Earliest Baseball Clubs

Learn more about the earliest baseball clubs and how they were formed.

Our collection of data on local origins consists of two types; earliest known local games and earliest known local clubs. This table shows the earliest local clubs.

For both categories of data, much of what we know has been found fairly recently; ten years ago, the spread of America's game received only passing attention. But digitized sources, and inventive and cheap electronic searches, changed that. The overall picture is still emerging, but we already know some things we hadn't even guessed at a decade ago. For example:

• Until 1857 the new game was largely unplayed beyond the immediate New York City region
• By the advent of the Civil War in 1861, the game had spread to almost all of America's largest towns, and in over half of US towns of 10,000 or more.
• The game was widely played in the newly-defeated South, as well as the East and Midwest states

This table lists the first known base ball clubs in each state and nation, listed alphabetically.