Note 225 — Chapter XXII · THE “NEW GYMNASTICS” OF DIO LEWIS.

The beginning of rowing clubs in the United States goes back to 1833 and the few years following, and in the decade 1850-1860 interest in the sport spread all over the country. Baseball, starting in the forties and fifties, did not become a truly national pastime until the period immediately succeeding the Civil War. The “Caledonian games” of Scotch immigrants, forerunners of our track and field athletics, had been shown in Boston in 1853 and Hoboken in 1857, but did not become widely popular till the later sixties and seventies. Football existed only in its primitive form.