We
knew that Denison had a "polo team" and a "polo ground" in 1874, but
until recently we didn't realize that polo was first played in America,
not by Patrician horsemen in New York, but by Texans in the Lone Star
State, right here in Denison.
It was English officers and tea planters who "discovered" the ancient game in India and started playing it there in the 1850s, according to Herbert Spencer, who is researching and writing a story for one of his English media clients. Polo was not played in England until 1869. Spencer's question in an email early in April raised the question, "So how did Denison horsemen know anything about this 'new' sport, how it was played, etc.?" It was first thought that James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald called together a dozen gentleman who were members of the sporting set most likely to be attracted to polo. A railroad car loaded with Texas ranch horses was delivered by the end of the meeting and the gentlemen tried their hand at the game. Most of the men were from Westchester County, N.Y., where one historical record says that Bennett established the Westchester Polo Club on May 6, 1876, and the race track in Westchester County was the site of the first outdoor polo match. But wait, Bennett got a little ahead of himself. Four days before his "first" game of polo in the U.S. was played, Denison already had a Polo Club, ponies and lots of outdoor space to play the game. The team was so proficient that during the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, it was called on to compete on the field in front of thousands of visitors from over the world. An 1876 Newspaper Timeline listed on the Internet tells of the beginning of polo in America and relates that on the same day of the announcement that the Denison team had sent a letter to Bennett (it took several days for the letter to get from Denison to New York), an article ran in Bennett's paper about the New Yorkers wanting to hire some Texas boys to teach them how to ride. An Englishman, Harold Gooch, who was playing polo in Denison, was a buffalo hunter on the high plains of Texas in the early 1870s. He married Mollie Taylor in her father's home near Bonham. The team wanted to challenge the New York Team. Gooch, in a newspaper article telling of the marriage, was remembered by many of Denison's early residents. He was playing polo in Texas in May 1876. In a 1913 article by H.L. Herbert, Bennett's New York team had trouble finding horses to ride on May 6 and didn't organize their club until after a second match on May 13. Denison had a club, English players, all the equipment and a place to play on May 2, four days before the New York Team's first game.
May 2, 1876 Member of Denison's team that had played on the local field had come from all parts of the world, including several members of English royalty who participated. The team played on small Texas ponies, described in an April 8, 1927, article in the Denison Daily News as "not much larger than an overgrown grasshopper but with the ability to make the cow which jumped over the moon turn green with envy." Among the members composing the local team were Will Lowe, leader of the First National Bank, Lt. A.W. Greeley of the U.S. Army in charge of the first weather bureau located by the government in the southwest; Lt. Tingle and Lt. DeLong; as well as several other Army officers in charge of the cavalry companies then located in the city for southwestern emergency purposes when the wandering tribes of Indians were a threat to the northern and western parts of Texas. Lt. Greeley and his assistants officed for many years in the two-story brick building on the corner of Gandy Street and Rusk Avenue. This was better known as the W. B. Munson home. The polo field became a popular resort among horsemen of the Southwest. The east goal of the riders in the 1870s was located where the Hotel Simpson - now the Hotel Denison - later stood, at 401 Chestnut. The 1870s field began with Rusk Avenue on the east, between Main St. and Forest Park, running westward was an open prairie with a few trees scattered along the way; the area later became known as Sugar Bottom or the headwaters of PawPaw Creek. The Denison Herald article of 1927 wrote that the players used what were "seemingly long-handled croquet mallets" to hit the ball on the ground in an effort to carry it to their respective goal. The game on horseback attracted attention of cowboys of the Southwest on trips to Denison who were driving herds for shipment over railroad to the northern markets. Some of the later known most popular men of the world were Denison guests, according to the 1927 story. Many thousand cattle from the King Ranch were driven to Denison to ship to Northern markets. The well-known Waggoner Ranch also drove thousands to Denison to be shipped. Not only was Denison considered their headquarters for shipping their cattle, it was also their playground. After driving the herds and completing the shipments, they were ready for rest and recreation, with the bosses and cowboys found both in Denison. Polo, the game on horseback, drew their attention. Guess this was the beginning of Denison being known as "The Playground of the Southwest". Denison as the location of the first polo game in the country is just another one of those exciting unknowns that helps make for such an exciting beginning for this early day railroad town. Ross Stoddard, Jr. Sources: Donna Hunt, "Athletes Horsed Around in Denison of Yesteryear," Herald Democrat, June 18, 2003. Donna Hunt, "America's Introduction to Polo Came to Denison," Herald Democrat, May 6, 2012.  The Legendary Texas Polo Club Sports Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |
