The American Bicycling Journal, Vol 1, No 17
Articles in this issue
- Unheaded front-page squibs beneath the pictorial masthead of Vol. 1, No. 17 (Boston, October 18, 1879), noting the arrival at New York of Cann, Forrest and Etherington from England and their intention to make their first debut in Boston. Also announces the Boston Club and Massachusetts Club union two-days run of about ninety miles starting from Walnut Avenue on Oct. 24th, and the Mayor of Newport, R.I., barring bicycles from certain streets.
- Numbered list of twenty-three American and Canadian clubs in order of founding, from the Boston Bicycle Club (1) and Suffolk (2) through San Francisco, Montreal, Capitol and Harvard to the Chicago and York (Pa.) clubs. Full particulars — entrance fee, subscription, colours, uniform and officers — are given for Fitchburg, Worcester, Brockton, Germantown, Detroit and Cleveland.
- Report of the one-mile amateur bicycle race held Sept. 11th before more than seven thousand spectators, contested in two heats by Hart, Gibson, Longstreth, Collier, Bartel, Seddall, Dyson of Philadelphia and Holman of Cleveland. Holman won the final by eight yards in 3.58 1-2 from Longstreth and Gibson, with Prof. Rollins of Philadelphia managing the racing.
- Wentworth Rollins completed his tour by reaching Chicago on the evening of September 27th, met at Grand Crossing by the Chicago Bicycle Club and escorted to the Grand Pacific Hotel via Drexel Boulevard, Michigan Avenue and Clark Street. His route ran through Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo and Adrian, about 2000 miles of roading since leaving New York on July 3.
- William P. Field, bugler of the Essex Bicycle Club, was sued by Johnson, a pedlar of cabbage and watermelons, for damages from a runaway horse; Justice Jeremiah Bennet gave judgment for Field, the horse having been left unattended two hundred feet ahead of the machine. That afternoon three Essex men and Mr. Briggs of the Philadelphia Bicycle Club rode twenty-five miles along the Jersey coast in two and a quarter hours.
- Races of Oct. 7th and 8th at the Pittsburg Exposition, on what the Journal calls the only specially constructed bicycle course in the country. Meyer of Pittsburg took the one-mile in 3.47 1/2, Master R. E. Waring the boys' half-mile, Beltz the half-mile and Holman of Cleveland both the three-mile (12.38) and the quarter-mile slow race, with H. B. Thompson credited for the meeting's success.
- Department of club items: the Boston Bicycle Club's sixteenth and seventeenth monthly meetings at Vossler's, the Massachusetts Club's Sept. 20 run via Milton and Quincy to Kimball's at Cohasset, and W. M. Wright's reinstatement as an amateur by the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America. Also Thomas K. Longstreth's Philadelphia to Lawry's Station run, Mr. Howard's $50 gold medal for the Providence club, and the Suffolk and Harvard races set for Oct. 18th.
- Full account of the six days race at Agricultural Hall, London, Sept. 1st-6th, managed by Harry Etherington & Co. of the Bicycling Times, with Waller, Terront, Higham, Cann, Pagis, Thresher, Leeming and Andrews riding eighteen hours a day. George Waller took the champion belt with 1,404 miles on a 53-inch D. H. F. Premier, Terront second with 1,390, Higham third and Cann fourth; daily distance tables and biographies of the four winners follow.
- Welcomes Cycling, a new monthly magazine of bicycling and tricycling published at Newcastle on Tyne, praising its articles on the History of the Bicycle and Bicycle Mechanism and its literary rather than newsy style. Appreciation among English riders was such that the proprietors doubled it to a thirty-two page paper at the eighth number.
- Will R. Pitman's letter, reprinted from the Boston Herald, protesting the Journal's editorial call to reinstate W. M. Wright as an amateur and his own classification as a professional after the July 4th Huntington Avenue races. He argues that under the same English rule Messrs. Albert A. Pope, Edward Pope, Arthur Cunningham and Frank Weston would all be professionals, and asks that the rule be abolished.
- Poem by J. G. D., subtitled "Closely after Holmes," mourning the pedestrians and horse-car passengers who have no wheel while riders twirl the magic wire. It closes with a parody address to "O men that walk, and take car line."
- "Kol Kron" reports 118 miles ridden on a dozen days in the metropolis, describing the five-mile macadam Boulevard from 59th to 155th street, Tenth avenue to the Fort Washington Hotel and Kingsbridge, Central Avenue to Macomb's Dam Bridge, the Eastern Boulevard from Harlem Bridge, and the Astoria shore road on Long Island. He recommends the Westchester County Atlas of J. B. Beers & Co. and warns beginners to set the saddle back before their first mount.
- The project for a three-lap cinder track with restaurant and stable accommodation in Boston has not been abandoned, though the promoters met unexpected difficulties before opening a subscription list. A closing joke contrasts the principal London track at Lilly Bridge, Brompton, with the proposed Boston site at Granite Bridge, Dorchester.
- Editorial on the imminent landing of Keen, Stanton and Cann with the French champion Terront, under the guidance of Harry Etherington of the Bicycling Times. Etherington writes that the visit is more a pleasure trip than a business enterprise, but that his flyers and stayers will meet all comers, amateur or professional, and even contest distances against American trotters; the team will spend only one night in New York before coming on to Boston.
- Editorial notice of the liberally endowed two-day meeting at the driving park in Rochester, N. Y., on the 21st and 22nd inst., open to both amateurs and professionals. The gravel track is being rolled and watered to a hardness said to rival any specially prepared cinder track, and some if not all of the English champions are expected to compete.
- Letter from Coventry, England, dated Sept. 10, 1879, in which Henry Sturmey offers to advise American readers choosing among the nearly four hundred varieties of machine in the English market. He describes his August tour of some four hundred miles from Coventry to Westbury, Weymouth, Honiton, Crewkerne, Bristol and Gloucester and back, the last hundred miles from Bristol to Coventry done in a single day.
- Arrangements are in progress for a six days bicycle race at either Gilmore's Garden or Madison Square Garden, with O'Leary the pedestrian as prime mover. Overtures have been made to Keen, Stanton, Cann and Terront, who are understood to have consented to compete under handicaps of as much as 300 miles.
- President Max Hausmann and Vice President Dr. H. M. Schooley of the Capitol Bi. Club arrived in Boston on the 14th inst. after leaving Washington on the 2nd. They averaged fifty miles a day despite exceedingly bad roads over nearly half the distance, stopping over to visit friends along the route.
- C. E. Pratt, President of the Boston Club, E. W. Pope, Captain of the Massachusetts Club, and Mr. Slocum rode about 150 miles from Boston on the morning of August 13th to Portland, Maine, on the evening of the 16th. A full description of the trip is promised for the next number.
- Two short verses hailing the bicycle as the best equitation and declaring that "Westward the star Bicycle takes its way," the four-foot horse already passed. A closing stanza parodies Moore on the pleasure of one's first rides after learning.
- Detailed account of the hundred-mile run of September 11th and 12th originated by C. E. Pratt, in which upwards of forty riders from Boston, Massachusetts, Orange, Worcester, Washington, Hartford and Salem clubs started from Walnut avenue, Roxbury. The route ran by Jamaica Pond — where Mr. Notman photographed the party and a policeman ordered the camera away — Brook Farm, Dedham, Readville (lunch given by Col. Pope), Blue Hill and Canton to the Massapoag House, returning next day through South Braintree, East Weymouth and Hingham to Kimball's at Cohasset and finishing at Milton Hill.
- Two letters: W. F. G. of Brooklyn, who took his Sp. Challenge on holiday to Port Jervis and found a fine thirty-one mile road along the Delaware valley; and a Detroit correspondent signing "Go As I Please" on the Pope Manufacturing Co. agency and riding school, N. B. Conger's three-quarter-mile race win at Recreation Park, and the organisation of the Detroit Bicycle Club with Louis J. Bates as President.
- Replies to G. R. of New York City on the roads round Pelham Manor and New Rochelle, to "Corn City," G. B. O. of Philadelphia, L. of Shifnal, England, and L. H. J. of Orange. H. B. of Danvers is told that trotting tracks are necessarily too soft for the bicycle and that three laps to the mile is the perfection of length for a bicycle track.
- While leading his club along the tow-path of the Baltimore and Ohio Canal, Gerald Owen glanced round, struck a large loose stone and disappeared with his machine into seven feet of water. He surfaced, dived to recover the bicycle, wrung out his clothes and gallantly resumed the lead to the end of the run.