Archival photograph unlocks Hamilton’s gaming history
From Alexander Graham Bell to Retro Gamers: Uncovering Hamilton’s Forgotten Gaming History by Sonya de Laat
Gaming culture is alive and well in Hamilton today. On any given night, you’ll find enthusiastic players at gaming cafes along James Street or Concession Street. Shops abound in this city with role playing adventure games, board games and video games to entertain almost everyone.
So, what does a random woman sitting in the middle of a McQuesten family photograph from 1903 have to do with today’s gaming culture?
Whitehern Historic House & Garden belonged to the McQuesten family, who lived there over three generations from 1851-1968. Thousands of artifacts, including the family’s correspondence, furnishings, and personal belongings were included in the home when it was handed over to the City to become a museum, which opened in 1972. Among the archives are the family’s photographs, which museum staff use in ongoing research of the family and in public programming.
Most of the photographs in the collection are of immediate family, including the one pictured below. The photograph includes members of the McQuesten family sitting on the front steps of the densely vine-covered house. It includes, from left to right, Ruby, Uncle Calvin, Thomas, Hilda, Mary Baldwin, Margaret Edna and Mrs. Mary Baker McQuesten, the matriarch, seated in a wicker rocking chair. In the middle of this relaxing scene sits a mystery woman (with an oversized bow-tie). Who is the random lady in the middle of this McQuesten family? The photograph only identifies the woman as Miss Mewburn.
Detail of photograph in the McQuesten family archive collection.
Whitehern Historic House & Garden, City of Hamilton
As it turns out, this young woman is the granddaughter of one of Hamilton’s first online gamers. No, not online as in the internet, but another type of line, the phone line. In August of 1877 Miss Mewburn’s grandfather, T.C. Mewburn, participated in a remote chess game with his friends C.D. Cory and Hugh Cossart Baker Jr. using the telephone to trade moves. In 1875, Baker had started using telegraph technology strung between the friends’ homes. In 1877, after having learned of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention at the Philadelphia International Exhibition, the line was upgraded to telephone so the chess enthusiasts could discuss chess moves and play remotely. Baker would go on to start up the first commercial telephone company in Canada that year, and the first telephone exchange in the British Empire in 1878.
Gaming historians continue to debate the origins of online gaming. While most consider ARPANET and MUDs of the 1970s-1980s as predecessors of today’s games, we’d like to think that it actually originated 100 years earlier right here in Hamilton with a grandfather of one of the McQuesten family friends.
Keep the gaming tradition alive by taking part in an adventure role-playing game inspired by Whitehern. Purchase tickets to Dungeons & Dragons: Questin’ with the McQuesten’s on September 14 or 15 at Dundurn National Historic Site.
Event Details and Ticket Purchase
NOTE: this article was originally published in The Linc, on 17 August 2023, a newsletter produced by Heritage Resource Management at the City of Hamilton, where I work part-time as a Historical Interpreter at the Whitehern Historic House & Garden.