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muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

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  • #1

    muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

    I am not sure this is in the right thread, if not please move.

    I have been reading about the history of the game horseshoes. What I am finding is that it is related to quoits. Apparently quoits was a very early game. The other thing I am finding reference to is muleshoe pitching in union camps during the civil war. Has anyone else found reference to this?


    Thank you

    Beverly Simpson
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

    Having grown up playing Quoits I always assumed that everyone played it. Apparently not. It is really only played in the US in the Philadelphia area by people of Welsh and Irish descent.
    Not that Wikipedia is the greatest source, but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoits

    Soldiers often mention playing Quoits. Winslow Homer's painting entitled, "Pitching Quoits," shows members of the 5th NYVV playing Quoits, but with Army mule shoes or horse shoes.
    http://chrismccormick.net/art/display_image.php?id=876

    Notice that the stake is extremely short by modern standards. Eventually this painting was re-named "Pitching Horseshoes."
    What I'm pretty certain about is that whether the soldiers were using animal shoes or quoits, the rules were probably the same and the game was still supposed to be played in a wet clay pit. Modern Horseshoes probably evolved out of this wartime experience.
    Also, like most games, Quoits is extremely underrepresented in the hobby.
    Yours, etc.,
    Matt White
    http://www.libertyrifles.org/
    http://www.cwurmuseum.org/
    http://www.military-historians.org/

    "One of the liveliest rows I had while in the service was with the quartermaster for filling a requisition that I made for shoes for my company, on the theory that no shoe was too large for a Negro, and he gave me all 10's and upwards. When I returned the shoes, informing him that my soldiers did not wear pontoons, he insisted that I should take them and issue them to my company anyway. Well, I didn't do it: consequently the row."
    -Robert Beecham 2nd Wisconsin/23rd USCT

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    • #3
      Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

      Thank you for your help. I will look into quoits with the substitution of mule shoes.


      Beverly Simpson

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      • #4
        Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

        Ms. Simpson-I knew I had this cite somewhere, just took a bit of looking-
        From the letters of William G. and Thomas D. Christie-'Letters from Corinth"
        Found at www.mnhs.org/library/Christie/corlist.html
        These gentlemen belonged to the 1st Minnisota Battery

        July 16th, 1862
        "for while they(another regiment) play quoits with mule shoes at 12 paces, we use the heaviest kind of uncorked horseshoes at 20 paces"
        Leland Hares, 10th Tennessee (U.S.)

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        • #5
          Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

          Hi All,

          Interesting thread, I am currently in my spare time, making up a camp set of hose shoes ( I play pretty regularly, as I have a modern pitch in my side yard).

          I have been looking for draft hose shoes, as they would seem to me to be a good shoe to throw, with a wider opening between the ends. As for the pins. I have seen in a private collection a set of pins dug from a winter camp site made from condemed musket barrels.

          though it would be fun to put together

          Don S
          Don F Smith

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          • #6
            Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

            Just noticed this picture, posted on another forum, of pioneers on the way west, and I believe it shows them playing quoits.

            Here's a link to the thread with the picture: http://thesewingacademy.org/index.php?topic=2920.0

            Hank Trent
            hanktrent@voyager.net
            Hank Trent

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            • #7
              Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

              How about these links:

              Winslow Homer
              http://books.google.com/books?id=mCSZzevvwpwC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=quoits,+zouave&source=web&ots=Q-xHprgC7d&sig=M7esZ-8iAkPgX2SqrERy1_NKyYQ&hl=en
              'Winslow Homer' is considered among the greatest American artists of the nineteenth century. This book examines the immensity of Homer's artistic accomplishments, focusing not only on his masterpieces in various media but also on the suites of works on the same subject that reflect the artist's essentially modern practice of thinking and working serially and thematically. The book discusses and reproduces more than two hundred paintings, watercolors, and drawings that span Homer's career, all of which are discussed in entries by Cikovsky and Kelly. It begins with the Civil War paintings that first brought Homer's remarkable artistic mentality to public attention, in which he movingly expressed the profound implications the war held for the nation. Homer's interest in national themes is further explored in his works of the later 1860s and the 1870s, which embraced a wide spectrum of American life. His shift toward more idealized and heroic imagery and his withdrawal to a solitary life at Prout's Neck, Maine, in the 1880s are discussed as turning points leading to the great achievements of his last two decades. After considering his beautiful late watercolors of the Tropics and the Adirondacks, and his monumental Prout's Neck seascapes, the book concludes with a reassessment of the tragic and visionary paintings of his last years.


              http://www.howison.us/Civil%20war/sgh.htm


              (Search for quoits on this one)

              Thanks,
              Mark C. Foster
              Thanks,

              Mark C. Foster
              Flint, Mi

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              • #8
                Re: muleshoe/horseshoe pitching

                Thanks to everyone for all your help. We will be putting this information to use in a couple of weeks.


                Beverly Simpson

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