The Great American Sport - Base Ball

Vintage baseball team, the Eagle Diamonds, sponsored by Old World Wisconsin.


Base ball teams in small villages in 1860's Wisconsin? Yes, indeed. Soldiers played base ball during their free time in camp during the Civil War; and when they came home, they continued to play, introducing it to their communities. At that time, the sport was spelled as two words, base ball. Players were called ballists.

The game supposedly started in Boston Massachusetts and spread to New York, where there was codification of the rules. Those rules were considerably different than those we know today. For instance some rules could be decided by the home team, such as those for stealing bases.

Team members did have uniforms. Those for the Eagle Diamonds in the picture above are reproductions of uniforms typical of the 1860's and 1870's. Local sawmills made the bats. The balls were leather and in the beginning, there were no baseball gloves. The game was played bare-handed.

Base ball games between local teams started in 1865 in towns like Baraboo and Beloit Wisconsin. One game in a town in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, had a score of 52 to 31. Quite a slugfest.

One bit of historical trivial: Enterprising publishers began issuing baseball trading cards with pictures of star athletes in the 1870s.

Sources:
Wisconsin Historical Society Internet Site
Notes from "Behind the Scenes Tour for Friends of Old World Wisconsin"

From Sheep to Dye Pot

Wild tansy












Before the wool was placed in the drying basket, many hours of work had been performed. In spring, the sheep had to be sheared. The shearer, seated on a low stool, held the head of the sheep under the chin and tilted it backward so that it was sitting between the shearer's legs. Because it was positioned on its spine just above its tail, the animal was off balance and fairly comfortable. Thus the sheep did not struggle much as they lost their heavy winter coats to the shearer. When released many of the sheep staggered as they walked away. The loss of their heavy coats put them off balance and it took a few minutes for them to regain it.

To dye wool, the women had to search for wild plants or, at times, waste parts of the plants from the garden.

Black walnuts produced a brown dye if placed in an iron pot but a reddish color in a copper pot. Red onion skins gave wool either and orange or a green color, depending on how long it was kept in the pot. Summac yielded a gray color; yarrow, a beige. Queen Anne's lace produced a pale green; mullein, pale yellow. The tansy (shown above) gave wood a pale yellow color.

A cheese cloth bag held the herbs while the yarn was being dyed in the pot

Wisconsin pioneers thought of black wool as a bit of a curse. The women could not dye the wool of a black sheep. For that reason, there was disappointment when a black sheep was dropped by one of the ewes. Hence the expression "He was the black sheep of the family."

How do you dry wet wool

Here's an answer to a question I had never thought about. When a pioneer woman finally finished the tedious process of carding, spinning and dying her wool, how did she dry it? One effective way is by making and using a wool drying basket.  A wool drying basket would have been used by the fireside. According to a workshop brochure from Old World Wisconsin "this is not your average basket! This large basket is square with handles on each side and sits atop four-inch legs.