday appears to be in DC. It was also known as Fort Massachusetts. [SOURCE: HISTORY OF THE SEVENTY-SIXTH REGIMENT NEW YORK VOLUNTEERS; WHAT IT ENDURED AND ACCOMPLISHED ; CONTAINING DESCRIPTIONS OF ITS TWENTY -FIVE BATTLES ; ITS MARCHES ; ITS CAMP AND BIVOUAC SCENES ; WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF FIFTY - THREE OFFICERS, AND A COMPLETE RECORD OF THE ENLISTED MEN . BY A. P. SMITH, LATE FIRST LIEUTENANT AND Q. M. , SEVENTY- SIXTH N. Y. VOLS. ILLUSTRATED WITH FORTY -NINE ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD, BY J. P. DAVIS & SPEER, OF NEW YORK ; AND A LITHOGRAPH , BY L. N. ROSENTHAL, OF PHILADELPHIA . CORTLAND, N. Y. PRINTED FOR THE PUBLISHER. 1867]" [2] From Bruce Allardice email, 2/5/2022:  "The Camp Doubleday mentioned is the one near Washington DC. The 76th regiment was not stationed near Brooklyn in 1862, but was stationed in/near DC. It was in a brigade commanded by Abner Doubleday, hence the 'Camp Doubleday' designation." ---  David Block suggests the drawing (see below: game is shown near the image's center) shows Drive Ball, a fungo game.  See  Baseball Before We Knew It ,(2005),  page 198.  See also the sketchy Protoball Glossary entry on Drive Ball. --  One auction house in 2015 claimed  "This is perhaps the very first piece of American stationery depicting Union soldiers playing baseball. Amazingly, this lithograph has it all by showing Union soldiers at play in Camp Doubleday which, of course, was named after the game's creator Abner Doubleday!" --  From John Thorn, 2/22/22: "Lithographer is Louis N. Rosenthal of Philadelphia. Born 1824."  See https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool%3A79709   Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Is it clear why someone would create such a letterhead? Can we find a fuller description of drive ball? How does Protoball give a source for John's Tweet for later users who want to see it?       Edit with form to add a query
Source Image
External Number
Submitted by	Bruce Allardice (2018); John Thorn (2022)
Submission Note	Tweet, 2/2/22
Has Supplemental Text

1862.104 Ballplaying Featured on 1862 Letterhead for Camp Doubleday"

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