A lovely, early image of the American game of wicket - or wicket ball - developed from the English game, cricket, and the precursor to baseball. The game is recorded as being played in the late eighteenth century (at Valley Forge including George Washington, no less) and into the nineteenth century.
“Wicket, or wicket ball, was one of a number of bat-and-ball games played by Americans in the era before baseball. New England was the heart of wicket country, with Western Massachusetts and especially Connecticut serving as strongholds of the game. There is little definitive history on the origin of the game. Most historians agree that wicket began as an early form of cricket imported to New England by English settlers sometime in the late seventeenth century. (2) Some speculate that cricket “savored so much of the English aristocracy” that the settlers of New England gradually changed the game’s features, shaping a primitive version of England’s national pastime into a uniquely American sport” (Litchfield Society).
This image was engraved by John Cheney (1801-85) who was born in Connecticut and taught himself the art of engraving before working professionally in that trade from 1829. His sister-in-law, Ednah Dow, wrote a memoir of him describing his self-education and early efforts which seemingly include this piece: “He studied engraving from an encyclopedia, and made a printing-press before he had ever seen an Engraver. He cut a piece from an old copper kettle and engraved on it a sketch of boys playing ball, to be used for a Reward of Merit. This plate still exists.” The likelihood of it being this plate is enhanced by the research of John Thorn on his MLB blog which locates the image in Cheney’s home town of Manchester, Connecticut.
A near identical engraving (though reversed) is recorded in Sylvester Rosa Koehler’s Catalogue of the Engraved and Lithographed Work of John Cheney, where it is described thus: “Six boys or young men in shirt-sleeves are playing ball. The ball is in the air in the middle of the sky. At the left two lookers-on are seated on a log, and the right stands another. On the extreme left part of a large tree is seen, on the right a grove of poplars. In the background a school-house, a church, and other houses, two poplars, bushes and a hill.” The piece is dated 1821.
Reward of Merit tickets showed a variety of illustrations, those listed on OCLC date from 1819 to 1820s. We know of three copies of this particular piece: Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the NGA (Washington) and one in a private collection.
Koehler, S.R., Catalogue of the Engraved and Lithographed Work of John Cheney (Boston, 1891), pp.17-18; Dow, Ednah, Memoir of John Cheney … (Boston, 1899), p.10; Thorn, John “The oldest wicket newly found” https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-oldest-wicket-game-newly-found-86b51ffe832f retrieved 7 October, 2022; “Litchfield and the Old Connecticut Game of Wicket” Blog.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org. p. 627. Retrieved 15 March 2022.
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