American Memory Gallery of Documents

Three Score Years and Ten, Life-long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other Parts of the West Chapter V, p. 42 Charlotte Ouisconsin Clark Van Cleve, 1819-1907	Dancing p. 187 by Mrs. Lilly Grove, F.R.G.S., and Other Writers	Song Games for the Small Child
Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910	An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals	American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
And then we had games, not croquet or any of those inventions which were then in the far future, but "hide and seek;" "blind man's buff;" "hide the handkerchief;" "hunt the slipper," and such old-fashioned sports which all enjoyed most heartily, till warned by the lengthening shadows that it was time to go home, which we generally reached in time to see the flag lowered to the roll of the sunset drum.	Some of the games of Scottish children seem to have been dances originally. For example, the merry-ma-tanzie is probably a corruption of Merry-May-dance, an old sport practiced on the first of May. Part of the song sung during the dance was, ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush.”	This is a circle game; the children all fall to the floor on the last word. Elephants The elephant's walk is steady and slow His trunk like a pendulum swings just so, But when there are children with peanuts around He swings it up - - - - - and he swings it down. (A gymnastic game)
Mike Pelletier	Subject Interview with Mrs. Ella Johnson - Games	Children's Jump Rope Games
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940	American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 s	American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
We used to play [Postoffice?] , Spin the Plate , Play the [?] , Catch the Rat , Blind Man's Bluff and The Turn Over Game . In that last one two of them used to lay down on the floor head to head and on their backs, and lock legs together and try to turn each other over. The girls used to play it, too. They'd wear bloomers or put on an old pair of pants, and some of them were pretty good at it. I've seen them turn some of the men over. Spin the Plate , Blind Man's Bluff , and Catch the Rat were kissin' games.	We had a "joggling board." It was a long, resilient board that was pegged down to two end foundations. We children used to get on the board and bounce up and down. You could bounce by yourself, or with as many as the board would hold. (From the description of the "joggling board", it seems somewhat comparable to the "teeter boards" which consisted of a long, somewhat resilient plank of wood but which rested on a wooden horse placed at its center rather than on a horse at either end.	Johny went over the ocean, Johny went over the sea, Johny broke a milk bottle, And blamed it onto me. I told ma. Ma told pa. Johny got a licking, Ha! Ha! Ha!

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