Monadnock Moment No. 094

Era 7: Emergence of Modern America - 1890 to 1930

The Thompson Nine

Baseball has been a popular pastime in New England for more than a century, and we look back at one of the area's most unusual teams.

From 1896 to 1899, Winchester, New Hampshire was the home of a baseball team made up of nine brothers from that town's Thompson family. Winfield Thompson, one of the nine, began the team during the summer of 1896. Winfield was home on vacation from Amherst College. He would gather his brothers together and play ball in the cow pasture when the farm chores were done. Before the summer ended, the Thompson's had played three or four teams from nearby towns.

The following summer the Thompson brothers played 18 games against local town teams and ended the season with a record of 16 wins and 2 losses. The Thompson Nine, as they were called, became known across the country and played as far away as the Midwest. They were once forced to turn down a lucrative offer to play a team of seven brothers in Michigan because of illness in the family.

By the turn of the century the older brothers began to marry and the team broke up. Several of the brothers later played baseball for local teams. Although they stopped playing together more than a hundred years ago, the Thompson Nine are still remembered in Winchester.