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.
In the spring of 1861 – at the start of the American Civil War in Camp Wayne in West Chester, PA, a civilian gifted the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry with a four week old puppy. The soldiers named her Sallie Ann Jarrett after their commanding officer, Colonel Phaon Jarrett and a young townswoman they were fond of.
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!