What we know (and don’t know) about this famous photo from 1859.

Historic teams, a milestone meeting – and a new location for baseball. This well-known image has it all. But over 165 years later, we still don’t know everything there is to know about this remarkable piece of history.

WE DO KNOW the teams, Knickerbocker and Excelsior, and the date, August 2, 1859. Historian Tom Shieber calls it “the earliest-known on-field baseball photograph.” We also can surmise the reason for the photo: to document an important baseball milestone, the very advent of the “fly game.” Newspapers can tell us the names of each player and where the game was played. Unfortunately, we can’t pinpoint exactly who was who in this photo, or look at a map and say exactly where the two teams played. The far-too-lengthy study below attempts to turn these unknowns into knowns. If interested, please keep reading. Thank you.

The Spalding caption.

This version, with caption, may have been the first printing of the image, shown as a fold-out in Albert Spalding’s America’s Game, published in 1911. Albert and his editors correctly labeled the Knickerbockers of New York standing on the left, and the Excelsiors of Brooklyn on the right; two of baseball’s most important early teams. However, they erroneously dated the photo as 1858, and today it is easy to find this image online dated as such. (You’ll also find online a September 3, 1859, photo date — wrong again.) The book also had trouble identifying all of the players, and captioned them as follows:

[Knickerbocker, from left] —, Davis, De Bost, —, Stevens, Harry Wright, —, Kissam, and —.

[Center] Dr. Jones.

[Excelsior, right of Dr. Jones] Polhemus, Pearsall, Leggett, Holden [sic], Russell, Dupont, H. Brainard, —, and —.

The Spalding book could not identify six of the eighteen players pictured. Two other identities were seemingly incorrect, and another name was misspelled. To Spalding, who first played as a teenager in the late 1860s, this scene when viewed in 1911 must have looked like ancient history — men from a vanishing generation.

Disproving 1858. Thanks Alex.

The identity of the Excelsior’s Alex Pearsall, shown in center in this detail view, tells us the 1858 date was incorrect. We can identify Pearsall by his belt, which bore his name. Tom Shieber, when studying this image, has noted that Pearsall was not with the team in 1858 and “does not appear in the Excelsior lineup until May of 1859.” On a side note, Pearsall also wore a shirt shield with an Old-English ‘E,’ one that differed from that worn by some of his teammates. It is possible Pearsall’s ‘E’ did not stand for Excelsior, but Esculapian, the name of his previous team. Information on the Excelsior uniform can be found here, the Knickerbocker uniform here.

Knickerbocker and Excelsior played three games in total with Pearsall in the lineup: June 30, 1859, August 2, 1859, and August 25, 1860. The 1860 game can immediately be discounted as the Excelsior pitcher on that day, James Creighton, was not in our photo. Shieber and researcher John Husman have determined the photo was most likely from the game played on August 2, 1859. Meeting notes in a Knickerbocker record book led to this conclusion. The entry, dated six days later on August 8, 1859, read:

“On motion of Mr. Niebuhr, the Secretary was empowered to have the photograph of the first nines of the Excelsiors and Knickerbockers framed at a cost not to exceed $10.”

This version of the image has the correct year, 1859, elaborately inscribed at the bottom of the print. In the two matches played against each other this year, the Knickerbockers and Excelsiors were testing the waters, “abrogating” what the Brooklyn Evening Star called “the old fogy bound rule.” Reporting on the August 2 game, the Star noted that the contest was played “in the presence of a large number of interested citizens,” and that “instead of retarding and embarrassing the game, the fly rule adds to its scientific precision and contributes much to the spirit and interest of the sport.” Of course the newspaper felt this way, their Brooklyn team won 20 to 5. To learn more about the “fogy” bound rule of 1859, go to protoball.org and see sections 11-13 here.

The identities of the Knickerbocker nine.

In today’s information age, identifying these men should be an easy task, right? The Brooklyn Evening Star even published a box score of the August 2 game, but the problem is matching names to faces. The Star listed the Knickerbocker lineup as Davis lf, Wright c, McLaughlin [sic] p, Stephens [sic] 1b, Kissam rf, Morrow cf, De Bost ss, Adams 3b, and Welling 2b. The scorer was J. F. Wenman. If you overlay these names with the Spalding caption and with other known images of certain players, you can make the following identities:

In his 1911 book, Spalding, oddly, did not identify Daniel ‘Doc’ Adams, an important figure in Knickerbocker history. Adams died in 1899 in Connecticut. Spalding also did not identify players Henry Morrow, Norman Welling or Napoleon McLaughlen, and their identities in the photo remain unconfirmed.

Morrow’s first name is not known today in most published resources. However, Charles Peverelly in his Book of American Pastimes (1866) listed a Henry Morrow of the Knickerbocker Club as the umpire of the Excelsior-Empire match played on September 14, 1859. This is undoubtedly the same person. After baseball and Brooklyn, Morrow moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where he founded the volunteer fire department in 1872 and later became the city’s mayor in 1876. One newspaper report from Iowa City in April 1896 confirmed Morrow’s baseball connection, saying that:

“Col. Henry Morrow is among the old-time ball players who might have participated in the Harry Wright [tribute] game at Rockford, Ill., Monday [April 13, 1896] if he had wished. Way back in the ‘60s he was a member of the old Knickerbocker club — the parent team of the United States.”

Henry Morrow was born in New York in 1826 and died in Iowa City on May 3, 1906. You might ask, does a picture exist of Mayor Morrow? Unfortunately, none have surfaced – but we came close. There are several books and articles online showing a gallery of portraits of former Iowa City mayors. Sadly, Henry Morrow was not included.

Norman Welling and Napoleon McLaughlen also cannot be identified in the photo. According to Peter Morris, et al., in Base Ball Founders (2013), Welling was a club director, but he died in 1885, a time when photos and engravings in newspapers were less common. McLaughlen, often spelled McLaughlin, was a decorated Civil War colonel for the Union Army who later became a brigadier general. He died in 1887 in Middletown, New York. A Civil War-era photo of McLaughlen is included in the facial study above for comparison. A positive identification can only be guessed at.

The identities of the Excelsior nine.

A box score from the August 2, 1859, game published in the Brooklyn Evening Star the following day listed the Excelsior lineup as Reynolds 2b, Pearsall 1b, Russell p, C Whiting rf, Holder ss, Polhemus cf, Markum lf, J. C. Whiting 3b, and Leggett c. The scorer was S. S. Gregory. Clearly Spalding and the Star were not in agreement; according to the newspaper two of Spalding’s participants, Dupont and H. Brainard, did not play in the game.

When comparing the faces to a known photo of the Excelsior team from 1860, the following identities can be presumed. Those of John Holder and of Charles Whiting, brother to John Whiting, are determined by the process of elimination.

Calling all researchers. If you want to “dig” for a representative image made later in life of Knickerbocker players Morrow and Welling, and Excelsior player Holder, please do so. Maybe someone out there can confirm their identities in the 1859 photo. Additionally, Charles Williamson of Brooklyn has been credited as the photographer of the image by some today. If there is documentation to support this, please send it my way. Thank you.

The identity of Dr. Jones.

As mentioned above, Spalding identified the top-hatted gentleman as “Dr. Jones.” The good doctor holds a baseball but he was not the game’s umpire as some sources today state, instead he was the Excelsior Club president. Joseph Bainbridge Jones (1823-1905) served in this role for the club into the early 1860s, and was also voted president of the NABBP in 1860. A photo published with his 1905 obituary is at right, at which time Jones was remembered as “an ardent devotee of athletics and out-of-door sports.” Historian Tom Gilbert has written that Jones “is about to offer the game ball to the losing team, the Knickerbockers, as a display of deference and respect.” The fact the game had just concluded could be further suggested by the players’ hair in the photo, which in many cases was matted down after they removed their caps.

The location of the Excelsior grounds.

This is how the Excelsior grounds looked during an Excelsior-Atlantic game on July 19, 1860. It may be the only depiction of the field the Excelsiors called home from 1859 to 1864. The grounds were located in South Brooklyn at Red Hook, on an open field near the Gowanus Bay. This was a new and larger location for the club, moving from their previous grounds at Carroll Park in Brooklyn where in a game in November 1858 “the block was completely hemmed in by an assemblage of at least three thousand people.”

Specifically, the new grounds for 1859 were located “at the foot of Court Street.” The Excelsiors announced this in a club meeting on May 11, 1859, and with a schedule of “practice days Tuesday and Saturday at 4 o’clock P.M.” The location was also referred to in newspapers as “Penny Bridge,” after the drawbridge located a few blocks away spanning the Gowanus Canal. The Excelsiors shared their new site with the Brooklyn Yacht Club, which was organized in 1857 and held their first regatta there in June 1858. In the background of the illustration the masts of shipping vessels and pleasure boats can be seen at the water’s edge. The Brooklyn Evening Star reported that “the base ball ground is in the immediate vicinity of the [yachting] club house.”

In this detail view, the Excelsior Club flag can be seen unfurling in right field. The large balconied club house at left likely belonged to the yacht club. The smaller club house at right may have been built by the Excelsiors, however the flag behind the building also belonged to the yacht club, their colors represented by a white star on a red field. One of several shipping warehouses sits between the two buildings. There was no seating for spectators, and the grounds were not enclosed. No admission fee was charged.

The lot was new to baseball when the Excelsiors arrived, and also just plain new — a recent building project by the City of Brooklyn. In the 1850s, workers constructed new shipping basins, drained the marsh land, and extended the grid of streets into Gowanus Bay. So where exactly was the foot of Court Street in 1859?

Map study.

Based on this map study, I would guess that the Excelsior field was located, literally, at the foot of Court Street, indicated by the red baseball diamond I have added to this 2026 map. Others have speculated that the grounds were located at what is now the Red Hook Park and Recreation Center, and this could very well be true. The current Red Hook Park was built in the late 1930s, and before that the land was earmarked for a canal. However the maps and information presented below seem to suggest the foot of Court Street was located a few blocks farther south at the time of the Excelsiors’ arrival in 1859.

Here are two maps of the same area. The red overlays show the suggested location of the diamond and the current 2026 land boundary. The 1850 map shows that Sigourney Street and everything to the south was either marsh or open water. The 1856 map shows the same area with the marsh drained, the land filled, and a proposed grid of streets laid out. These streets were certainly in place by 1857. The Brooklyn City Directory from that year was the first edition to list the following cross-streets with Court street, heading south to Gowanus Bay: Bay, Sigourney, Halleck, Percival, Bryant, Oregon, and Cuba. (Only Bay, Halleck, and Bryant Streets exist today in this area.) The directory did not list any house numbers for any of these streets, indicating there were no structures, and newspapers in the late 1850s ran land-for-sale advertisements for many of the streets.

Two more maps showing the progression of the area. The 1868 map was similar to the 1856 map above, showing roughly the same grid of streets. The 1880 map shows a more accurate configuration of streets as the area became less speculative, and with the blocks between Court and Smith Streets being subdivided into housing lots. The 1875 city directory was the first to list house numbers for some of these streets.

The Court Street blotter.

Newspaper accounts from the late 1850s tell us a lot about “the foot of Court street.” The area was occupied by both affluent club members and rough and tumble immigrants grazing cattle and fighting with each other. An interesting mix. To create a better picture of area, I searched Brooklyn newspapers for the term “foot of Court street.” Here is what I found:

—March 23, 1858: “A fire broke out in a small frame tenant house on the meadows, foot of Court street, and it was burned down in a short time. It was occupied by Patrick Farrell.”
—June 22, 1858: The Brooklyn Yacht Club held their first regatta. The club “is not yet been a year in existence.” During the event, “the club house at the foot of Court street was crowded with spectators and the docks were lined with crowds.”
—March 30, 1859: The body of Richard Heffern was found “at the foot of Court Street in a place called Sandy Bank.”
—June 23, 1859: The second annual regatta of the Brooklyn Yacht Club took place “from the Club House, foot of Court street.”
—August 1, 1859: Three men were enjoying “a bath in the vicinity of the club house at the foot of Court street” and “making too great an exhibition of themselves.” When the police arrived, the men grabbed their clothes and ran. Two were detained when they became stuck on the sandy bank, but the third “ran up Hamilton avenue in a state of nudity.”
—June 22, 1860: The annual regatta of the yacht club “from the foot of Court street” was postponed due to an Excelsior’s match. “The base ball ground is in the immediate vicinity of the club house” and it was thought “not to have two great attractions at one time.”
—September 27, 1860: The local regiment plans to drill at “the Excelsior Base Ball ground, foot of Court street, where they will occupy about 2 hours in manual of arms and evolutions.”
—January 16, 1861: Thomas Lynch, age 80, “lived by himself in a shanty at Sandy Banks, near the club house, foot of Court street.” He was discovered “in a helpless condition” and then “the candle flickered in the socket and went out.”
—July 16, 1861: “A grand regatta” once again took place “from the club house at the foot of Court street” and “a large numbers of persons were attracted to the vicinity.”
—July 25, 1861: A group of base ball players planned to play “an interesting game of cricket on the Excelsior ball ground, foot of Court street.”
—August 6, 1861: A fight broke out “in neighboring shanties in a piece of ground called Sandy Beach, at the foot of Court street.” The combatants were “about a dozen males and females” and “sticks, stones, knives and other weapons were freely used.” When they appeared before a judge they had “broken heads and were full of cuts and bruises.”
—May 5, 1862: “The Brooklyn Yacht Club […] is composed of not only influential, but like the Excelsior Base Ball Club of that vicinity, wealthy men. The club house and headquarters of the Brooklyn Yacht Club are situated at the foot of Court street, on Gowanus Bay, and is a commodious and conveniently located building.”
—May 11, 1862: Another fight. “Two women named Bridget Conway and Joanna Ryan, who reside in the shanties at the foot of Court street, got into an altercation in relation to their right to allow their cows to graze on the grounds of the Excelsior Base Ball Club.” A scuffle ensued and “Mrs. Conway stabbed Mrs. Ryan with a knife on the face and neck, inflicting dangerous wounds.”
—June 26, 1862: Excelsior played “on the grounds at the foot of Court street” against Charter Oak. It was remarked to be the club’s “first match since 1860.”
—April 1863: Members of a gang were charged with arson after “firing a shanty at the foot of Court street.” One member, James Murphy, was arrested after evading police for several days.
—June 1865: After Excelsior moved to Brooklyn’s Capitoline grounds for the 1865 season, the Brooklyn Union referred to their former grounds as “that objectionable locality at the foot of Court street.”
—April 1866: The Brooklyn Yacht Club begins to dissolve and a new club, the Atlantic Yacht Club, is formed. “The club room formerly occupied by the Excelsior ball club, at the foot of Court street, has been hired and will soon be handsomely furnished for the use of the members.” The new club stayed at this location until 1881.

The site today.

The former site of the Excelsior grounds is changing once again. After years of post-industrial decay, recent efforts are in place to convert the foot of Court Street into a logisitics hub. The site is already well on its way to looking much like this architectural rendering. In this visualization, Court Street remains the dominant thoroughfare heading north.

One last look.

So here they are, the Knickerbockers and Excelsiors, standing in the sunshine of 1859. Do we know anything more now about the image than we did before? Maybe. The afternoon sun tells us the men were facing west. We know now that to their left, out of frame and to the south, stood the nearby clubhouses of the Brooklyn Yacht Club and beyond them, the Gowanus Bay. Somewhere behind the players flows the Gowanus Canal, and beyond that, a rise of land on the other side of the waterway.

Buildings have stood at the foot of Court Street for decades, so finding a photo of the lot as open land is hard to come by. This photo-composite imagines what it would look like if the two nines stood at the corner of Court and Halleck streets today, close to where they stood in 1859. They face westward in the sunshine of 2026, the same rise of land in the distance behind them.

Thank you for you time. –Craig

First image: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Spalding book image: Rutgers University Library. Shieber “earliest-known” remark: X post, August 2, 2019. Shieber and Husman image research: SABR Pictorial History Committee Newsletter, Number 99:2 (1999). Image with elaborate border: SABR Pictorial History Committee. Game box score: Brooklyn Evening Star, August 3, 1859, 3. Morrow obituary: Iowa City Press, May 3, 1906, 8, research from Paul Winter. Morrow not attending tribute game: Iowa City Morning Democrat, April 15, 1896, 4. Morrow birth info: findagrave.com. Biographical info on Knickerbocker and Excelsior players: John Thorn, William J. Ryczek, and Peter Morris, Base Ball Founders (2013). Jones obituary: Brooklyn Times, October 10, 1905, 12. Jones displaying deference: Thomas W. Gilbert, How Baseball Happened (2020). Image of Excelsior grounds 1860: John Thorn, Our Game, “A Pictorial Retrospective of Baseball: Part 6, 1860” (January 19, 2026), citing Demorest’s New-York Illustrated News, August 4, 1860. Hemmed in at Carroll Park: Brooklyn Daily Times, November 10, 1858, 3. First regatta: Brooklyn Evening Star, June 23, 1858, 3. Grounds in vicinity of yacht club: Brooklyn Evening Star, June 22, 1860, 3. 2026 map: Google maps. 1850 map: culturenow.org. 1856 map: digitalcommonweatlh.com. 1868 map: collections.lib.uwm.edu. 1880 map: wardmaps.com. Court street blotter: Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Brooklyn Evening Star. Atlantic Yacht Club move date: atlanticyachtclub.org. Visual of site today: redhooklogisitics.com