Exhibitions - The Machine in the Garden

Commercial public pleasure garden owners welcomed the curious machine into their 18th century American gardens with open arms. The machine soon would transform man's ancient agrarian society into a bustling industrial, & then, technological economy.

1671 Christiaan Huygens by Caspar Netscher (1635-1684)

In the 1600's & 1700's, master clockmakers began to build elaborate clockwork machines, initially showing the movement of the sun & planets.  The clockworks depicting the planets & sun were called orreries. Clockwork machines had been built by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) & Steven Thrasi (d 1703) in Leiden by 1700.  Englishman George Graham invented the orrery about 1710.  This was quickly copied by London instrument maker John Rowley & more commercial, entertaining clockwork machines soon were available from English vendors George Adams & Benjamin Martin.  The popularity of these machines exploded in Europe, England, & the British American colonies.

An orrery by John Rowley. Detail of an engraving from The Universal Magazine (1749).  The device of arms & balls & gears, run by clockwork, showed how the planets & their satellites moved around the sun as time passed.  The Earth typically took about 10 minutes to go round once, so it probably would not have been an enthralling spectacle by today's standards.  John Rowley made a copy for Charles Boyle, the fourth Earl of Orrery, and ingratiatingly named it in his honor.

During the 18C, Enlightenment writers sometimes described the universe itself using the metaphor of a great clock, an intricate mechanism moving with the perfect regularity & predictability of clockwork.  One of the earliest of these was Rene Descartes (1596–1650) who wrote in his 1664 Treatise on Man, "I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth ... Thus God ... places inside it all the parts required to make it walk, eat, breathe & indeed to imitate all those of our functions that can be imagined to proceed from matter...We see clocks, artificial fountains, mills & other such machines which, although only man made, have power to move of their own accord in many different ways. But I am supposing this machine to be made by the hands of God, & so ... you may reasonably think it capable of a greater variety of movements than I could possibly imagine in it."

Some of the earliest entertaining machines finding their way into a commercial colonial garden were akin to the clockwork mechanisms displayed in Pennsylvania at Philadelphia's Coach and Horses Tavern in 1738. The owner brought the exhibit to his tavern in hopes of beguiling his fairly influential clientele. The work depicted the dreams of the Biblical character Joseph.

The initial promotion must have been successful, as the intriguing machine made an encore appearance at the popular Coach and Horses in 1745.  The tavern & grounds, built around 1690, had originally been called The State House Inn of Philadelphia & was also known by the owner's name as Clark's Inn. In colonial times it seems to have been called the "Coach and Horses," & after the Revolution the "Half Moon." The most important thing about the tavern was its location. It sat on Chestnut Street across from State House which gave it the custom of the members & hangers-on of the colonial assemblies.  In the 1898 Memorial History of the City of Philadelphia, it was reported, "Master William Penn, when he was in Philadelphia during his second visit to his province, used to sit in the porch & refresh himself with a pipe...Apparently it was only a drinking-house of the commoner sort, to which the statesmen of the capital resorted for a cheerful glass..."

The Coach and Horses inn was a rather common 2 story building which stood not in a green garden filled with walkways & grass, but in a field covered in white crushed shells. At the Coach and Horses, where the city elections were usually held, discarded oyster & clam shells around it had been trampled into a hard, white, smooth yard giving it the appearance of a sea-beach tavern.  Whenever the weather permitted, guests would sit on chairs from the tavern carted out to the porch & the "garden."  The grounds did boast two ancient walnut trees, the remains of the forest that covered the neighborhood in Penn's time. The last of these trees was cut down in 1818.  Some of the wood was made into snuff-boxes, one of the boxes being presented to the Marquis de la Fayette, when he visited Philadelphia in 1825.

In another Philadelphia tavern, Crooked Billet, the owner exhibited a clockwork mechanism featuring eight figures ringing eight bells, while a lady turned head over heels "like a mountebank" in 1744. (In the mid 18th century, a mountebank was an impudent pretender to a skill or knowledge, a charlatan, who resorted to some degrading means to gain attention.) Men & women were invited to view this mechanical extravaganza for six6 pence apiece. Children were admitted for 3 pence.  Benjamin Franklin, fresh off the boat from Boston in 1723, looking for a "reputable" Philadelphia tavern headed for the Crooked Billet. The tavern was established in the 1690s by widow Alice Guest on Front Street below Chestnut.

By September 8, 1746, Richard Brickell had arrived in the colonies and begun to perform and promote in the New York Evening Post, a variety of entertainment in the taverns & public pleasure gardens of the colonies.  This initial presentation consisted of an elaborate musical clockwork with bellringers. "a curious musical machine, lately arrived from England, which performs several strange and diverting motions, viz. the doors fly open of their own accord, and there appear six ringers in white shirts, all busy pulling the bell-ropes, and playing several tunes, chimes, and changes:  They first appear with black caps and black beards; at one corner there is a barber's shop and a barber's pole hung out, and at the shop door stands the barber's boy, who, at the word of command, gives three knocks at his master's door, out comes the barber with his razor and bason, to shave the ringers, then the doors shut themselves whilst the barber is shaving them, then the doors open themselves the second time, and the ringers appear all clean shaved and clean caps put on; afterwards they ring a long peal of changes, and fall their bells to admiration, then the barber walks into his shop again, his boy standing ready to open the door for his master, and then shuts it after him; last of all, the great doors shut themselves again.  All being performed by clock-work, in intimation of Bow-Bells in London...Where is also to be seen, the curious and surprizing Magick Lanthorn, by which Friar Tuck, Doctor Faustus, and others, performs such wonderful curiosities, representing upwards of 30 humourous and entertaining figures, larger than men or women; as the Rising Sun, the Friendly Travellers, the Pot Companions, the Blind Beggar of Gednal Green and his Boy, the Merry Piper dancing a Jigg to his own dumb musick, the Courageous Fencing Master, the Italian Mountebank or famous infallible Quack,  the Man riding on a Pig with his face towards the tail, the Dutchman scating on the Ice in the midst of summer; with a great variety of other figures equally diverting and curious, too tedious here to mention."

In New York City, Adam Vandenberg's drinking establishment was known as the Drovers' Inn. In connection with the tavern business, he also operated a commercial public pleasure garden called Mead Garden. Vandenberg seems to have been one of the most energetic & successful amusement-promoters of his day. In addition to his tavern & entertainment garden, he maintained a race-course, to which he charged admission at the rate of six-pence a head, & which was the scene of many lively contests according to the local newspapers. Vandenberg was still in the occupation of the premises as the Revolution approached, when a a liberty pole was erected opposite his house.

An expert at enticing new drinking patrons into his Mead Garden, proprietor Adam Vandenberg, offered an intricate machine fantasy to lure the curious in 1755. He announced obtaining, "a curious musical MACHINE" depicting the 1703 London play The True & Ancient History of Bateman; or The Unhappy Marriage.  Vandenberg was so impressed with the mechanism that he bought newspaper space to advertise the entire workings to potential patrons. "Two folding doors fly open, a curtain draws itself up, & exhibits a company of gentlemen &ladies, with knives & forks in motion, sat down to a wedding-dinner. The bride having promised marriage to young Bateman, proving false, & marrying old Jermain, Bateman hangs himself on her wedding day. Four cupids fly down, & carry Bateman away. The bride still enjoying herself at dinner, she at last falls from the table, dead & her rosy colour changes to a deadly paleness; After which the devil comes up, &carries her away. Here the curtain falls, & ends the first act. The drawing up a Second time...exhibits young Bateman laid in state, with mourners about him, dressed in black cloaks & white hatbands; the room hung with excutcheons, & six ringers, in their shirts, ringing the bells...The whole represented by clock-work."

Elaborate clockwork productions retained their popularity throughout the 18th century, when a clock was probably the only machine most British American colonials could hope to own. Machines traveled from tavern to tavern. Bateman's clockwork tragedy appeared at Philadelphia's The Death of the Fox tavern in 1756. By that year, the owner John Butler ran his stage-wagon & stage-boat twice a week, setting out from his house 'at the sign of the Death of the Fox, in Strawberry alley,' on Monday morning, reaching Trenton, New Jersey ferry the same day. He received the return passengers at the ferry, & took them to Philadelphia on Tuesday.

Interest in clockwork machines was booming, both inside & outside the commercial garden, by the time of the American Revolution.  In South Carolina by December of 1773, the Charleston Library Society decided to "to engage an ingenious Artist one Mr Writtenhouse of Philadelphia who is a native of Pennsylvania to make an Orrery for this Society (he having made one & nearly nearly finished another in which he seems greatly to have improv'd that Instrument)."  David Rittenhouse (1732-1796) was a renowned American astronomer, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, & public official. Rittenhouse was a president of the American Philosophical Society; Treausrer of Pennsylvania; & the first director of the United States Mint.

Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) Portrait of David Rittenhouse (1732-1796)

Familiar with published descriptions & illustrations of orreries produced by several English clockwork makers, Rittenhouse based his design on John Rowning's Compendious System of Natural Philosophy (1758).  In a 1767 letter, Rittenhuse explained how his clockwork orrery would differ from the strictly entertaining orreries & clockworks being produced in England, "I did not design a machine which should give the ignorant in astronomy a just view of the Solar System: but would rather astonish the skilful and curious examiner, by a most accurate correspondence between the situations and motions of our little representatives of the heavenly bodies, and the situations and motions of those bodies, themselves. I would have my Orrery really useful, by making it capable of informing us, truly, of the astronomical phaenomena for any particular point of time; which, I do not find that any Orrery yet made, can do."

Rittenhouse had begun his orrery design in 1767.  His 1st machine which contained 3 faces & pointers could determine the position of a planet for any day in the nest or the past 2,500 years of 1767.  A 2nd Rittenhouse machine measured 16 feet in width & was 8 feet high.  The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, April 26th, 1770: "It is with pleasure we inform the public that the Orrery of which the American Philosophical Society formerly published an account projected and executed by Mr. David Rittenhouse in this Province is now almost finished. As this is an American production and much more compleat than anything of the-kind ever made in Europe, it must give great pleasure to every lover of his country to see her rising to fame in the sublime science as well as every improvement in the arts. Dr. Witherspoon accompanied by some gentlemen went on Saturday last to see and converse with the ingenious artist, and being convinced of the superior advantages that must arise from this new invented Orrery in the study of natural philosophy, and desirous to encourage so truly great a genius, purchased it for the use of the College of New Jersey."

The Rittenhouse Orrery at the University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia   The machine measures 16 feet in width & was 8 feet high.

Knowledge of clockwork machines, especially the Rittenhouse Orrery was growing throughout the public.  It ws alluded to in "The Vision of Columbus," published at Hartford in 1787:

See the sage RITTENHOUSE, with ardent eye,
Lift the long tube and pierce the starry sky;
Clear in his view the circling systems roll,
And broader splendours-gild the central pole.
He marks what laws th'eccentric wand'rers bind,
Copies Creation in his forming mind,
And bids, beneath his hand, in-semblance rise,
With mimic orbs, the labours of the skies.
There wond'ring crouds with raptur'd eye behold
The spangled Heav'ns their mystic maze unfold;
While each glad sage his splendid Hall shall grace,
With all the spheres that cleave th'ethereal space.

Mechanical clockwork machines, especially the two Rittenhouse orreries were of interest to a wide range of early Americans.  John Adams, August 27, 1776, wrote of the Princeton Orrery: "Here we saw a most beautiful machine--an Orrery or planetarium constructed by Mr. Rittenhouse of Philadelphia. It exhibits almost every motion in the astronomical world."

Near the end of the 18C, another clockwork exhibition appeared in a public pleasure garden in New York City. In 1798, Frenchman Joseph Delacroix presented a typically European intricacy at his Ice House Garden.  The machine featured Charles, the Archduke of Austria, & Napoleon signing the Treaty of Campo Formio at Rastatt while a Turkish band played & 14 figures marched in the background. A bear & several monkeys danced to the commands of a keeper, & a German couple then danced with the bear plus a Harlequin. Admission to behold this "beautiful & astonishing sett of Mechanism, far superior to any ever exhibited in the United States," was two shillings for adults & one shilling for each child.

Clockwork machines were morphing into larger entities by the turn of the century.  Always searching for new ways to entice patrons to his New York City gardens, in 1805 Delacroix added a display of "hydraulic machines" to his July 4th spectacular. He announced that "at very great labor & expense" he had erected the machines in his garden. The apparatus turned vertically & horizontally using water power.  The inventor set up the whole machine as a globe of the world displaying people, a ship in full sail, animals, birds, fish, & trees. "The first moving wheel displayed Minerva, Pluto with Cerebus chained, a shepherdess, a miser with a money bag, a beggar with a bundle, & three children standing on each others shoulders. The second turning wheel was dedicated to mechanics. A wheelwright, cooper, baker, tanner, shoemaker, gardener, whitesmith, & a miller spun around on this level. The third twirling loop honored the military exhibiting a company of uniformed soldiers with two on horseback. A fourth wheel displayed an elegantly dressed African queen, a sportsman, a jew, Apollo with his harp, a Dominican friar on horseback, & Pluto with his dog chained."  In all, 12 wheels exhibited a variety of curious people &animals.

Four years later, the ingenious Delacroix added nine new wheels containing transparent paintings to his hydraulic machine. The paintings represented traditional motifs, "A figure of Night flying before the God of Day, who opens his azure gate to distribute his favours on the earth. Phoebus conducting his chariot, accompanied by Nymphs strewing flowers. Mars conducted by Victory to the Temple of Peach, where the Goddess offers him the Palm & Crown of Laurel, & a procession of Lovers offering at the Temple of HYMEN."



In the summer of 1800, inventor Phineas Parker patented a curious new attraction for Joseph Delacroix's New York City garden. This machine was not just meant to be viewed, adventurous visitors could even climb aboard Mr. Parker's contraption for a ride.



Parker called his novelty the "Patent Federal Ballon" or the "Vertical Aerial Coachee." The inventor offered to carry "persons in health...1500 feet per minute, nearly 20 mile an hour, but slower if they chuse," while passing by "a rich variety of Landscapes, equal to any in the world, & alternate views of the Waters of the East & North Rivers of the City of New-York, & the neighboring Villages."



He advertised that eight people could ride on the machine at a time. The machine may have been "flying horses"--called a a merry-go-round today--or it might have been a rotating flying swing. Philadelphia diarist Elizabeth Drinker remembered that the owner of the Coach and Horses tavern in that town "kept flying-coaches fifty years ago, perhaps."



Not to be outdone, Delacroix's fellow Frenchman Joseph Corré installed flying horses, a fountain, & a swing "for the amusement of the Ladies." in his new Mount Vernon Garden in 1800.


The proprietor of the Hay Market Garden in Richmond, Virginia hoped his machine would help increase his dinner business. In 1802 he promoted a newly patented cooking machine at his public pleasure garden while charging the audience for both the privilege of watching & eating.  ETHEREAL DINNER...a Dining & Dancing Party at the...Garden...THE dinner to be cooked entirely by the flame produced from gas according to Mr. Henfrey's mode, for which he has obtained a patent; the process of the cooking will be in view of the company so as to admit of a full investigation shewing its cleanliness, expedition & economy."

The novelty of newfangled machines did lure new patrons into America's 18th century commercial public pleasure gardens. Today's technology is based on machine building. Eighteenth century inventors soon abandoned the mechanical clockwork machines made soley for entertainment & applied the principles they had learned to the development of mechanical tools, soon inventing the world's first completely automated loom, controlled by a punch-card technology that anticipated the computer by 2 centuries.

Sports for 19C Women

During the 19th-century, more & more American women began to participate in outdoor sports in public spaces. Clothing worn for sports began to change as well.  This chronology traces that evolution.

1825 - Ballooning Madame Johnson takes off in a hot air balloon in New York, landing in a New Jersey swamp.

1834 - Lacrosse The first modern Lacrosse games are played. The original game was played by North American Indians.

1837 - Donald Walker's book, Exercise for Ladies, warns women against horseback riding, because it deforms the lower part of the body.

1850 - Bloomers Amelia Jenks Bloomer begins publicizing a new style of women's dress, first introduced by Fanny Kemble, a British-born actress - loose-fitting pants worn under a skirt. Other women's rights leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony adopted the new style. But it wasn't until Katharine Hepburn (another actress) began wearing stylish pants in public nearly a century later that a wide-spread revolution in women's clothing finally "took."

1855 - Hockey The first modern game of hockey is played in Kingston, Ontario, using rules similar to today's. 

1856 - Catherine Beecher (1800-78) publishes Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families, the first fitness manual for women.

1858 -Mountain Climbing Julia Archibald Holmes (1838-87) climbs Pikes Peak in Colorado (14,110 feet) wearing bloomers on Aug. 5.

1863 - Roller Skating New Yorker James Plimpton uses a rubber cushion to enable the wheels of roller skates to turn slightly when the skater shifted his or her weight. This design is considered the basis for the modern roller skate, allowing for safer, controlled skating.

1864 - Croquet The Park Place Croquet Club of Brooklyn organizes with 25 members. Croquet is probably the first game played by both men and women in America.

1865 - Swimming & Boating Matthew Vassar opens Vassar College with a special School of Physical Training with classes in riding, gardening, swimming, boating, skating and "other physical accomplishments suitable for ladies to acquire ... bodily strength and grace."

1866 - Baseball Vassar College fields the first two women's amateur baseball teams.

1867 - Baseball The Dolly Vardens, a black women's team from Philadelphia, is a women's professional baseball team.

1867 - Mountain Climbing Frances S. Case and Mary Robinson climb Mt. Hood in Oregon (11,235 feet).

1870 - Sculling In a sculling contest held on the Monongahela River, Lottie McAlice and Maggie Lew, both 16, row 1 mile. McAlice wins the race in 18:54, winning a gold watch and a $2,000 purse.

1871 - Mountain Climbing Addie Alexander climbs the 14,256 foot Longs Peak in Colorado.

1871 - Roller Skating Miss Carrie A. Moore demonstrates a variety of roller skating movements at the Occidental Rink in San Francisco. Later in the same day, she exhibits her skill on a velocipede.

1871 - Rowing The Empire City Rowing Club's 10th annual regatta features a rowing match among young women on the Harlem River in New York on Sept. 25. Five women row 17-foot workboats around a 2 mile course. Rowing the Glen, Amelia Shean wins the singles race in 18:32. Elizabeth Custarce and Annie Harris win the pairs race.

1872 - Baseball Mills College in Oakland, CA establishes women's college baseball teams.

1873 - Swiming 10 young women compete in a mile-long swimming contest in the Harlem River. Miss Deliliah Goboess wins the prize, a silk dress worth $175.

1874 - Tennis Mary Ewing Outerbridge of Staten Island introduces tennis to the United States. She purchases tennis equipment in Bermuda (and had trouble getting it through Customs!) and uses it to set up the first US tennis court at the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club that spring.

1875 - Ballooning Lizzie Ihling, the niece of famed American balloonist John Wise, makes a solo flight on July 5. The skin of the bag began to rip, sending the balloon falling to earth. Lizzie was not injuried.

1875 - Baseball The "Blondes" and "Brunettes" play their first match In Springfield, IL on Sept. 11. Newspapers heralded the event as the "first game of baseball ever played in public for gate money between feminine ball-tossers."

1875 - Ice Skating Wellesley College opens with a college gymnasium for exercising and a lake for ice skating and the first rowing program for women.

1876 - Walking Mary Marshall, 26, shocks spectators when she beats Peter VanNess in the best of three walking matches (called Pedestrians) in New York City.

1876 - Maria Speltarini crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope in July, wearing 38-pound weights on each ankle.

1876 - Mountain Climbing Ten percent of the members of the newly created Appalachin Mountain Club are women.

1876 - Boxing Nell Saunders defeated Rose Harland in the first United States women's boxing match, receiving a silver butter dish as a prize.

1877 - Swimming Eliza Bennett swims across the Hudson River in August.

1877 - Field Hockey The first known women's field hockey club is started in Surrey, England.

1878 - Walking Woman pedestrian Ada Anderson walks 3,000 quarter-miles in 3,000 quarter hours over the course of a month in New York' Mozart Hall, kicking off a series of "lady walker" matches.

1879 - Archery The first National Archery Championship is held, with 20 women participating.

1879 - Speed Walking Speed-walker Ada Anderson walks 2,700 quarter-miles in 2,700 quarter hours, as indoor Pedestrianism continues to attract attention.

1880 - Ballooning Balloonist Mary Meyers makes her first ascent on July 4 at Little Falls, NY before a crowd of 15,000.

1881 - Horseracing Bell Cook of California and Emma Jewett of Minnesota toured the country, competing in a series of 20-mile horse races. On Sept. 29, in Rochester, NY's Driving Park, the two compete, with Jewwtt winning for the first time when Cook was thrown from her horse with only half a mile to go. Jewett covered the 20 miles in 45:05 using a nunber of changes of mount.

1881 - Indoor Tennis Indoor tennis is played inside the 7th Regiment Armory in New York City on Nov. 26, with 12 courts put in use for women enthusiasts and their male partners.

1882 - Croquet The National Croquet Association is formed to revise and standarize the rules.

1882 - Athletic Competition At the YWCA in Boston, the first athletic games for women are held.

1883 - Archery Mrs. M. C. Howell wins her first archery title. She will win the national championship for women 17 times between 1883 and 1907.

1883 - Baseball The first baseball "Ladies Day" is held on June 16 by the NY Giants, where both escorted and unescorted women are allowed into the park for free.

1885 - The Association of Collegiate Alumnae publishes a study which concludes that it is sufficient to say that female [college] graduates...do not seem to show, ...any marked difference in general health for the average health ... of women engaged in other kinds of work, or in fact, of women generally...", refuting the widely held belief that college study impaired a woman’s physical health and ability to bear children.

1885 - Sharp Shooting Annie Oakley (Phoebe Ann Moses, 1860-1926), 25, is the sharp-shooting star of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. She could hit a moving target while riding a galloping horse; hit a dime in mid-air; and regularly shot a cigarette from her husband's lips.

1885 -Roller Skating  More than $20 million has been invested in roller skating rinks in almost every city and small town around the country.

1886 - Ballooning Mary Hawley Myers sets a world altitude record in a hot air balloon, soaring 4 miles above Franklin, PA, without benefit of oxygen equipment. Her first balloon ascent was in Little Falls, NY in 1880. Between 1880 and 1890 she completed more balloon ascents than any other living person.

1886 - Lacrosse The first known women's lacrosse game is played.

1887 - Tennis Ellen Hansell is crowned the first Women's Singles tennis champion at the US Open.

1887 - Indoor Baseball Indoor baseball (the forerunner of softball) was invented by George Hancock at the Farragut Boat Club on Chicago's South Side. The first game was played on Thanksgiving Day. The basic equipment included a huge 17-inch ball and a stick-like bat. No gloves were worn, and the catcher wore no mask. It quickly became the indoor winter sport of choice for boys and girls in the area.

1887 - Trap Shooting Rose Coghlin ties two men in a mixed trap shooting match held at the Philadephia Gun Club. All three score 7.

1888 - Cycling The modern "safety" bicycle is invented with a light frame and two equal-sized wheels and a chain drive.

1888 - Cycling Women join (bi)cycling clubs in Chicago and tennis clubs in New York City.

1888 - The Amateur Athletic Union is formed to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sport. During its early years, the AAU served as a leader in international sport representing the US in the international sports federations.

1888 - Fencing AAU holds its first fencing championships. Professor J. Hartl of Vienna tours America with a women's fencing demonstration; women begin to fence at private clubs.

1889 - Cycling The first women's six-day bicycle race ends at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1890's - Cycling More than a million American women will own and ride bicycles during the next decade. It is the first time in American history that an athletic activity for women will become widely popular.

1890 - Golf  Miss Carrie Low and John Reid defeat Mrs. Reid and John Upham in golf's first mixed foursome.

1890's - Baseball The Bloomer Girls baseball era lasted from the 1890s until 1934. Hundreds of teams -- All Star Ranger Girls, Philadelphia Bobbies, New York Bloomer Girls, Baltimore Black Sox Colored Girls -- offered employment, travel, and adventure for young women who could hit, field, slide, or catch.

1890 - Baseball A women's baseball club plays a game against the Danville, IL Browns before 2,000 fans on Sunday, June 8. As the women leave town in carriages for Covington, IN, they are arrested and fined a total of $100 for disturbing the peace by playing baseball on Sunday in viloation of the local "Blue Laws." The men's team members are also arrested.

1890 - Baseball Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochran Seaman) becomes the first woman to travel around the world alone - she does it in just 72 days while a reporter for the New York World newspaper, returning on Jan. 25.

1890 - Mountain Climbing Fay Fuller climbs the 14,410 foot Mt. Rainier in Washington.

1891 - Walking Zoe Gayton arrives in Castleton, New York on March 20 after walking cross-country in 213 day, leaving the West Coast in Aug. 1890, averaging 18 miles per day. She won a $2,000 wager.

1891 -Golf The Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island opens its doors to women. Golf proved so popular that the club opened a 9-hole course for women 2 years later.

1891 - Parachuting Beatrice Von Dressden, 14 of Buffalo, NY, makes her first parachute jump from a hot air balloon.

1892 - Gymnastics Gymnastics instructor Senda Berenson Abbott adapts James Naismith's basketball rules for women and introduces the game to her students at Smith College, where she became the first director of physical education in Jan. Her rules confine each player to one-third of the court.

1892 - The Sierra Club of California welcomes women members as it organizes.

1892 - Rifle Shooting Louise Pound, (born Lincoln, NE June 30, 1872), enrolles at the University of Nebraska and earned a BA degree in 1892 and her MA in 1895. While in college she helped organize a girls' military company and she set a record at rifle target practice. She was the first woman named to the Lincoln Journal Sports Hall of Fame in 1954. She participated in tennis, golf, cycling, and ice skating, and also coached girls' basketball.

1892 - Boxing Hessie Donahue, who donned a loose blouse, bloomers and boxing gloves and sparred a few rounds as part of a vaudeville act, knocks out legendary heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan for over a minute, after he accidentally landed a real blow on her during the act.

1893 to 1900 - Cycling The "Golden Age of the Bicycle", with the development of the modern-style "safety bicycle" with two equal- sized wheels, coaster brakes, and pneumatic tires creating a comfortable, faster and safer ride. A side effect is more common-sense dressing for women.

1893 - Mountian Climbing Katharine Lee Bates climbs to the top of Pike's Peak and is inspired to compose a poem, "America, the Beautiul."

1894 - Golf The first ladies golf tournament is held on the 7-hole Morristown, NJ course on Oct 17-1894. Miss Hollard A. Ford won with a 97 scored on the double-7, 14 strokes under her nearest rival.

1894 - Indoor Hockey College girls at McGill University in Montreal begin weekly ice hockey games at an indoor rink - with 3 male students on "guard" at the door.

1895 - Mountain Climbing  Annie Smith Peck is the first woman to reach the peak of the Matterhorn. She climbed in a pair of knickerbockers, causing a sensation with the press. She helps to found the American Alpine Club in 1902.

1895 - Golf The first Women's Amateur Golf championship is contested among 13 golfers at the Meadow Brook Club, Hempstead, N.Y., on Nov. 9. The match is won by Mrs. Charles S. Brown with a 132 and the runner-up is Nellie Sargent.

1895 - The first organised athletics meeting is generally recognized as the "Field Day" at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, on Nov. 9. A group of "nimble, supple and vivacious girls" engaged in running and jumping events despite bad weather.

1895 - Cycling Frances Willard, president of the WTCU, publishes A Wheel Within a Wheel, a best-selling account of learning to ride a bicycle.

1895 - Softball The first women's softball team is formed at Chicago's West Division High School. They did not have a coach for competitive play until 1899.

1895 - Volleyball Volleyball is invented in Holyoke, MA. By the 1990's, volleyball is the second-largest participation sport in the United States with more than 42 million participants. There is indoor and outdoor competition for boys and girls, men and women and co-ed teams.

1895 - Bowling The American Bowling Congress is organized, establishing equipment standards and rules on Sept. 9. By the 1990's, bowling is the second-largest participation sport in the world, with more than 100 million athletes, 46% of whom are women who compete equally with men.

1895 - Mrs. Frank Sittig exhibits her new duplex riding skirt - which The New York Times judges to be "An ideal suit for cycling, to which even the most prudish could not object."

1896 - Cycling Women are buying 25-30% of all new bicycles.

1896 - Cycling The first 6-day bicycle race for women starts on Jan 6 at Madison Square Garden in NYC.

1896 - Basketball The first women's intercollegiate basketball championship is played between Stanford and the University of California at Berkely. Stanford wins 2-1 on April 4 before a crowd of 700 women!

1896 - "Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride on a wheel. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance." Susan B. Anthony, US suffragist.

1897 - Acrobatics Lena Jordan becomes the first person to successfully execute the triple somersault on the flying trapeze. The first man to acomplish this didn't do so until 1909.

1898 - Cycling Three women create a stir when they compete in a "century run" endurance contest in bicyling. Irene Bush of Brooklyn rides 400 miles in 48 hours; Jane Yatman of Brooklyn rides 500 miles in 58 hours; and Jane Lindsay rides 600 miles in 72 hours.

1898 - Baseball Lizzie Arlington becomes the first woman to sign a professional baseball contract, appearing in her first professional game pitching for the Philadelphia Reserves.

1899 - Cycling Setting a new women's cycling endurance record, 125 pound Jane Yatman rides 700 miles in 81 hours, 5 mintes on Long Island. During the 3 and one half day trial, she rests less than 2 hours. Her record is beaten on Oct. 19 by Jane Lindsay who rides 900 mikes in 91 hours, 48 minutes.

1899 - Ice Hockey Two teams of women ice hockey players play a game on the artifical ice at the Ice Palace in Philadelphia.

1899 - Ping Pong/Table Tennis Ping-pong, or table tennis, as it soon becomes known, is invented.

Research by the St. Lawrence County Branch of the New York State, American Association of University Women. The AAUW advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education, and research. See here.

Women Playing Tennis

Otto Henry Bacher (American painter, 1856–1909) Portrait of Mary Holland


The modern form of tennis evolved in the 19th-century. Between 1859 & 1865, in Birmingham, England, Major Harry Gem, a solicitor, & his friend Augurio Perera, a Spanish merchant, combined elements of the game of rackets & the Spanish ball game Pelota playing it on a croquet lawn in Edgbaston. In 1872, both men moved to Leamington Spa; & in 1874, with 2 doctors from the Warneford Hospital, they founded the world's 1st tennis club, the Leamington Tennis Club.

In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield designed & patented a similar game—which he called Sphairistikè (from ancient Greek meaning "skill at playing at ball" soon known simply as "sticky") for the amusement of his guests at a garden party on his estate of Nantclwyd, in Llanelidan, Wales. He likely based his game on the evolving sport of outdoor tennis including real tennis.

Much of modern tennis terminology also derives from this period, as Wingfield borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of real tennis and applied them to his new game.   Tennis comes from the French tenez, the imperative form of the verb tenir, to hold. This was a cry used by the player serving in royal tennis, meaning "I am about to serve!"   Racquet comes from raquette, which derives from the Arabic rakhat, meaning the palm of the hand. Deuce comes from à deux le jeu, meaning "to both is the game" (that is, the two players have equal scores). The origin of the use of Love for zero is disputed. It is possible that it derives from "l'oeuf," the French word for "egg," representing the shape of a zero.

George Goodwin Kilburne (English painter, 1839-1924) A Game of Tennis

Francis Sydney Muschamp (British artist, 1851-1929) A Game of Tennis

John Lavery (Irish painter, 1856-1941) A Game of Tennis

Leopold Franz Kowalski (French painter, 1856-1931) A Game of Tennis

John Strickland Goodall (British artist, 1908–1996) A Game of Tennis

Horace Henry Cauty (English genre painter, 1846-1909) The Tennis Match

Arthur Hacker (English Pre-Raphaelite painter, 1858-1919) The Artist's Sister 1882

John Strickland Goodall (British artist, 1908–1996) A Game of Tennis

Max Liebermann (German Impressionist Painter, 1847-1935) Tennis Player by the Sea

Tom Simpson (British artist, 1877-1964) The Tennis Party

John Strickland Goodall (British artist, 1908–1996) A Game of Tennis

James Wallace (British artist, 1872-1911) A Game of Tennis in Battersea Park

Max Liebermann (German Impressionist Painter, 1847-1935) Tennis Court with Players

Samuel John Peploe (Scotland artist, 1871-1935) Game of Tennis, Luxembourg Gardens, c 1906

Tom Simpson (British artist, 1877-1964) Edwardians at Tennis

Tom Simpson (British artist, 1877-1964) The Tennis Party

John Lavery (Irish painter, 1856-1941) Tennis

Louis Prang (American artist, 1824-1909)  Lawn Tennis

 Edith Hayllar (British Painter, 1860-1948) After Tennis

Women in Golf

1600s "Madam, please keep your eye on the ball!"  The 1st kolf lesson. Flemish painting by unknown artist.

Accurate records of women playing golf in America only begin to appear in the 19C.

1891 -The Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island opens its doors to women. Golf proved so popular that the club opened a 9-hole course for women 2 years later.

1894 - The 1st ladies golf tournament in the United States is held on the 7-hole Morristown, NJ course on Oct 17-1894. Miss Hollard A. Ford won with a 97 scored on the double-7, 14 strokes under her nearest rival.

1895 - The first Women's Amateur Golf championship in the United States is contested among 13 golfers at the Meadow Brook Club, Hempstead, N.Y., on Nov. 9. The match is won by Mrs. Charles S. Brown with a 132 & the runner-up is Nellie Sargent.

Sports in American Public Spaces - Women Ice Skating + a little history

Skating in 17C North America arrived with the Dutch settlers in New York . Upon visiting colonial New Netherland - New York, English clergyman Charles Wooley wrote in 1678, "And upon the Ice its admirable to see Men & Women as it were flying upon their Skates from place to place, with Markets upon their Heads & Backs."

Saint Lidwina is a Dutch saint who loved to go ice skating, until she fell and broke her rib. This 1498 image of a real skating scene is found in the book 'Vita alme virginis Lydwine' that was written by father Jan Brugman. The print depicts the unfortunate fall of the canonized Lydwina of Schiedam  (1380-1433) a hundred years before.

Watching the Olympics from Russia today, I began to wonder when women's skiing & ice skating events began in the Olympics & when women first began to ice skate.  The first Olympic figure skating events were part of the 1908 Summer Olympics. Events for both men & women took place at that Olympics.  Colonial American women were ice skating during the 17C.

Woodcut from Olaus Magnus. Swedish Olaf Mansson (Swedish historian, 1490-1557) wrote, "Among the Sami, both men & women take part in hunting & fishing." Winter scene from Finnmark. Three sami with skis, participating in the hunt. The middle hunter is a woman.  These wooden boards were used for skiing.

Ice skating by young men is recorded in London in the 12C.  The 1st English mention of ice skating is found in a biography of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Beckett written by his former clerk William FitzStephen around 1180, in his "description of the most noble city of London."  The account reads: "when the great fenne or moore (which watereth the walles of the citie on the North side) is frozen, many young men play upon the yce, some striding as wide as they may, doe slide swiftly...some tye bones to their feete, & under their heeles, & shoving themselves by a little picked staffe, doe slide as swiftly as birde flyeth in the aire, or an arrow out of a crossbow. Sometime two runne together with poles, & hitting one the other, eyther one or both doe fall, not without hurt; some break their armes, some their legs, but youth desirous of glorie, in this sort exerciseth it selfe against time of warre..."

Hendrick Avercamp (Dutch artist, 1585–1634), Winterlandschap met schaatsers. c 1608 (detail).  This crowded winter scene presents a cross-section of Dutch society enjoying a wide range of winters sports, on the frozen waterways.

There is some confusion about where women first began to ski & skate.  The Dutch believe that ice skates were a Dutch invention.  Scandinavians, however, claim that ice skating was introduced in the Netherlands by their Viking ancestors who visited the European coasts around 800. They think the art of ice skating derived from the Nordic custom to prevent people from sinking in loose snow by binding boards under their boots. This custom should have resulted in both skiing & ice skating.

Hendrick Avercamp (Dutch artist, 1585–1634), Winterlandschap met schaatsers. c 1608 (detail).

The discovery during the 19C of ancient bone skates in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the Danube valley & England suggests that ice skating may be much older than 1,700 years.  A study by Federico Formenti of the University of Oxford suggests that the earliest ice skating happened in southern Finland more than 3000 years ago.

 Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (Dutch painter, 1589-1662), Autumn 1625 detail

The first skates were flattened bone that was strapped to the bottom of the foot. The oldest pair of skates known date back to about 3000 B.C., found at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland. The skates were made from the leg bones of large animals, holes were bored at each end of the bone & leather straps were used to tie the skates on. An old Dutch word for skate is "schenkel" which means "leg bone."

Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (Dutch painter, 1589-1662), Winter 1625 detail

In the 13th Century, the Dutch invented steel blades with edges. The Dutch started using wooden platform skates with flat iron bottom runners. The skates were attached to the skater's shoes with leather straps. Poles were used to propel the skater. 

1695 Cornelis Dusart (Dutch artist, 1660-1704) published by Jacob Gole (Dutch, c. 1675 - 1704)

Around 1500, the Dutch added a narrow metal double edged blade, making the poles a thing of the past, as the skater could now push & glide with his feet (called the "Dutch Roll").  In the Netherlands, all classes of people skated. Ice skating was a way people traveled over the canals in the winter months.

La Hollandoise sur les patins after Cornelis Dusart (Dutch artist, 1660-1704)

James II (1633-1701) helped introduce ice skating to the British aristocracy in the late 1600s. In 1742, the Edinburgh Skating Club, the 1st British figure skating club, was formed in Scotland. To gain membership in the club it was necessary for the skater to be able to skate a complete circle on either foot & to jump over one, then two & then 3 hats placed on the ice.  The 1st English instructional book concerning ice skating was published in London in 1772. The book, written by a British artillery lieutenant, Robert Jones, described basic figure skating forms such as circles & figure eights.

Fille de petit bourgeois d'Amsterdam...  Bernard Picart (French engraver, 1673-1733) Ice Skater

Skating in North America came with Dutch settlers to New York . 

A La Mode Romeyn de Hooghe Published by Nicolaes Visscher II c 1682-1702

By the 1730s, images of women getting help from a gentleman to put on their skates become popular in Europe.

Four Ages of Man; L'Adolescence; print Nicolas Lancret (After) Nicolas de Larmessin III (Print made by) Nicolas de Larmessin III (Published by); 1735; Paris.

From 1400 to the 19C, there were 24 winters in which the Thames was recorded to have frozen over at London: 1408, 1435, 1506, 1514, 1537, 1565, 1595, 1608, 1621, 1635, 1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1677, 1684, 1695, 1709, 1716, 1740, 1776, 1788, 1795, & 1814. Images of these periods show hundreds of folks on the river, some ice skating. 

  Nicolas Lancret (French painter, 1690-1743) Fastening the Skate.

An eye-witness recorded the London frost of the 1680s: "On the 20th of December, 1683, a very violent frost began, which lasted to the 6th of February...the Thames was so frozen that a great street from the Temple to Southwark was built with shops, and all manner of things sold." John Evelyn (1620-1706) noted, "Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from several other stairs too and fro, as in the streets, sleds, sliding with skates, bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tippling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water."

Winter by John Simon after Nicolas Lancret, published by Thomas Burford 1758

When the Thames was not frozen over, early Londoners skated on the frozen marshes of Moorfields, just north of the old walled city. Archaeologists working on London's recent Crossrail dig have found medieval ice skates. By the middle of the 18C, skating in Hyde Park in London had become a popular winter pastime.

Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1734-1794) Skating in Hyde Park

Pennsylvania-born lawyer Alexander Graydon (1752-1818) was a Captain in the Revolutionary Army & Delegate to the 1790 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention.  Graydon was obviously aware of the New York men & women who carried their wares on their heads as they skated from place to place, when he wrote of figure skating in 18C Philadelphia in his 1811 "Memoirs of a life, chiefly passed in Pennsylvania: within the last sixty years" Graydon wrote, "With respect to skating, though the Philadelphians have never reduced it to rules like the Londoners, nor \ connected it with their business like Dutchmen, I will yet hazard the opinion, that they were the best & most elegant skaters in the world. I have seen New England skaters, Old England skaters, & Holland skaters, but the best of them could but make " the judicious grieve." 

The Pleasures of Skaiting - or, a View in Winter from orig by John Collet pub by Carington Bowles, London c 1780

Graydon continued, "I was once slightly acquainted with a worthy gentleman, the quondam member of a skating club in London, & it must be admitted, that he performed very well for an Englishman. His High Dutch, or, as he better termed it, his outer edge skating, might, for aught I know, have been exactly conformable to the statutes of this institution: To these he would often appeal; & I recollect the principal one was, that each stroke should describe an exact semicircle. Nevertheless, his style was what we should deem a very bad one. An utter stranger to the beauty of bringing forward the suspended foot towards the middle of the stroke, & boldly advancing it before the other, at the conclusion of it, thus to preserve, throughout his course, a continuity of movement, to rise like an ascending wave to its acme, then, gracefully like a descending one, to glide into the succeeding stroke without effort, either real or apparent—every change of foot with this gentleman seemed a beginning of motion, & required a most unseemingly jerk of the body; an unequivocal evidence of the want of that power, which depends upon a just balance, & should never be lost—which carries the skater forward with energy without exertion; & is as essential to his swift & graceful career, as is a good head of water to the velocity of a mill wheel. Those who have seen good skating will comprehend what I mean, still better those who are adepts themselves; but excellence in the art can never be gained by geometrical rules. The two reputed best skaters of my day were General Cadwallader, & Massey the biscuitbaker; but I could name many others, both of the academy & Quaker school, who were in no degree inferior to them; whose action & attitudes were equally graceful."

Charles Willson Peale (American artist, 1741-1827) John and Elizabeth Lloyd Cadwalader with their daughter Anne.  John Cadwalader (1742-1786) was a commander of Pennsylvania troops during the American Revolutionary War; and apparently, he was a fine skater.