Philadelphia - the epicenter of Cricket in America
The History of the game in Germantown.
Germantown was founded by the Francis Daniel Pastorius and his Teutonic followers in 1683 who were commissioned by the Frankfort Land Company and a group of merchants from Crefeld, Germany to form a settlement in America. Francis and his followers purchased 15-acres of land in Pennsylvania, which became the Germantown.
After the Revolutionary War, the town become predominantly English, where around the 1840s the English "mill hands" first began playing cricket on pasture fields. During that time, an American boy in Germantown, William Rotch Wister, took keen interest in game. It was through Wister's efforts that Americans became involved with the game. Wister studied the science behind the game and began training the local boys. He was the first and the only teacher the boys had, and was affectionately seen as a father figure in their lives, and much later, was regarded as "The father of American Cricket" for his contribution to the game.
Wister backed the establishment of the Germantown Cricket Club in 1854, which exists even till today – although, less as a cricket club and more as a Country club, but the cricket centric history of the club is still recognized by it's members, and cricket is still lovingly played on the grounds of Germantown. The club was founded to compete against some older clubs like Philadelphia Cricket Club and Merion Cricket club in Philadelphia city, as well as to size up against the local English eleven, which inspired and impassioned many boys of the time to take up cricket. It did not take long for the Germantown boys to get the better of the local English eleven, as the Germantown boys had the time and the proper playing fields that the Englishmen lacked; nevertheless, the Englishmen were always welcomed on Germantown fields, and they shared a strong bond with the Germantown boys.
While a year later a new club was formed consisting of the younger brothers of the members of the Germantown Club, it was called the Young America Club. Soon, both teams became rivals of sorts for the betterment of the game in the Philadelphia.
Germantown Cricket Club
The Young America Club
As cricket in Philadelphia was getting more inclusive with the immigrant population and the locals playing together, the story was little different in places like New York and Newark, and New Jersey. The British expatriates in New York were not keen on extending cricket to the local population, choosing to keep the game to themselves, while those in Newark willing played cricket with the locals, but the affluent of the expatriates chose to stay an arms-length from the sport as they considered cricket as lower-middle class sport.
However, as the civil war broke out the older Germantown Cricket Club was disbanded. Other smaller cricket clubs formed previous to, and during the war reached a similar fate as the players had no cricket grounds to play on.
