No batteries required - Glimpses of the Past with Karen Webster
This past Thanksgiving weekend, our teenaged grandsons challenged the older males in the family to a few games of Trevett. The bragging rights seesawed back and forth between youthful prowess and experienced consideration, with both sides ultimately declaring themselves as the winners.
What is Trevett you ask? It is a tabletop board game that uses cue sticks, about three feet (90 centimetres) long, and wooden buttons, such as those used in the game of crokinole. The wooden board measures 18 by 48 inches (45 x 120 centimetres) with a one-inch (2.5-centimetre) raised wooden rim around three sides.
Each player starts a round with 12 wooden buttons. The first player places a button on a circle that is six inches from the shooting end and strikes the button with his cue. Play alternates between players until all buttons are used. To make things a bit more challenging, there is a series of 14 pegs strategically placed to complicate the trajectory of shots. Down the centre are four hollowed-out cups marked five, 10, 15 and 20, denoting the score obtained if a wooden button falls into them. The further from the starting end, the higher the score. At the extreme far end of the board are two 50 score cups.
A unique scoring system consisting of dark- and light-coloured wooden beads strung on wires is attached to the opposite long sides of the board. Each section of this scoring system has five wooden beads for each of the possible scores. When a player scores a button in a cup, they slide the respective bead forward. When an aggregate score of 500 is reached, a winner is declared.
This game was the brainchild of Henry J. Trevett, who, in 1898, became the part owner of the Lucknow Furniture Factory, along with John Button. The pair had formerly ran a similar business in nearby Teeswater. The wooden frame factory on the north side of Campbell Street, west of Stauffer in Lucknow, had its beginnings in the early 1880s under the leadership of various owners. When Button and Trevett were in charge, the factory turned out tables. During the Second World War, the Maple Leaf Aircraft Company took over the plant to manufacture war products. Another company to use this building manufactured ladders.
Today, the premises are occupied by Montgomery Motors. It is believed that very few of the Trevett boards manufactured were likely to have stayed concentrated in the Lucknow area. No record of a patent has been found.
There are still some who remember this game. In 1947, in Wingham, the Teen Town group held a special activities week. Included in events were tournaments in table tennis, darts, Trevett and quoits. In the May 7, 2021 edition of the Lucknow Sentinel, Gertie Henderson is quoted as saying she remembers playing Trevett as a child as her relatives would bring a board to family get-togethers. A pristine iteration of the game is currently being offered on the Kijiji website for $250.
Some time after leaving the furniture business in Wingham in 1907, Henry Trevett lived in Appleton in the state of New York where he ran a fruit farm, returning to Lucknow in his later years. His death, at age 63 in 1916, was the result of pneumonia and he was laid to rest in Greenhill Cemetery.
Another popular non-electronic pastime is that of crokinole. A crokinole board measuring approximately 26 inches (66 centimetres) in diameter, is also made of wood, but in a circular form. The central playing area is divided into four quadrants, from where opponents use a finger and thumb to flick wooden buttons into a recessed centre hole. Placing one’s button into this hole earns the shooter 20 points. Surrounding the 20 point centre are several pegs that serve to deflect incoming buttons and, likely, to infuriate the hapless shooter. Concentric rings out from the middle are scored in decreasing amounts from 15, 10 and down to five.
The object of the game is to place one’s buttons in the centre and throughout the board to get as high a score as possible at the same time as dispatching the opponent’s buttons. One catch to the play is that if an opponent’s button is on the board, the shooter’s button must make contact, either directly or indirectly, (if not knock it off the board) to count. If it does not do so, that button is removed from play. Players take turns shooting their buttons and when all are in play, the 20 scoring buttons are replaced in the centre. Players cancel out each other’s buttons and the one with a score left counts that number of that round. A score of 100 wins the game. Play is possible with either two or four opponents. One form of this game uses short cue sticks to hit the buttons into play.
Crokinole is believed to resemble games such as karoom and pitchnut. The earliest known crokinole board was made in Ontario in 1875 by Eckhardt Wettlaufer of Perth County, who made it for his five-year-old son’s birthday. This board is on display in the Joseph Schneider Haus in Kitchener, Ontario. In New York State, in 1880, a man by the name of M. B. Ross patented the crokinole board. Whether Wettlaufer and Ross were known to each other or had ever met has been lost with the passage of time.
Unlike Trevett, which had limited production, the game of crokinole has lasted through the years. There is even a World Crokinole Championship, which is held in Tavistock on the first Saturday in June each year and offers almost $7,000 in prize money.
Games like Trevett and crokinole engage people in social interaction, involve moderate exercise and never need recharging.