OLDEST AMERICAN “LAWN BOWLE”
The Puritans have a well-earned reputation as historic killjoys. They liked rules and considered it their godly duty to keep people from the fires of hell by telling them exactly how to live. Building what Governor John Winthrop called a “city upon a hill” that the world would watch in awe was not a job for libertarians, and certainly not for libertines.
Naturally, then, they disdained fun and games. Except they didn’t—at least not entirely. As early as 1622, eight years before the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a sermon by a London-based Puritan clergyman advised that Puritans could perform their duties to God at all times, “yea, even in our eating and drinking, lawful sports, and recreations.” Winthrop noted that “outward recreation,” in the form of “moderate exercise,” lifted melancholy and refreshed his mind.1 Moreover, all Puritan villages had militias, whose training resembled a day camp, featuring horsemanship, jumping, weight lifting, wrestling, and races.2
And that brings us to Katherine Naylor’s privy—an outdoor toilet and rubbish pit. Naylor, a late seventeenth-century resident of Boston whose father had been banished to what became New Hampshire for nonconformity with Puritan theology, became a successful businesswoman after she divorced her abusive second husband. Naylor was also a relative by marriage of the poet Anne Hutchinson, whom the Puritans banished in 1638.
Naylor was a woman of uncommon ability and of some prosperity. That is the evidence from a 1994 excavation done in preparation for Boston’s Big Dig, the mammoth infrastructure project that reconfigured the center of the city. When archaeologists uncovered Naylor’s centuries-old, three-seat toilet, they found a trove of artifacts, including silk, Venetian glass,3 and the oldest known bowling ball in the country (see the following page). Made of oak and the size of a small grapefruit, this “lawn bowle” has flattened sides decorated with carved concentric circles, as well as a small hole where a weight would have been inserted.4
Boston’s Puritan elders did not approve of bowling. A 1647 law forbade the activity at inns and taverns; another banned football in the “streets, lanes, and enclosures of this town.”5 In each case, the concern was that sport would infringe on public order. A complaint to the General Court noted that bowling was associated with “much waste of Wine and Beer,”6 perhaps the first recorded mention of the association between sports and suds.
As historian Laurel Ulrich Thatcher wrote in her essay on the Naylor “lawn bowle,” there would have been no need to legislate against bowling if the sport had not been popular. The lawmakers seemed concerned not about bowling per se, but rather its association with other vices, such as gambling, loose behavior, profanity, and breaking the Sabbath. Thus, it was legal for the Naylor family to bowl in the privacy of their own property; doing so in public was not.7 In a sense, the Puritans were legislating against excess, not good clean fun.
But times change. The stern first generation of Puritans gave way to a less insular society. Many of the newcomers—sailors, merchants, and other ne’er-do-wells—didn’t care about building a God-fearing city on a hill. By 1714 taverns were openly advertising their bowling facilities. When it came to sport, the Puritans were the first, but hardly the last, to learn that the great American public had a way of making its own rules.8
1823
SOUVENIR FROM THE GREAT MATCH RACE
T
he date: May 27, 1823.
The place: Union Course, eight miles from New York City.
The contestants: Eclipse versus Sir Henry.
The race: Best two out of three, at four miles.
The prize: $40,000 to the winner.1
The real stakes: Regional supremacy.
In addition to death and taxes, one thing was certain in the United States in the early 1820s: when it came to the horse, the South was superior. There were racetracks big and small all over the South, and the culture ran deep. Not so in the North, where there were few tracks, and there was deep suspicion of the sins that accompanied the sight of running horseflesh.
And then came Eclipse. He had won a couple of obscure events before being put to stud, but when racing was legalized in New York in 1821, he went back to work, winning every race he entered, including four over southern-bred horses.2 By 1822 northerners were bragging that Eclipse was “the greatest horse for bottom and speed in America.”3 Southerners had their doubts. In November 1822 Colonel William Ransom Johnson of Virginia—the self-described “Napoleon of the Turf”—issued a challenge: Eclipse versus a southern horse of Johnson’s choosing. It was accepted.
After a series of trials, the southerners chose Sir Henry as their champion. Although he and Eclipse had never met before the day of what became known as the Great Match Race, they shared a bond. Both were grandsons of the great Diomed, an English champion who4 was brought to stud in the United States. Diomed’s blood coursed throughout American racing. Eclipse would carry 126 pounds; Sir Henry, the younger horse, only 108.5 They would go four times around the one-mile oval, best two out of three, with only a short rest in between.6
It was the first modern-style sports spectacle. An estimated 60,000 spectators—New York had a population of 120,0007—made their way to the Union Course, where they could buy overpriced souvenirs such as the red-on-yellow cotton handkerchief (see previous page). About 20,000 of the attendees were from the South.8 The newspapers covered the event extensively; the saloon talk was of little else, and the betting was outrageous.9 Vice President Daniel Tompkins was there, as were future president Andrew Jackson and almost-president Aaron Burr. The New York Stock Exchange closed for the day.10
Sir Henry won the first heat in a record time of 7:37.5.11 Eclipse raced bravely, but his young jockey, William Crafts, rode him cruelly, lashing him bloody down the stretch. One of the horse’s legs and a testicle were cut. In the 30 minutes between heats, the call went up for Samuel Purdy, Eclipse’s regular jockey, who at age 49 had been deemed too old for the big race. Some of Eclipse’s backers tracked him down: Would Purdy ride? Yes, he said, and ripped off his overcoat. He had worn his racing silks underneath, just in case.12
In the second heat, the old pro showed how it was done, coaxing Eclipse to the rail in a nifty move on the inside to take the lead in the last mile, then holding off a game Sir Henry. Eclipse finished in 7:49, two lengths ahead.
So it would come down to the third heat; neither horse had ever had to run three in a day. They were exhausted but had the competitive spirit of true athletes. Eclipse took the lead at the start and hung on the whole way, winning in 8:24. Over the three heats, a distance of 12 miles, the difference between the two was no more than a length.
Although the Great Match Race was a conflict contested by animals, the humans involved were acutely aware that it was something more. “It was the first great contest between the North and the South,” Josiah Quincy, a member of the Adams family, would write in 1881, “and one that seems to have foreshadowed the sterner conflict that occurred 40 years afterwards.”13
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