Wanted to Share This Amazing 19th Century Photo

[steve B]

Contributed to a Dartmouth magazine, either in or before 1951

https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagaz...51/3/1/letters

[piecesofthegame]

Steve, very interesting. The photo caption in the article says “contributed by T.D. Cram”. My photo has the name T.D. Cram hand written on the back as scene in my pics.

[piecesofthegame]

So based off the info in that article, the owner of my photo, T.D. Cram, had a brother Nathan who was the catcher in this game/photo. Fascinating connection.

[vintagesportscollector]

Great connection! Adds a whole new level the the photo. If I were a Dartmouth collector it would truly be a holy grail item. Collecting Cornell memorabilia deeply myself, making connections like this is by far the best part of collecting for me.

One poster commented how surprised it is that the Dartmouth library would deaccession that photo. Shockingly it’s not surprising at all. It happened all the time across university, and all libraries, in the day. Most likely the Dartmouth library never knew it “left” their archives, probably many many years ago before digital cataloging and better security measures were put in place. A lot of items just simply "walked out" of libraries before the libraries understood the value of what they had.

[scooter729]

I've worked at Harvard for many years and have assembled a collection of a lot of Harvard items from that era while working here, so I can help for the Harvard side of things with a couple of items in my office....

Here's an 1882 cabinet team photo of the Harvard varsity baseball team. Also, a scorecard for an 1882 game of the current varsity team against the Harvard 1877 team, returning for a reunion. Players can be seen here, including James Tyng (first to wear a catcher's mask) and Fred Thayer (came up with the mask concept with Tyng, and brother of Ernest Lawrence Thayer, author of 'Casey at the Bat').

[michael3322]

This thread reminds us all how great this community is - fantastic image/story and amazing research contributions by several members. Love threads like these!

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by michael3322

This thread reminds us all how great this community is - fantastic image/story and amazing research contributions by several members. Love threads like these!

+1 on that!