John Cunningham Early American Racket Maker

First Published October, 2019

Last Updated September, 2023

I worked for many years to identify the first American lawn tennis racket maker with limited success, until 2018 when I finally discovered John Cunningham and his son, John W. Cunningham, both of whom can be documented as making rackets in New York City in 1877 and perhaps as early as 1876.

Since Walter Wingfield began marketing his successful version of the game of lawn tennis in 1874, I feel that these two racket makers could very well be America’s first (and second).

In a 2007 article in the Journal of the Tennis Collectors of America, after the discovery of lawn tennis ads in the American Cricketer that pointed to E. Clarke (August 1877) and F. Clark (March 1879) of Philadelphia as potential first makers, I theorized that perhaps the first maker was a member of the Philadelphia Clark family that produced nationally known tennis players.

That was not one of my best theories. The Clarks, who had generations of family members working together at the E.W. Clark & Company in 1880, were a very wealthy Philadelphia family that produced a U.S. Senator, the Mayor of Philadelphia and two members of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Clarence Munroe Clark, who was inducted into the HOF in 1983, graduated from Penn in 1878 and won the first U.S. National Championship in doubles with Frederick Taylor in 1881. He was also the first Secretary of the USNLTA, which was the forerunner of today’s USTA.

His younger brother, Joseph Sill Clark, a Harvard educated attorney who was inducted in 1955, won the first Intercollegiate Singles and Doubles Championships in 1883, as well as the 1885 U.S. National Championship in doubles with Richard Sears.

The primary piece of evidence eliminating both Joseph and Clarence Clark as potential first racket makers was supplied by Joseph himself when he wrote a long biographical letter to his family on his 90th birthday in which he stated that he and Clarence “became interested in the game of tennis in 1878” when they first laid out a court on their father’s property.

The family patriarch Enoch White Clark’s youngest son (and the uncle of Clarence and Joseph) was Frank Hamilton Clark, but he is not the F. Clark from the March 1879 American Cricketer ad. Enoch Clark’s son was a Civil War veteran who joined the family business after being discharged in 1866. I found him listed from 1875 through 1877 in the Philadelphia City Directory showing his employment at the E.W. Clark & Company. Soon after that he became president of the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad until his death in 1882.

Since the Clark brothers were raised in the Germantown area, it is possible that they may have purchased rackets from fellow Philadelphian F. Clark, but the timeline is too off and the wealth too great for any member of the Enoch Clark family to be the first American racket maker.

I have never found any further mention of E. Clarke, but a Frank Clark is listed in the 1884 Philadelphia City Directory showing “Lawn Tennis” as his business at 164 East Chelten Avenue. This is definitely the F. Clark from the March 1879 ad, because a subsequent F. Clark American Cricketer ad in 1882 shows the same East Chelten address that is listed in the 1884 directory

In the 2007 article, I stated that I had never seen a Clark racket. That changed in November, 2014 when an excellent condition Clark tilt top racket with a convex wedge appeared for sale on the internet. I would have aggressively pursued the Clark racket but, ironically only one month earlier, I had acquired a tilt top racket stamped “J. Cunningham” that is obviously earlier than the Clark example.

Off and on since 2014, I have researched the Cunningham racket in several libraries and on the internet with very little success. In April of 2018, I finally made a breakthrough by finding Cunningham’s first name, John, and his business address while scanning through the Trow’s New York City Directory for 1877.

Encouraged by this finding, I followed up by flying to New York the following month and spending two days researching in the Microfilm and Rare Book Rooms at the Schwarzman Manhattan Branch of the New York City Public Library. Not only did I find an additional 1877 business listing for J. Cunningham and a very early Horsman Catalog, I also discovered 1878 lawn tennis ads for A.G. Spalding and Peck & Snyder while scrolling through ten years of the New York Clipper weekly publication searching for a J. Cunningham ad without success.

The Trow’s Directory that initially lists John Cunningham’s business as “Rackets” has a publication date of April 30, 1877. In the 1870’s, type for printing was set by hand, so just to typeset the entire 3,342 page New York City directory could take months. When you add the additional time required to print, collate and bind the huge directory, it is quite possible that Cunningham was making rackets in 1876 when his information for the 1877 edition was recorded.

After finding the 1877 listing, I began working backwards in the directories and found an earler listing that identifies John Cunningham as a cabinet maker. This makes perfect sense for his evolution into a racket maker. Cabinet makers were experts at steaming and bending wood, which is the integral step in constructing a wood racket. As you can see in the two ads below, Fred Bancroft (1888) and R. Bliss (1892) are other examples of wood workers who expanded into the tennis business.

The 1879 Trow’s Directory lists the son John W. Cunningham for the first time and lists his profession variously as “Racketmkr”, “Rackets”, “Raquette Maker” and “Racquets” through 1892, which puts him in the racket business for at least 15 years.

The middle initial, coupled with his 1878 home address, gave me enough information to sign on to Ancestry.com and find the Cunningham family history in America, which at that point in time was brief. I found that John W. was the son of two Irish immigrants, John and Mary, who married in Manhattan in1853. According to the 1880 U.S. Census, all five of their children were born in New York City with the oldest son, John W., being born in 1856.

As I noted earlier, I discovered a second John Cunningham business listing at 52 Wooster St., which was their business address into 1892, in the 1877 Rand’s New York Business Directory under “Base-Ball Goods”, along with E.I. Horsman and Peck & Snyder. According to the publisher’s letter in the front, this edition was “issued early in May” of 1877.

This is the only baseball listing that I could find for Cunningham, which is much more heavily documented than any other sport. As skilled wood workers, turning baseball bats on a lathe would be a simple process for them. This part of their new business evidently never developed significantly and they steered their efforts toward racket making.

In 1877, John W. Cunningham was 21 years old, which by modern standards is quite young to run a business. However, as I learned from conversations with a direct Cunningham descendent, John who was listed as a carpenter in the 1860 and 1880 U.S. Census reports definitely helped his son with the development of his woodworking skills, as well as actually working in the shop with him making rackets.

Additionally, in the late 1800’s, with shorter life spans and fewer educational opportunities, people moved into their professions much earlier than today often beginning apprenticeships in their early teens. When you consider that contemporary sporting goods entrepreneurs E.I. Horsman and A.G. Spalding entered the same business on much larger scales at the ages of 22 and 25 respectively, John W. Cunningham’s entry age seems entirely plausible.

Beginning in 1877, the first couple listings listings in the Trow’s Directories list the father John as the business principal and in 1879 it begins to list the son John W. instead, so it appears the father helped to get the business off the ground and then returned to his carpentry business (which is evidenced by his 1880 carpenter listing) while still helping his son make rackets on the side.

The bottom line is that the father, John, possessed the background skills to become a racket maker that he developed earlier as a cabinet maker and passed these skills on to his son, John W. That makes John the first documented American racket maker with his son John W. being a close second.

I drove by Cunningham’s business address at 52 Wooster Street that they occupied from 1877-1892, which is in the Soho section of Lower Manhattan. It is a great corner location and while the building has been replaced by a modern retro design, the rough brick street could very well be like the one that the Cunninghams walked on.

I distinctly remember the impression I had when I first picked up one of Wingfield’s original Sphairistike rackets, sold by French & Co of London, was that it simply felt too light and too fragile for the game of tennis. And it was – for modern tennis. However, when one considers the original game of lawn tennis where almost everyone served underhanded and rushing the net was simply bad manners, these initial lightweight small head rackets make more sense.

The 1877 or possibly 1876 racket pictured here that has “J. Cunningham New York” stamped into the throat is one of these very early fragile rackets. It shares important characteristics with the Sphairistike rackets that were phased out very quickly by heavier tilt tops as the game rapidly became more aggressive in nature.

The most obvious shared characteristic is the concave wedge. This, in itself, makes the Cunningham a very early tilt top. The earliest documented tilt top with a concave wedge that I have been able to identify is a ten ounce English 1875 Cordeaux & Ernest racket with almost the exact head dimensions as the Cunningham racket, varying only by ¼ inch. (Interesting side note – Ernest also was a cabinet maker by trade.)

The Cunningham head measures 7 ¼ inches across (outside edge to outside edge) and 10 inches in length (outside edge to top of the throat). It is also an inch shorter than the English racket at 26 ¾ inches.

Sphairistike rackets were always made with a leather grip that is usually referred to as “sheepskin.” The Cunningham racket was also made with a grip, presumably some type of leather. While the grip is missing, it is evidenced by a small brass nail and nail holes in the handle. Additionally, the Cunningham has a cloth butt strap with no trace of ever having a cap or a throat collar.

The Cunningham racket is displayed in an accompanying photo next to a circa 1880 Horsman tilt top to visually illustrate the differences that evolved in a period of less than five years. As you can see, that while they are essentially the same length, the Horsman is a much more robust racket weighing slightly over twelve ounces compared to the Cunningham’s nine ounces. Additionally, the Cunningham’s tilt is much more severe and the squarish handle is significantly smaller measuring 3 ¼ inches in circumference to the Horsman’s 4 ¼ inches.

The only other Cunningham lawn tennis rackets that I have seen (one in person at a TCA Annual Meeting in Newport and two more on the internet) were definitely heavier circa 1880 convex wedge model tilt top rackets with collars and heavy gauge strings.

There are two additional attributes to the pictured Cunningham racket that I find remarkable. The first are the multi-colored strings, which I feel are probably original, due to the fact that they are still protected by a glued leather strip on top of the head and the smaller string holes drilled in the head would not accept a larger gauge string.

It may be hard to detect in the photo, but the six crosses at the top are dyed blue and the bottom six are dyed red, as if Cunningham was making sure everyone knew this was an American racket.

The second is a marketing aspect to this racket that appears to be an anachronism. As you can see from the photo, this racket has “Newport” incised into the throat above the maker’s name. Lawn tennis arrived in Newport, RI in the Spring of 1875 when the first court was laid out on the estate of W.W. Sherman with two additional courts installed at other Newport locations by midsummer of that year.

Did Cunningham have the foresight to think that adding a model name to his racket would make it more marketable or did a New Yorker who summered in Newport request it? Either way, it adds to the uniquity of this racket.

I have been collecting and researching tennis rackets since 1989 and, as a consequence, I have seen thousands of rackets in collections and museums literally around the world, which led me to the question that if Cunningham listed himself as a racket maker for 15 years into 1892 and even though he was a limited production “boutique maker”, “Why have I only personally seen only three of his lawn tennis rackets, all of which were tilt tops that went out of style in the early 1880’s”?

In 2023, I acquired a photograph of the father, John, standing in front of the Cunningham shop holding a flat top racket with a round handle, so it is entirely possible that other later model Cunningham lawn tennis racket models will be found over time.

However, the answer to why there have been so few Cunningham lawn tennis rackets found to date may lie in John W’s 1888 Trow’s listing where he is listed as a “Marker”, despite being listed as a racket maker before and after that. A marker is essentially an umpire in the English game of rackets who makes in game calls during play.

It is possible that at some point (perhaps early in his career) Cunningham switched his primary interest and racket making ability to producing “bats” for the game of rackets, which were 30.5 inches long with a round gut-strung head measuring seven inches across.

As I researched John W. Cunningham’s life, it became apparent that he had lived the life of a quintessential New Yorker. He worked in Manhattan, owned a house in Brooklyn where he and his wife Josephine raised eight children and 76 years after being born in Manhattan, he was buried in the Calvary Cemetery in Queens.

The J. Cunningham shop closed in 1892 shortly after the father passed away. While researching John W’s post racket making career, I found that the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Census lists his occupation as working in a “Drug Shop”, which I assume was an early pharmacy, and the 1925 New York Census lists him as “Retired”.

Whether the Cunningham shop switched sports in its racket making or not, it is my considered opinion that the racket pictured here is, without a doubt, the oldest American made lawn tennis racket that I have ever encountered, which coupled with the research contained in this article, makes John Cunningham the first documented American lawn tennis racket maker.

Good Collecting.

Be sure to check out my “Early American Racket Makers” article on this website to find out who chronologially followed the Cunninghams in making lawn tennis rackets in the United States.

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John Cunningham First American Racket Maker

Early American Racket Makers