This appeared in the ACF Forum under General Discussion posted Mar 21, 2008 by Jim Loy "Cleveland Public Library - George F. Wales collection" Read the story and be sure to click here
9th National Tournament of the American Checkers Association
The game of checkers, or draughts, is one of the oldest games known to man with origins that can be traced back to Egyptian times. The Special Collections Department of the Cleveland Public Library collects and preserves a wide range of materials related to the history of chess and checkers. Among the collections housed there are the George F. Wales Checkers Columns Scrapbooks, part of the Don Deweber Checkers Collection.
This 311 volume collection includes
checkers columns from newspapers printed in Great Britain, the United States,
and Canada in the late 19th century to early 20th century, with the bulk of the
clippings being from the 1920s and 1930s. The columns were a forum for
aficionados to solve problems, participate in correspondence games, learn about
new publications, and read tournament results. Many of the volumes contain
complete runs of the column appearing in a particular publication. The majority
of the scrapbooks include columns that were published in Great Britain and those
published in the United States were mostly published in the Northeast. Some of
the newspapers represented include The Winnipeg Free Press, The Glasgow Weekly
Herald, and The Leeds Mercury. The photo appearing here documents the 9th
National Tournament of the American Checkers Association, played in 1937 in
Martins Ferry, Ohio. The column appeared in The Roseville Citizen published in
Newark, New Jersey.
This collection is a wonderful resource for checkers fans to get an overview of the game and its players
spanning ninety years. An index to the scrapbooks can be viewed
here. To access this collection, visit the Special Collections Department of
the Cleveland Public Library.