United States, 1860 to 1876

Rural Play

Farm life was not as isolated as it has long been portrayed. Loneliness was more a missing of loved ones left in Europe than physical isolation. In rural America, the old tradition of private, family entertainments prevailed. Children's games included Ante Over, Crack the Whip, Tag, Ring Around the Rosie, and Hide-and-Seek. Women such as Lydia Sigourney and Catherine Beecher advocated calisthenics, swimming, and other physical exercise for women in the antebellum period, but during and after the war, women more commonly avoided such activities, rather spending their time in less strenuous pastimes—visiting and quilting bees for instance. Men had hunting and fishing and the rougher sports to themselves.

On the agricultural frontier, Plains residents were geographically isolated, but they settled in communities from a common background. Scattered small towns brought them together to build the town church or community hall. They helped each other to build or repair a “soddy.” They also helped one another in case of illness, death, or disaster.

Community activities included church, camp meetings, lodges, and literary circles. Visiting was a common leisure-time activity, as was swap-work during barn raisings and corn shucking. The social networks developed readily into cooperatives and political organizations. The Patrons of Husbandry or Grange began in 1867 as a rural organization that met many needs that the other societies provided in urban settings. Meanwhile, the Grange allowed farmers' coops to bypass the middlemen in buying [Page 749]and selling, milling, manufacturing, and banking. It also sponsored picnics, lectures, dances, and fairs.

A detail of an 1863 lithograph of Union prisoners playing baseball in Salisbury, North Carolina. During the Civil War, soldiers played games like baseball or rounders, and brought the games back to their hometowns after the war.

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