[benjulmag]

This bat was awarded to the Tri-Mountain Base Ball Club of Boston for winning the 1867 New England Base Ball championship. It is pictured in the sheet music, The Base Ball Quadrille, which was dedicated to the Tri-Mountain team. The bat was also described in period newspaper reports about the tournament, as well as old books on baseball history in New England. The provenance of the item is that it was sold by the estate of the caregiver of the owner of the Tri-Mountain Base Ball Club. He gave it to her before he died, and it remained in her possession until she passed in the latter part of the 20th century, when her estate consigned it to a prominent New England auction house. The bat is multi-toned being made from a variety of historic American woods. It is housed in a custom-made period wood box. Each wood used to make the bat is identified by a silver mount affixed to the bat, along with a mount showing the scores of the games the Tri-Mountains won. The woods are identified to come from the (i) battleships Kearsarge and Alabama (two of the last wooden naval ships, deployed in the early days of the Civil War before the first use, later in the war, of steel battleships),(ii) historic Elm tree at Boston Common, (iii) tree under which Lee surrounded to Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox to formally end the Civil War, and (iv) Lincoln's cabin.