Sporting life for the well-to-do at the turn of the 20th century, as recorded in two period photograph albums containing more than five hundred images primarily related to family life and travel, including golf, hunting, boating, tennis, and auto racing and touring, chronicling the travels and sporting activities of E.W. Bigelow of Brooklyn, New York, and his family, 1905-1926, with his ownership signature and address on the pastedown of the first volume. Pinehurst, North Carolina, Detroit, Michigan, and other places, 1905-1920 and 1922-1926

Photograph albums. Oblong folio. 2 volumes: 401 mounted photographs, 4 3/8 x 2 to 3 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches; 102 mounted photographs, 2 3/4 x 1 7/8 to 3 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches, predominantly of the larger size in both volumes and with nearly all of the images captioned in white. Included are sections dedicated to Pinehurst, North Carolina (75 images), Lake Placid, New York (37), Detroit, Michigan (68), and several other eastern United States locales where Bigelow and his family lived and vacationed, and depictions of the Sound Beach Golf Club of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, in its inaugural year of 1905 (6), the Detroit Country Club in 1905 (4), the Pinehurst Golf Club in 1905 (16, identifying golfers George Low, Sr., Alex Findlay, Andrew Kirkaldy, Alan Lard, and Donald and Alec Ross), photo-essays on the 1906 and 1910 Vanderbilt Cup [Automobile] Races at Westbury, Long Island (13), Dyker Meadow Golf Club in 1907 Brooklyn, New York (6), the White Mountain Express train wreck of 1908 (4), Salisbury Golf Links & Club in 1911 Garden City, New York (6), a 1911 Lake Placid fire department drill (7), and the Ann Arbor and Detroit Golf Clubs in 1915 and 1925 (8). Scattered through the text are images of other golf courses and country club buildings, a baseball game and cricket match, horseback riding, and other outdoor sporting activities, making a total of about 130 in the album (25 per cent of the total). Covers very worn, but images, for the most part, are bright and sharp. Original gilt-stamped suede (rear cover detached, spine eroded, yapped edges chipped) and gilt-stamped brown fabrikoid (tied, original ties replaced). (#6114). Of particular interest is the 75-image section documenting the early days of the Pinehurst development, a photo-essay examining the relatively new golf resort which had opened its first course in 1899 and saw Donald Ross appointed golf pro there in 1900, a position he would hold until his death in 1948, productive decades that would find him designing over 400 courses in the United States; this section of the first album includes, in addition to the 16 images of the golf course and golfers, photographs of the train depot, a "Negro cabin," 'possum hunting, elaborate cottages, the town hall, an African-American with his wagon pulled by the "oldest mule in the state," sand hills, pine stands, and other scenery, quail hunting, the deer park, owl cage, and hennery, the golf club house, and an old turpentine mill. Other sections of the albums picture Bigelow and his family living, vacationing, and participating in various outdoor activities, as they moved from Brooklyn, to Greenwich and Farmington, Connecticut, Long Island, Grosse Point, Michigan, and Philadelphia and visited a wide range of cities and outdoor destinations in the south, middle Atlantic, and upper midwest states. The Vanderbilt cup race was the first major trophy in American auto racing; the inaugural race in 1904 and the next two were held on winding dirt roads in Nassau County, Long Island, suspended for a year, and then held 1908-1910 on the Long Island Motor Parkway, the first specially built racetrack in America. We have not found much information on Bigelow; apparently he studied at Cornell in the 1880s, playing on the baseball team, competed in tennis and golf tournaments around New York in the 1890s and 1900s, and was a member of the Brooklyn Boat Club in the 1910s. Nevertheless, his photograph albums, offered here, provide an expansive look at the leisure activities of the well-to-do in the early decades of the 20th century, especially revealing for the views of American golf courses, clubs, and play just at the time when the wave of professionals from Scotland began to make their presence felt, with improved course design and instruction. (Inventory #: 59115)