The above ad comes from the Hermanner Volksblatt of July 13, 1867. I didn't bother to translate the entire thing but what we have here is an ad for a ball held by the Union Club of Hermann, Missouri in the summer of 1867. Hermann was a town founded by German immigrants in 1837 and is located on the Missouri River, a little more than halfway between St. Louis and Jefferson City.
The significance of this piece is that it speaks to the popularity and spread of the game during the post-war era but, more importantly, it speaks to the popularity of the game among the German immigrant community. I'm of the opinion that the game was very popular among the German immigrant community but the problem that I have in proving this is that there is a language barrier with regards to the contemporary source material. My German is terrible and I don't have the language skills necessary to go through the German papers of the era. But I know that there are plenty of references to baseball in those papers, even though I don't know the specifics of those references. This little ad from the Hermann paper gives a little support to my thinking with regards to the popularity of the game among the German immigrant community in Missouri. But there is much, much more research that needs to be done on the subject.
The significance of this piece is that it speaks to the popularity and spread of the game during the post-war era but, more importantly, it speaks to the popularity of the game among the German immigrant community. I'm of the opinion that the game was very popular among the German immigrant community but the problem that I have in proving this is that there is a language barrier with regards to the contemporary source material. My German is terrible and I don't have the language skills necessary to go through the German papers of the era. But I know that there are plenty of references to baseball in those papers, even though I don't know the specifics of those references. This little ad from the Hermann paper gives a little support to my thinking with regards to the popularity of the game among the German immigrant community in Missouri. But there is much, much more research that needs to be done on the subject.
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