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This site is dedicated to Henry Chadwick, the man responsible for popularizing baseball throughout the United States and beyond. This site contains information about Chadwick's life in support of a biography being written by Andrew Schiff due for publication in 2007 by McFarland & Co. Chadwick, who became known in his time as "The Father of Baseball," is a largely forgotton figure due in large part to Albert Spalding's successful campain to promote the false idea that Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented baseball, when, in fact, the game evolved from British bat and ball games that were brought over to the American colonies during the 1600s and 1700s. Chadwick claimed that baseball derived from rounders, a British bat and ball game with similar rules to primitive baseball. Chadwick drew the logical conclusion that baseball was a more advanced form of rounders because of the similarity of the game's rules, particularly since he played rounders as a boy in Exeter, England, where he was born on October 5, 1824. |