Lost to Lake Erie: Early Canadian Baseball at Colchester’s Sunken Field
This article was written by Steve Rennie
This article was published in The National Pastime: Baseball on Lake Erie (2026)
The ruins of old Christ Church in Colchester, Ontario, pictured in this 1921 postcard. According to local memories and historical accounts, the land now lost to erosion once held a baseball diamond and a schoolyard where local children played during the nineteenth century. By the time this photo was taken in July 1921, decades of shoreline erosion, compounded by a violent windstorm in 1913, had already claimed much of the original grounds, leaving the church ruins just feet from the lake’s edge. (Internet Archive)
Stand today at the ruins of old Christ Church in Colchester, Ontario, and you are only feet from the edge of Lake Erie. But in 1821, when the church was completed—its limestone hauled across the winter ice from nearby Pelee Island—the landscape looked very different1. A broad expanse of land stretched between the church graveyard and the high bank above the lake, crossed by a road and shaded by a grove of walnut trees.2 On that open ground sat the churchyard, a natural spot for children to play.3
Over the decades, the lake slowly claimed the land. Surveyors in the late nineteenth century noted that in some spots, the shoreline was receding by up to two feet a year.4 Seeking higher ground, the community opened a new church farther inland in 1876.5 By the early twentieth century, erosion threatened the cemetery itself, and efforts to protect the bank—cement walls, log groynes, and brush piles—proved largely ineffective.6
The situation worsened on March 21, 1913, when a violent windstorm battered Essex County.7 The storm’s fury toppled buildings, uprooted trees, and drove Lake Erie’s waters inland with immense force. When it was over, the bank had receded to within fifteen feet of the old church’s remains.8
Even as the shoreline vanished, memories of the lost land remained. Local tradition held that the property once extended so far into Lake Erie that children played baseball nearly a mile from today’s shoreline. These stories lived on in family memory before eventually being written down. In the early 1970s, for a high school essay, Colchester resident Mary (nee Brush) McKeen recounted her grandmother’s stories about playing ball by the lake, an account later excerpted in a 2018 booklet marking the town’s 225th anniversary.9
In 1821, between the graveyard and the lake bank were three things—a road, a grove of walnut trees and a baseball diamond. People tethered their horses to the trees and watched the boys play baseball all day. I can remember my grandmother saying that she used to play baseball almost a mile out in the lake when she was a child.10
But could baseball, or some other bat-and-ball game, really have been played in Colchester as early as 1821? A tantalizing thought, to be sure. Though it may sound far-fetched at first, accounts of earlier games across what is now southern Ontario suggest it is not entirely out of the question.11 But one thing is certain: if Colchester children played baseball in the early 1820s, McKeen’s grandmother was not among them. Georgeanna Hubbell, McKeen’s paternal grandmother, was born in February 1876, making it impossible for her to have played in the churchyard during the 1820s.12 Hubbell would have played ball there in the late nineteenth century, by which time the shoreline had already begun to recede, but memories of the broader churchyard still lingered.
Such stories of ballplaying on the lost land are common in Colchester, where many families have lived for generations. The Brush family, for example, has been part of the village nearly as long as it has existed. Colchester’s origins date to the mid-1790s, when the government began laying out townships along the north shore of Lake Erie. John Brush, who arrived in Canada around 1799 with a company of United Empire Loyalists, lived in Colchester until his death.13 His brother, Stephen Silas Brush—McKeen’s great-great-great-grandfather—followed from Connecticut in 1806, settling with his wife, Jemima Squire (later Huffman), near present-day Harrow.14, 15 By the time Stephen Brush died in 1808, the couple had seven children.16, 17 His grave is believed to be the cemetery’s oldest.
As the village grew around these early families, it soon became clear that they needed a place to worship. Christ Church was first planned in 1816 under the guidance of Rev. Richard Pollard.18 When it opened in 1821, the church—modeled after its counterpart in nearby Amherstburg—became a focal point for both worship and community life.19,20
We can get a sense of the surroundings from McKeen’s high school essay, which depicts how the area was organized in those early days. Three lots were reserved for the village, extending far south of today’s shoreline.21 Historian Chris Carter notes that the original six-acre parcel stretched south from present-day Sullivan Street all the way to the water’s edge.22 As the Amherstburg Echo recalled in 1913, “The property in those days extended so far out into the lake that old inhabitants yet remember the time they played baseball south of the church, and there was plenty of room to spare.”23
A week later, the Echo returned to the subject, this time drawing on the memories of Philip Ferriss, one of Colchester South’s oldest residents. Born there on June 4, 1824, he was the second of eleven children of Isaac Ferriss and Lucy Wright.24, 25 His father, a Kentucky-born United Empire Loyalist, had come to Upper Canada as a boy and later served as a private during the War of 1812, including at the capture of Detroit.26
Raised near the old church, Philip Ferriss would have known the grounds before decades of erosion reshaped the shoreline. As a boy in the late 1820s and early 1830s, he may even have watched schoolchildren at play in the churchyard. By the time the Echo published his recollections, he was nearing 90 and among the last residents with firsthand memories of the churchyard as it had appeared in the early nineteenth century.
When the old church was built, the property stretched out southward a sufficient distance to permit the first school being built, having an extensive schoolyard on which when the lads played ball, they had no fear of the ball going over the lake to the south, not breaking the windows of the church to the north. Philip Ferriss, who has seen over 90 summers and winters, is about the only one left who remembers attending the school.27
Though they offer fewer specifics, other records support the claim that children once played baseball in the churchyard. Laurie Brett, who wrote the Colchester 225 booklet, found a reference in Harrow and Colchester South: 1792-1992—a local history better known as the “Blue Book” because of the color of its binding—which notes: “The earliest reference to base ball notes that it was played on a field south of Christ Church cemetery before the site eroded into Lake Erie.”28,29 While the exact timeline remains unverified, the community never forgot that the land once served as a ballfield.
Colchester was not alone in its love for the game. By the first decades of the nineteenth century—when the region was officially known as Upper Canada—baseball emerged as a popular pastime across the colony. Historian William Humber has uncovered several references to ballplaying dating to the early 1800s.
One of those early traces of the game’s history comes from an 1803 diary entry by Ely Playter, a resident of York (the colonial precursor to modern-day Toronto), who wrote about “playing ball.”30 That same year, Playter’s brother-in-law, David McGregor Rogers, was playing a similar bat-and-ball game 60 miles away, near present-day Port Hope.31 Over the following decades, brief but telling newspaper references offer a glimpse into a pastime far more prevalent than is otherwise captured in the sparse historical record. As Humber noted recently in the Baseball Origins Newsletter—a publication of SABR’s Origins Committee—these scattered reports point to a game that was already familiar to many in Ontario. For example, a newspaper in the town of Prescott noted in 1845 that young men who had “only played what is called ‘Base Ball’” were now taking up cricket, while an 1848 report from Goderich listed “Bass-Ball” among the day’s common amusements.32 By 1860, a Kingston newspaper noted that before cricket came into vogue, baseball had long been a favorite pastime of Canadian youth, particularly in rural areas.33
Baseball was clearly well known throughout Upper Canada, and in areas closer to Colchester, it began appearing in local newspapers, with pick-up games giving way to public challenges. On November 5, 1859, the Chatham Planet published one such challenge, in which locals invited “any dozen Young Men” to a match at the Chatham North Cricket Ground, with victory decided by runs over three innings.34
This 1859 challenge represented the peak of competition in what was known as the Canadian game, a regional version of baseball that developed in southwestern Ontario. As the New York Clipper reported in the following summer, this version had distinctive rules: the ball was thrown rather than pitched, teams fielded eleven players per side, and an inning did not end until all players were out.35
But perhaps the most well-known example of early Ontario baseball comes from the small town of Beachville. What we know of that 1838 contest comes from Dr. Adam Ford, who wrote about it 48 years later. His letter, published in Sporting Life in May 1886, described a game he witnessed as a 7-year-old in vivid detail.36 There are several excellent accounts of the Beachville game—notably Andrew North’s chapter in SABR’s Our Game, Too, Brian “Chip” Martin’s Baseball’s Creation Myth, and Humber’s Old Ontario at Bat. Rather than another retelling, we will focus on one of the men who stepped onto the Beachville field and explore his ties to Colchester.
That man was “Old Ned” Dolson of the Zorra club from Zorra and North Oxford, remembered for his skill on the field—in an 1886 letter, Ford noted that Dolson could “catch the ball right away from the front of the club.”37 The Dolson family, originally Van Dolzen and later Dolsen, were prominent early settlers with deep roots in the Western District.38 They were Loyalists who had fled Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, to Niagara during the American Revolution, and their first Canadian ancestor eventually settled at Petite Cote, across the river from Detroit, in the region that included the township of Colchester.39
The family established themselves as influential merchants and landowners throughout the Western District. Matthew Dolsen, a son of Van Dolzen, built a successful settlement along the Thames River—known as “Dolsen’s”—complete with a distillery, grist-mill, tavern, and blacksmith shop.40 He was also active in regional security; in 1813, he joined prominent citizens petitioning the government to station troops at Amherstburg to protect the frontier.41 His wife, Hannah Field, served as an unofficial physician.42 Other branches of the family settled in Sandwich and Essex County, while some moved into Kent and Oxford counties.43
“Old Ned” Dolson came from this same network of Western District settlers.44 The Dolsons were connected through marriage and migration to other prominent families in the region, including the Burdicks and Williams, linking them to the very site of the Beachville match, played on a pasture owned by Enoch Burdick.45 As branches of the family spread across Ontario, including areas around Colchester, they left a lasting legacy—Dolson Creek, east of the village, still bears the family name today.
There are other, more tentative connections between the Beachville game and Colchester. Reuben Martin of the Beachville club, for example, shared an admittedly common surname with a prominent Colchester South family whose descendants remained active in local affairs.46 The Williams brothers, Abel and John, traced their Loyalist lineage to settlements in Gosfield and Colchester, where their family home became a hub for Methodist worship.47
Together, these communities and families helped plant the seeds of a baseball tradition that would take root across southwestern Ontario for generations—one that would leave a lasting mark well into the next century and produce remarkable players, including Indigenous athlete Jay Justin Clarke. In July 1902, while playing for the Corsicana Oil Citys of the Texas League, Clarke reportedly hit either seven or eight (or possibly just three) home runs in a game against Texarkana, depending on the account, a reminder of just how much talent could come out of the ballparks of southwestern Ontario.48
While Beachville is best remembered for hosting one of the earliest documented baseball games in Canada, and other communities were already playing baseball across southwestern Ontario, memories from Colchester suggest that the sport may have already been taking root along the shores of Lake Erie, even before anyone thought to record it. The lost field behind Christ Church is a reminder that the sport’s beginnings were never confined to one place, but grew wherever families and neighbors gathered to play.
STEVE RENNIE is an author and former journalist. He regularly gives talks on early baseball history, including at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and his baseball writing has also appeared in the “Journal of Canadian Baseball.” He co-edited and contributed to “From Bytown to the Big Leagues,” which explores the origins of baseball in Canada’s capital. His next book, on baseball during the Klondike Gold Rush and across the North in the nineteenth century, is being published by University of Nebraska Press. He previously reported on politics and national affairs for the Canadian Press, where he won two National Newspaper Awards and was a three-time finalist for the Canadian Association of Journalists Awards. His reporting took him around the world, from covering the war in Afghanistan to a journey through part of the Northwest Passage aboard an icebreaker. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, two children, and cat.
Notes
1. Gregory F. Nolan, “Christ Church Colchester Celebrates 200 Years,” Harrow News, March 8, 2005, 10; “Old Church and Cemetery at Colchester,” Amherstburg Echo, November 14, 1913, 6; Mary Brush, “The Development of the Village of Colchester in the 1800s,” 1.
2. Brush, “The Development of the Village of Colchester in the 1800s,” 2.
3. “Old Church and Cemetery at Colchester.”
4. “Widening its Banks,” Windsor Evening Record, May 27, 1897, 2. According to a report by government surveyor O.J. Klotz, the north shore of Lake Erie west of Port Stanley shifted inland by four to eight rods over a fifty-year period. One rod is a historical surveying unit equal to 16.5 feet, meaning the shoreline retreated by about 66 to 132 feet in total, or roughly 1.32 to 2.64 feet per year.
5. Chris Carter, Tour Colchester: The Way We Were (Upper Canada Press, 2010), 150.
6. “Waves Invade Graves,” Hamilton Spectator, April 10, 1916, 2; “Old Church and Cemetery at Colchester.”
7. Neil F. Morrison, Garden Gateway to Canada: One Hundred Years of Windsor and Essex County, 1854-1954 (Ryerson Press, 1954), 248.
8. “Old Church and Cemetery at Colchester.”
9. Laurie Brett, Colchester 225: 150 Historical Facts (Revised Edition 2018), Town of Essex, 2018, https://www.essex.ca/en/discover/resources/Colchester-225-Revised-Edition-2018-for-WEB.pdf, accessed December 3, 2025. The town of Essex was formed on January 1, 1999, when the towns of Essex and Harrow joined together with the townships of Colchester North and Colchester South. This merger brought the area back to roughly the same boundaries as the original Colchester township in 1792. Confirmation that the original essay was written around 1970 for a Grade 13 history project at Harrow District High School was provided by Mary (Brush) McKeen via email correspondence, February 17, 2026.
10. Brett, Colchester 225, 42; Mary Brush, “The Development of the Village of Colchester in the 1800s,” 2.
11. William Humber, Old Ontario at Bat: Baseball’s Unheralded Ancestry (Centre for Canadian Baseball Research, 2024), vii, 54-55.
12. Mary (Brush) McKeen, email message, February 17, 2026.
13. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, Ontario (Toronto: J.H. Beers & Co., 1905), 49.
14. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, Ontario, 381. This record states that Stephen Brush married Jemima Squire in Connecticut, his family was born there, and he later settled on a Loyalist free grant in the 3rd Concession of Colchester.
15. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, Ontario, 381; No. 2. Colchester & Gosfield, Western District, n.d., map (Ontario Department of Lands & Forests, Surveys Branch, Reel M-308, 796-800), item no. 4132197, Maps, Plans and Charts Collection, Library and Archives Canada, catalogue record, https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/record?app=fonandcol&idnumber=4132197; Town of Essex, Ward Map (Essex, ON: Town of Essex), https://www.essex.ca/en/town-hall/resources/Ward_Map.pdf, accessed January 28, 2026.
16. “Stephen Silas Brush,” Find A Grave, memorial no. 271734007, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/271734007/stephen_silas-brush, accessed December 3, 2025.
17. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, Ontario, 381; FamilySearch, “Stephen Silas Brush, 1765-1808,” FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/K2F3-R78, accessed January 27, 2026. These records list the seven Brush children by name: Silas Squire, John Cornwall, Jairus Rood, Benjamin Anson, Nathan Villerse, Amos Curtis, and Stephen Dexter.
18. Gregory F. Nolan, “Christ Church Colchester Celebrates 200 Years,” Harrow News, March 8, 2005, 10; R.M. Fuller, Windsor Heritage (self-published, 1972), 58.
19. “Christ Church Colchester Celebrates 200 Years.”
20. “Christ Church Colchester Celebrates 200 Years.”
21. Brush, “The Development of the Village of Colchester in the 1800s,” 1.
22. Carter, Tour Colchester, 169.
23. “Colchester South,” Amherstburg Echo, November 7, 1913, 5.
24. “Ontario, Canada records,” image 854 of 1369, Archives of Ontario; digital images, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-XC4S-9MV: accessed January 26, 2026), Image Group Number 004170931.
25. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 89; “United States records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-95CJ-1PG?view=index, image 769 of 2809; United States, National Archives and Records Administration, Image Group Number 004867442, accessed January 26, 2026. The latter source lists Isaac Ferriss as a private in the War of 1812. He and Lucy (Wright) Ferriss were the parents of eleven children: Ann (m. Benjamin Knapp); Philip (m. Eleanor Little); Hulda (m. Joseph Snider); Caroline (m. William Buchanan); Sarah (m. John Munger); Lucy (m. Joseph Drummond); Joseph (m. Alma Baldwin); Abner; Ebenezer (m. Margaret Brimmer); Thomas; and Isaac (m. Mary Lonsberry).
26. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, Ontario, 89; “United States, War of 1812 Index to Service Records, 1812-1815,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-G5CJ-BF5 : accessed January 26, 2026), Isaac Ferris [Ferriss], image 770 of 2809; citing NARA microfilm publication M602 (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); Image Group Number 004867442.
27. “Old Church and Cemetery at Colchester,” Amherstburg Echo, November 14, 1913, 6.
28. Brett, Colchester 225. The town of Essex was formed on January 1, 1999, when the towns of Essex and Harrow joined together with the townships of Colchester North and Colchester South. This merger brought the area back to roughly the same boundaries as the original Colchester township in 1792. Confirmation that the original essay was written around 1970 for a Grade 13 history project at Harrow District High School was provided by Mary (Brush) McKeen via email correspondence, February 17, 2026.
29. Harrow History Book Committee, Harrow and Colchester South, 1792-1992 (Harrow History Book Committee, 1992), 183.
30. Humber, Old Ontario at Bat, 39-40.
31. Humber, Old Ontario at Bat, 36-38.
32. William Humber, “Baseball, Not Cricket, Was Always Going to Win (Unlike the Blue Jays who came so close in 2025),” SABR Baseball Origins Committee Newsletter, Vol, 6, No. 1 (February 2026): 2-5.
33. Humber, “Baseball, Not Cricket,” 2-5.
34. “Challenge! Base Ball,” Chatham Planet, November 5, 1859, 2.
35. “Base Ball at Ingersoll,” New York Clipper, August 4, 1860, 5; “Base Ball in Canada,” New York Clipper, August 18, 1860, 5. These two articles reference games between the Young Canadians of Woodstock and the Rough and Ready club of Ingersoll. Woodstock won the first game by a score of 83-59 and the second game by a score of 100-58. The August 4 article details the differing Canadian style of play: “The game played in Canada differs somewhat from the New York game, the ball being thrown instead of pitched, and an innings is not concluded until all are out, there are also eleven players on each side.”
36. Brian Martin, Baseball’s Creation Myth: Adam Ford, Abner Graves and the Cooperstown Story (McFarland & Company, 2013), 192-94.
37. Martin, Baseball’s Creation Myth, 194; Thorn, “A Canadian Ball Game of 1838.” In his 1886 letter, Dr. Adam Ford describes “Old Ned” Dolson as a “gray-headed” man who served as the Zorras’ catcher during the 1838 Beachville match.
38. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 29-30; John Laddell and Monica Laddell, Inheritance: Ontario’s Century Farms Past & Present (Macmillan of Canada, 1979), 176-77, 180, 181, 183-86. The family name changed over time from Van Dolzen to Dolsen and finally to Dolson. Early nineteenth-century records usually show “Dolsen,” but the spelling “Dolson” became common in later land records, local histories, and references to figures like “Old Ned” Dolson.
39. Laddell and Laddell, Inheritance, 183.
40. Laddell and Laddell, Inheritance, 183-184; W. S. Wallace, “Captain Miles Macdonell’s ‘Journal of a Jaunt to Amherstburg’ in 1801,” The Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 25, No. 2 (June 1944): 171; Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 29-30, 115-116. Matthew Dolsen’s settlement became very successful and was widely known as “Dolsen’s.” It was the main center of Kent County until Chatham eventually took that role around 1818. Captain Miles Macdonell’s 1801 journal describes “Dallsons” (Dolsen’s) as a “very good Inn,” where travellers stopped for dinner and to prepare their boats for lake travel. By 1793, Matthew Dolsen’s inn had become an important venue for regional diplomacy, hosting figures such as Jacob Lindley and Joseph Moore during Indian land conferences. This early commercial success enabled the family to acquire extensive landholdings, eventually playing a central role in the municipal and social development of Essex and Kent.
41. Laddell and Laddell, Inheritance, 180.
42. Laddell and Laddell, Inheritance, 184.
43. Laddell and Laddell, Inheritance, 183; Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 29-30; Wallace, “Captain Miles Macdonell’s ‘Journal of a Jaunt to Amherstburg,’“ 171; John Thorn, “Pittsfield 1791 and Beachville 1838,” Our Game (blog), May 20, 2013, https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/pittsfield-1791-and-beachville-1838-6b07d3f20497.
44. Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 29-30. Ned’s status as an elder in the game aligns with the timeline of the Dolson family.
45. Thorn, “Pittsfield 1791 and Beachville 1838.”; Andrew North, “The Beachville Game,” in Our Game, Too: Influential Figures and Milestones in Canadian Baseball, ed. Andrew North, Len Levin, and Bill Nowlin (Society for American Baseball Research, 2022), https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-beachville-game/; Martin, Baseball’s Creation Myth, 192-94.
46. John Thorn, “A Canadian Ball Game of 1838,” Our Game (blog), August 23, 2012, https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/a-canadian-ball-game-of-1838-15019564f9a6; Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 495; Martin, Baseball’s Creation Myth, 162-63. The sources do not document a direct genealogical relationship between Reuben Martin of Beachville and the Martin family of Colchester South (including Robert, Thomas, or Thompson Martin). Rather, the connection rests on the shared surname and on the well-established pattern of interconnected settlement among late Loyalist and immigrant families across south western Ontario in the early nineteenth century.
47. Thorn, “A Canadian Ball Game of 1838;” Commemorative Biographical Record of the County of Essex, 278-80. The available sources confirm the Williams family’s Loyalist origins and long-standing presence in Essex County. Thomas Williams, a Welsh-born Loyalist who settled in Colchester South after the American Revolution, established the family’s roots in the region. His son, also named Thomas Williams, later drew land in Gosfield from Colonel Talbot in 1825, where the family homestead became a recognized center of Methodist worship for more than three decades.
48. “Seven Four-Baggers in One Game for J. Clarke” Los Angeles Evening News, July 10, 1909, 16; “Many Freak Plays,” Hutchinson News, February 19, 1910, 3; Jack Keene, “Sport Snaps,” Bayonne Times, October 6, 1922, 14; Allen Tait, “Jay Justin Clarke and the Ennis, Texas Ballpark,” Journal of Canadian Baseball, vol. 3 (2024): 28-33; Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, “Jay Justin Clarke,” accessed January 27, 2026, https://baseballhalloffame.ca/hall-of-famer/jay-justin-clarke/. The first source, citing a scrapbook kept by Houston part-owner J. Doak Roberts, reports that Clarke hit seven home runs and a triple in eight at-bats in a July 17, 1902, game in Ennis, Texas, which Corsicana won 54-2 after Clarke and five teammates combined for 19 home runs. The second source also credits Clarke with seven home runs and a triple. The third source, published many years later, says Clarke hit eight home runs in a July 14 game. No contemporary game accounts have been found that clearly resolve these conflicting versions. In his article, Tait provides new research on the Ennis ballpark and the circumstances of the game. Clarke’s eight-home-run performance is also officially recognized by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.