Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town

40. Sports

524 A sport may be defined loosely as any skilled physical activity conducted for pleasure. Sports may be team or individual, competitive or noncompetitive, participatory or spectator, indoor or outdoor, with combinations of these elements. Sports as participatory and spectator phenomena have come to be so quintessentially American that their near absence in the South prior to the Civil War is one of its most striking cultural features. In particular, there were no competitive team sports such as baseball, football, or basketball. Baseball, the premier American sport, was popular in the Northeast well before the Civil War, but it does not begin to be mentioned in the newspapers of northeast Texas until the 1870s. Athleticism in general and competitive athleticism in particular appear to have been of little interest to anyone. Few people knew how to swim, which is why drownings were frequent. People fought with their fists, but there are no reports of boxing in the papers of northeast Texas. People shot animals and undoubtedly engaged in target practice with some competition, but there are no reports of competitive marksmanship . People ran, but there are no reports of challenge races. That this lack of interest was real and not an artifact of reportage is indicated by the fact that challenge footraces between local champions (and often ringers) were reported when they began to occur in the 1870s. The newspapers of the period mention only five sports that Jeffersonians participated in: hunting, fishing, bowling, billiards, and horse 40. SPorts 525 Sports racing. The most popular were hunting and fishing. They were probably equivalent to card playing as leisure activities, but the latter activity was not a sport because it required skill but not physical exertion. All of these sports had very strong social dimensions that rendered them conducive to conviviality as opposed to competition. Hunting and Fishing Hunting and fishing were widely practiced individually and socially. There are no reports of fishing and hunting clubs, and it is doubtful they existed, because access to resources was readily available . Fishing excursions to Caddo Lake by steamboat came to be an important annual event out of Shreveport, but there is nothing of a similar nature mentioned in connection with Jefferson. Something of the nature of these resources is indicated by Edward Smith in his 1849 Account of a Journey Through Northeastern Texas: Game, of every variety, is in countless numbers over the country. Deer, in herds, occupy every wood, and at dawn of day and at night, may be seen browsing on the open prairie. Their number is much diminished, but even now the huntsman needs never to return without his game. Wild turkeys weighing 30 lbs. frequently crossed our path. Ducks and geese are said to be innumerable . Partridges exist everywhere, and were constantly running in front of our horses. The prairie hen is very abundant, and is about the size of a common fowl, but much more delicious. Woodcocks, snipes, and every other known variety of game are met with on all hands. Squirrels are very numerous, and are accounted a great luxury, and to my untutored taste the flesh is very rich. I shot six of these creatures in a very short time, and the large fox-tail squirrel, the grey and the black squirrel are equally prized. Game has long ceased to be profitable to the settler, since more useful occupations than hunting have presented themselves; and it is still too abundant to be valued as a luxury. 526 Antebellum Jefferson, Texas The 1860 census lists three Jefferson residents as sportsmen (O. H. Whitman, 28, born in New York; Frank Marr, 24, born in Kentucky; E. O. Kidd, 19, born in Missouri) and one as a fisherman (Anthony Owens, 40, born in North Carolina), but the latter was probably involved in a commercial operation. Hunting and fishing are mentioned only occasionally in the newspapers, and there are only two extant larger accounts, both of which are concerned with other matters. This is not surprising given the fact that hunting and fishing were common and therefore not worthy of reportage unless they involved unusual circumstances. The first of these accounts concerns the accidental killing of the young lawyer John Eppinger on a November 1850 hunting trip at night: MELANCHOLY ACCIDENT.—We learn from J. C. EVERETT, just from Jefferson, that in a fire hunt on Wednesday night, JOHN EPINGER, a citizen and promising lawyer of that place...