These historical artifacts tell an important story. In the case of Archive #8, it shows how a match in Kentucky between Lloyd’s Pilot and Kreiger’s Crib for the (first) American Championship in 1881, created s spike in interest of breeding pit bull terriers in the United States for the purpose of sport.
We’ve already seen one white pit bull dog on a cabinet card from the 1890s in this blog series – The Archives. In Archive #3 we have yet another! But, this time it’s a white pit bull with his children taken in 1893. Yes, that exact year.
In the first entry of this special blog series – The Archives, I chose to start it off with a white pit bull dog on a Cabinet Card photograph from the 1890s. That timeframe would have been when the American Pit Bull Terrier breed name was born. This entry – Archive #2, of a pit bull dog laying at the feet of a gentleman smoking a pipe dates even further back to the 1870s!
In this blog series – The Archives, we are going to explore the pit bull dog debate through vintage items of yesteryear. There’s a story in these artifacts that will help paint a more accurate picture of the complicated history of pit bull terriers, and how we got here.