Cincinnati Confectioner

Baseball Cards First Sold with Gum?

/ sandramervillehart

Did you know that baseball cards celebrated a 150-year anniversary in 2018? In 1868, the first baseball cards were produced by Peck & Snyder, a sporting goods store in New York.

Tobacco companies began including baseball cards with their products in the 1880s. This practice eventually died out because they learned that children were the main audience for the cards—most states prohibited children from purchasing tobacco by the end of World War I.

So, when were baseball cards first included with gum?

H.D. Smith & Company, a Cincinnati company that began in 1856, may have been the first to include a baseball card packaged with gum. An ad that mentions HD Smith & Co.’s products in Leslie’s is dated October 27, 1888. A partial ad reads:

“A novel production of theirs this season is the St. Louis and Detroit Champion Baseball Gum—a piece of gum with a perfect lithograph picture of one of the champion nine of the National League or American Association on each piece. The pictures were made to order in Germany, and are wonders in their way.”

When an auction house came across two baseball cards from 1888, they researched the origin. The players were Sam Thompson and Ned Hanlon. “H.D.S. & Co.” was printed on one of the tabs. Further digging led to the H.D. Smith & Company. If these were printed early in 1888, they believed they might have found baseball cards from the first chewing gum company to include them.

This company manufactured and sold a variety of chewing gums. The “Big Long Chewing Gum” was advertised as “the best paraffine gum made.” They sold a patented medicinal gum called “Cough.” “Red Riding Hood” gum was advertised on ceiling fan pulls.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

Blitz, Matt. “How Gum and Baseball Cards Became Intertwined,” Food & Wine, 2019/03/18 https://www.foodandwine.com/news/how-gum-and-baseball-cards-became-intertwined.

“Spectactular 1888 Scrapps Uncut Pair of HOFers – Sam Thompson/Ned Hanlon – SGC Fair 20,” Love of the Game Auctions, 2019/03/18 http://loveofthegameauctions.com/spectacular-1888-scrapps-uncut-pair-of-hofers—sa-lot3962.aspx.

“Pictorial history of baseball cards covers 150 years of diamond dandies on cardboard,” Starr Cards, 2019/03/18 http://starrcards.com/history-of-baseball-cards/.

Woellert, Dann. Cincinnati Candy—A Sweet History, American Palate, 2017.

Confectioner of the West

/ sandramervillehart

Johann Meyer immigrated with his family from Württemberg to the United States in 1804. Unfortunately, sickness claimed the lives of his father, brother, and two sisters during the ocean voyage. Even worse, the family’s belongings were stolen when they disembarked in Baltimore. Then about eleven, Johann indentured himself for eight years to pay his family’s passage. Yet the skills he learned while indentured served him well later in life.

He met his wife while working for a baker in Philadelphia and, in 1817, the young couple moved to Cincinnati where Johann started the city’s first confectionery.

A few years later, Revolutionary War General Lafayette received an invitation from President James Monroe to tour all twenty-four states as the nation’s 50th anniversary approached. Lafayette accepted and his Grand Tour lasted from August of 1824 through September of 1825.

A tour stop in Cincinnati gave Johann the opportunity to create a dessert display for a grand ball held at Cincinnati Hotel, located at the northwest corner of Front and Broadway Streets on the Public Landing

Lafayette arrived by barge in Cincinnati on May 19, 1825. Though the city’s population was then only about 12,000, some 50,000 gathered at the Public Landing on the Ohio River to honor the Revolutionary War hero. Speeches by General William Henry Harrison and Ohio Governor Jeremiah Morrow remarked on the many war patriots that had settled in Cincinnati.

At the grand ball, marzipan figures recreated events from Lafayette’s Continental Army experiences on Johann’s elaborate six-foot sugar pyramid. His amazing dessert earned him the nickname of “Confectioner of the West.”

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

Engelking, Tama Lea. “The Story Behind CSU’s Lafayette Collection,” Cleveland State University Library Special Collections, 2019/03/18 http://www.clevelandmemory.org/lafayette/engelking.shtml.

Icher, Julien. “The Lafayette Trail: Mapping General Lafayette’s Farewell Tour in the United States (1824-1825), American Battlefield Trust, 2019/03/18 https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/lafayette-trail-mapping-general-lafayettes-farewell-tour-united-states-1824-1825.

Jones, William. “Lafayette’s Visit to the United States, 1824-1825,” The American Patriot, 2019/03/18 https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/eirv34n46-20071123/54-63_46.pdf.

Suess, Jeff. “Our history: Hunting for Lafayette almost 200 years later,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 2019/03/18 https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/10/11/project-maps-lafayettes-u-s-tour/1600338002/.

Suess, Jeff. “Our history: Thousands welcomed war hero Lafayette in 1825,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 2019/03/18 https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/06/20/thousands-welcomed-lafayettes-visit-1825/717476002/.

Woellert, Dann. Cincinnati Candy—A Sweet History, American Palate, 2017.