Wright & Ditson Co. Boston
By Pete Georgiardy
George Wright, one of the principals for whom this famous Boston sporting goods firm was named, was an icon in early the American sports and games world. As a star baseball player in the 1870s and 1880s he acquired a national reputation that allowed him to start the business that satisfied the needs of sportsmen, especially in baseball and tennis, in one of the hotbed cities of participatory sports. Even as a retailer, he was a surprisingly active competitor in other sporting circles.
Already in the business for several years, legend has it that in about 1890 Wright received a set of golf clubs from Britain on consignment. As no one was familiar with their use, they sat idle in the back of the shop for a period of time. Eventually, Wright received an instruction book from Scotland and began to fiddle with the clubs and balls.
Armed with a thimble full of knowledge, Wright and a group of other experimenters took the equipment to Boston's Franklin Park for a match. Laying out a small course using tomato cans for holes, they played the first golf match staged in a public park in America. This experience, linked with the formation of the St. Andrews Club, the Newport Golf Club and The Country Club of Brookline, Mass., caused Wright to order more golf equipment from Scotland and thus he became the first factor for golf goods in the United States.
George Wright did much to advance the spread of the game, certainly for marketing reasons but also because he was a devoted player himself. He was influential in bringing Harry Vardon to the U.S. for his exhibition tour in 1900 but he was most widely known for his sponsorship of Boston's "Old Timers Golf Outing" which was staged for many years and accepted competitors only if they could prove they had played golf in America before the year 1900. Far from being a single sport person, Wright was also active in tennis competitions in the 1890s and early 1900s.
From 1890 to about 1894 or 1895 clubs sold at the Wright & Ditson Company were all imported from Scotland. Goods from James Anderson of Anstruther, Tom Morris, Robert White and Robert Forgan were among the early shipments. Examples can be found with Wright & Ditson stamped shafts and their early mark of the rampant lion. It is believed many of these clubs were assembled in the United States. Wright & Ditson's first domestically produced clubs date from 1895 or 1896 and carry the famous mark of the company name in script, the same mark used on tennis goods.
It was also about this time that the A.G. Spalding & Brothers company bought a significant but silent interest in Wright & Ditson. Many early Spalding clubs are identical in form to Wright & Ditson clubs since they were produced in the same factory. But the two companies maintained separate identities for at least another decade. While the Wright & Ditson house line included such early Spalding innovations as the Cran cleek and spring face irons, they also sold some unusual items like the upright pendulum putter and the J.H. Roger patent rake-type iron, which never appeared under the Spalding name.
In 1899, Wright & Ditson induced Scotsman Alexander Findlay to come out of retirement and become their club designer. Findlay's major effort was to assemble a group of clubs, which bore the name A.H. Findlay, selling between 1900-03. This was a novel approach to golf since named sets of clubs as such were not commonly marketed at that time.
Even into the post World War era, Wright & Ditson had their own brands though the clubs were merely private label goods from the Spalding factory. They included several generations of the Bee Line models, the St. Andrews sets and the pre-war One Shot series. In the late 1920s they sold their own version of the Kro- Flite models registered by Spalding.
From North American Club Makers by Pete Georgiardy