For far too long New Jersey has been stereotyped by Benjamin Franklin’s equally all too frequently quoted metaphor comparing the state to a barrel tapped at both ends. The operative word is “tapped,” suggesting that anything of value is sucked out of the state by New York City and Philadelphia leaving behind a barrel with little more than unwanted dregs. It’s an effective, damaging and, unfortunately, enduring image. Taps, however, work in both directions and on more than one occasion New Jersey has done the “tapping.”
Such was certainly the case in Newark during the nineteenth century when New Jersey’s largest city grew from little more than “an agricultural township” in 1816 to “the leading industrial city in the nation” by 1860. By that point, Newark was “the [country's] eleventh largest city, with 74% of its laboring force employed in manufacturing.” During the same time frame, Newark’s population grew tenfold from just over 6,500 in 1820 to almost 72,000 in the final year of the antebellum period. The city’s booming economy required raw materials, markets for products and financial capital. In each case, Newark businessmen met their needs by tapping on neighboring cities and states. Manufacturers acquired raw materials from the Delaware Valley, jewelers sold their products to buyers nationwide who gathered in New York City, while growing Newark businesses borrowed essential financing from New York City banks. In this case, at least, it was Newark and New Jersey that did the tapping.
And when the time came, just as Newark businessmen found money and markets in New York City, Newark men “discovered” a New York game that met their need for exercise. In 1854 there weren't any Newark teams playing baseball by the Knickerbocker rules and, at most, only one in the entire state. By the end of 1855, however, Newark had six to seven clubs, compared to New York City’s six and Brooklyn’s ten, a significant number for a much smaller city. Even more interesting, however, is how extensively males of all ages and races in New Jersey’s largest city adopted this old game played by new rules. While the New York and Brooklyn clubs were largely made up of adult White males, Newark had the earliest known junior club (under 21) as well as the country’s first Black club. How did such a diverse segment of the city’s male population “discover” baseball in 1855?
Broad and Market Streets in Newark about 1855
At the 2022 Frederick Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Baseball Conference in Cooperstown, Thomas Gilbert argued persuasively that the best way to uncover the “how” of baseball’s past is to explore the “who” – the game’s early pioneers. Gilbert put that approach to good use in his valuable and essential work, How Baseball Happened. According to Gilbert’s research, the “two types of people that predominated in the baseball clubs of the 1850s” were emerging urban bourgeois (EUB) and artisans. The former included doctors and bankers, but especially noteworthy were “dynamic, resourceful urbanites,” some of whom were “on the cutting edge of the American economy’s transition . . . to modern industrial and financial capitalism.” Artisans, at a time when there was “no working class in the modern sense,” were skilled craftsmen who made things by hand. By 1855, Newark had no shortage of both groups, who, like their New York and Brooklyn counterparts, became increasingly aware of their need for exercise. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Newark men were looking for, or were at least receptive to, new ways to meet that need.
William Dodd – First President of the Newark Club
The city’s first baseball club was the aptly named the Newark Club, made up of “some of our best citizens,” “whose habits of life are such as to render exercise eminently necessary.” Founded in May of 1855, the club attracted members from both the EUB and artisan communities, two groups Gilbert considers “polar opposites.” Perhaps living and working in a much smaller city was conducive to greater interaction between the two groups. Although it may not be why they were chosen, the Newark Club’s two senior officers had entrepreneurial spirit in abundance. As a young man, founding president William Dodd successfully “established a retail hat business” in lower Manhattan. He later bought the “patent for forming hat bodies” which he used to start a manufacturing business in Newark when hat making was transitioning from a craft to an industry. While nowhere near as successful as Dodd, no one could question vice president John Shaff’s “spirit of adventure.” In1849 he joined the California Gold Rush in quest of fame and fortune. Similar to Dodd, club member, Nicholas Van Ness also played an important part in Newark’s industrial growth. His obituary credited him as being “one of those who was greatly instrumental in making the city a manufacturing one.”
While they didn’t hold any leadership positions, there was no lack of artisans among the charter members of the Newark Club including jewelers, hatters and carpenters. Joseph Coulter, a hatter, was perhaps symbolic of the difference between EUBs and artisans. An 1850 ad in the Newark Daily Advertiser warned the “Trade and all persons from harboring” Coulter who had allegedly left his indentured apprenticeship without permission. Such behavior couldn’t have sat well with club president William Dodd, a hat industry executive himself. However, there’s no evidence any such tensions were a major problem. Combining the attributes of both groups was Charles Murphy, a skilled carpenter, who didn’t lack for entrepreneurial instincts. An enthusiastic fisherman, Murphy, according to his obituary “was the inventor of the celebrated split bamboo fishing rod” which he made by hand and sold to the “most prominent anglers in this country and Europe.”
Although it’s totally speculative, there is also the tantalizing possibility Murphy was connected to a third lesser-known source of early baseball players. In 2007, John Thorn, Official Historian of MLB, discovered the Magnolia Club, a long-forgotten team some of whose members came from a somewhat seamy section of Manhattan society that included boxers. As a young man, Charles Murphy was also reportedly a boxer who on one occasion “got decidedly the best of “Awful” Gardner." Gardner was a Manhattan boxer who later became a well-known evangelist. During his pugilistic days, Gardner was affiliated with John Morrissey and Bill “The Butcher Poole,” both of whom were part of the same segment of Manhattan society as some of the Magnolia Club members. Again, this is totally speculative, but too fascinating a possibility not to mention.
How then did these Newark EUBs and artisans “discover” baseball? In the early days of the organized game, the primary way people learned about baseball was through direct personal contact. Young men in Newark and elsewhere “discovered” baseball by playing it, watching it being played or talking to someone who had played or seen it. While a lot of baseball was played at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, it’s unlikely the first Newark players had much contact with those games. There was no direct railroad connection between the two cities and little evidence Elysian Fields was an important pleasure ground for Newarker’s. As a result the opportunities for interaction with the New York clubs playing there were limited. It’s far more likely the city’s first baseball players learned about the game through other contacts with New Yorkers.
Determining exactly how this happened is admittedly speculative, but the lives of some club members offer examples of possible ways this kind of interaction might have happened. Here again, we turn to the club’s founding president and vice president, who were likely in those positions because they were among those most interested in playing organized baseball. William Dodd, the first president of the Newark Club, as was previously noted, established a retail hat business in lower Manhattan, just south of Delancy Street. Before moving his business affairs to Newark, he was also the manager of another New York business. In both cases, he had multiple opportunities for contact with members of the early New York clubs or others who knew about the game.
Newark Daily Advertiser – April 27, 1849
Unlike Dodd, where we can only infer such contact, there is no doubt the club’s vice president, John W. Shaff, not only knew a member of the Knickerbockers, but also spent a great deal of time with him. However, this didn’t happen in either Manhattan or Newark, but in the far expanses of the western United States. In 1848, at the age of 20, Shaff was a clerk/accountant, an occupation that didn’t offer much in the way of exercise or adventure. The young man clearly wasn’t satisfied because a year later he joined the Newark Overland Company on its quest to find gold and glory in California. While the company’s 46 members were primarily Newark/ New Jersey men, there were a few outsiders including one Alexander Cartwright, a member of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club of New York. With that size of a group, however, being in the same traveling party didn’t guarantee any close contact between the two men. Perhaps fortunately for the New York game’s introduction to Newark, thanks to totally unrelated circumstances, they spent plenty of time together. In fact, it’s possible Newark’s “discovery” of baseball was facilitated by a dispute over the most efficient means of crossing the mountains and plains of the western U.S.
When the Newark Overland Company arrived in Missouri, there was disagreement over whether it would be better to use mules or oxen for the rest of the trip. Cartwright and Shaff were part of a smaller group who opted for the mules, but that alone didn’t insure the two men would travel together. However, at the Green River in eastern Utah, Shaff became part of Cartwright’s “mess,” five men who traveled together for almost 900 miles. Although mules traveled faster than oxen, it took seven-eight weeks to reach the gold fields, plenty of opportunity for Cartwright to tell Shaff about the New York version of baseball.
Alexander Cartwright
Writing to the Newark Daily Advertiser from San Francisco, Shaff told the paper’s readers that not only had he survived the arduous transcontinental trip, he had gained almost 30 pounds in the process without being sick for “an hour.” Shaff returned from California without fame and fortune, but to everyone he met in the streets of Newark, he was a living example of the benefits of vigorous exercise. And equally importantly, he had likely learned about a game that could provide similar benefits without making a 6,000-mile round trip across the United States. This was obviously a unique set of circumstances, but it demonstrates that exposure to the New York game could, and did, happen in more ways than we can imagine. There are other possible Newark Club member connections to New York City including Dr. Milton Baldwin, who graduated from medical school in Manhattan in 1843 and Rochus Heinsch who worked in his father’s New York City store at Nassau and Fulton Streets during the Newark Club's gestation period. While it’s impossible to know exactly where the Newark Club members learned about baseball, there were, as these examples illustrate, many possibilities.
Forming the city’s first team wasn’t the Newark Club’s sole contribution to getting baseball started in Newark. Although exercise may have been their primary motivation, they also might have played a part in getting other teams on the field. On June 13, 1855, not more than a month after being formed, the Newark Club played their first match game. Competition, of course, requires opponents something that doesn’t just happen especially with a new form of baseball. Unfortunately, little information survives about the membership of the Oriental Club, the Newark Club’s first opponent (the name was quickly changed to the Olympic Club). There was, however, a family connection between the teams. Two Olympic Club players were the brother and brother-in-law of Frederic C. Dodd, treasurer and a very active member of the Newark Club. This suggests the Newark Club might have encouraged the formation of the city’s second baseball club, a contribution to creating a critical mass of baseball teams in Newark.
Newark Junior Club Players
Two other senior clubs were formed in Newark in 1855 – the Friendship Club, of whom nothing other than the name is known, and the Empire Club which came on the scene in September. While getting four teams started in one season is impressive, far more important are the two other Newark teams formed that same year. First up, is the Newark Junior Club, organized no later than late June of 1855, the earliest known club in the United States to call itself a junior team. Eleven of the thirteen Newark Junior Club members who played in 1855 match games have been identified. Their ages range between 14-18, an average age of 16, compared to 27 for the clearly more senior Newark Club. As the above chart illustrates, the fathers of the Newark Junior players were men of property. The financial affluence of the older generation meant their sons, unlike most of their contemporaries, didn’t have to work at an early age and had time to play baseball. Perhaps more importantly, parental approval, stated or implicit validated playing baseball as an acceptable activity for teenage boys. This was a valuable precedent for any of their peers with similar interests and inclinations.
How these teenagers were introduced to baseball isn’t known, but there were family connections to the Baldwin and Dodd families of the Newark Club. In addition, there were five common occupations between the fathers of the Newark Junior players and Newark Club members. Three Newark Junior Club members not only lived on Park Place, but within a few doors of each other, suggesting this was a group of friends who decided to form a baseball team. Unlike the brief existence of other junior clubs, the Newark Juniors not only survived, but graduated to senior club status in 1857 as the Adriatic Club. The club disbanded after the 1861 season with any remaining players moving to the Newark or Eureka Clubs.
Sometimes baseball history is discovered, or perhaps recovered, by the fortuitous finding of a brief newspaper article. Such was certainly the case with the short account of an 1855 baseball game between the St. John’s and Union Clubs that I stumbled upon at the end of a long day of scrolling through microfilm of the Newark Daily Mercury. In just four sentences, the paper reported that the game was rained out after two innings, but would be replayed on Friday at the St. John’s Club’s grounds at the foot of Chestnut Street. This was nothing out of the ordinary, if not for one fact that made all the difference – the two clubs were, in the paper’s words, “colored” teams – that is Black or African-American. This is the earliest known instance of Blacks organizing to play baseball in the United States. The grounds at the foot of Chestnut Street were definitely a Newark baseball field which confirms that the St. John’s Club was a Newark team. The home of the Union Club is unknown.
Barbershop in Richmond, Virginia – The Illustrated London News – March 9, 1861
For Newark to be the home of the country’s earliest known Black baseball club was no small accomplishment for the city’s miniscule Black population. While Newark had an adult (over 16) White male population of more than 23,000 in 1855, the adult Black male population was a mere 557. Most unfortunately, there is no record of the St. John’s – Union game ever being replayed nor has any additional information been found about either team. That makes it almost impossible to determine how Newark’s very small Black community learned about baseball. There was, however, sufficient interaction between the city’s White and Black communities to suggest some possibilities.
A review of the occupations of the Black men listed in the 1855 Newark City Directory shows 13 barbers, eight coachmen and three waiters – jobs where the workers could have heard White men talking about baseball. Especially important are the 13 barbers who clearly didn’t support themselves cutting the hair of the other 600 or so Black males. As different as life may have been 160 years ago, it’s not hard to envision a group of White men talking about baseball in a barber shop, while the barber listened as he worked. And Black barbers were likely a receptive audience. Known as the Knights of the Razor, Black barbers used a craft that “grew out of the courts of European aristocracy” to establish a middleclass identity as artisans. And artisans, as we have seen, were one of the two groups most likely to take up the New York form of baseball.
The likelihood of this kind of interaction is even higher because of how close some Black men lived or worked to members of the Newark Club. Broad Street was, and is, the city’s main thoroughfare while Bank Street intersects Broad not far from the historic intersection of Broad and Market. The addresses listed on the below chart are for both businesses and residences. Between 150 and 341 Broad Street, five properties occupied by Black men were near those of six Newark Club members. Similarly on Bank Street, two Newark Club members lived or worked near six Black men. Just one example is Frederic C. Dodd, founding treasurer of the Newark Club who worked at 311 Broad Street and lived at 341 Broad. If this baseball pioneer needed a haircut or shave while at work, he could go almost next door to 314A to Abraham Cook’s barber shop. Or if Dodd preferred going closer to home, Charles Jackson’s shop at 322 Broad was only a short distance from his residence at 341 Broad.
Another probable interaction between the city’s Black and White communities is music. While there were doubtless multiple barriers to inter-racial mixing in antebellum Newark, a shared love of music could breach at least some of those barriers. Newark Club member William Clinton owned a music store at 290 Broad and lived at 14 Bank Street. It seems almost certain he knew John and Peter O’Fake, two brothers and popular Black musicians who performed at the Newark Club’s first ball in February of 1856. The probability of Clinton and the O’Fakes knowing each other was further enhanced by the proximity of their homes and places of business. Peter O’Fake, in addition to his musical career, operated a barber shop at 249 Broad close to Clinton’s store, while John O’Fake, like Clinton, lived on Bank Street. While there is no evidence either of the brothers played baseball, in the early 1860s, John O’Fake’s son, Charles, was a member of the Hamilton Club, another Newark Black team. There’s no proof these connections led to the founding of the St. John’s Club, but they illustrate another way Newark’s small Black community could have “discovered” this new form of baseball.
By the end of 1855, baseball was well established in Newark. There was something of a drop off the following year as the Olympic Club failed to return for a second season while the Friendship and St. John’s Clubs were never heard from again. Fortunately, the Newark Club, their junior counterparts and the Empire Club were still very much in business. 1856 proved to be only a temporary hiatus with many new clubs joining the ranks by 1860. Through that final antebellum season, 52 clubs had been formed in Newark, equal to the combined total in Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia. While no record of additional Newark Black clubs has been found, another team, the Hamilton Club played from 1862 to 1866. Newark men, not just of different ages, but also of different races had “discovered” baseball. Once again the barrel had been tapped from the New Jersey side.
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