Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 2014
Among the Dorchester Historical Society’s collections is a board game by the name of The Mansion of Happiness.
The following is from the internet:
The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement is a children’s board game inspired by Christian morality. Players race about a sixty-six space spiral track depicting virtues and vices with their goal being The Mansion of Happiness at track’s end. Instructions upon virtuous deed spaces like Honesty and Temperance advance players forward to eternal happiness and vices such as Cruelty and Ingratitude move players backward.
The Mansion Of Happiness was designed by Anne Abbott, a children’s author and game designer. W. & S. B. Ives published the game in 1843, and it was republished by Parker Brothers in 1894 after George S. Parker & Co. bought the rights to the Ives games. The republication claimed The Mansion of Happiness was the first board game published in the United States of America; today, however, the distinction is awarded to Lockwood’s Traveller’s Tour games of 1822. The popularity of The Mansion of Happiness and similar moralistic board games was challenged in the last decades of the 19th century when the focus of games became materialism and competitive capitalistic behavior.
One of the earliest children’s board games published in America was The Mansion of Happiness (1843). Like other children’s games that followed in its wake, The Mansion of Happiness was based on the Puritan world view that Christian virtue and deeds were assurances of happiness and success in life. Even game mechanics were influenced by the Puritan view. A spinner or a top-like teetotum, for instance, was utilized in children’s board games rather than dice, which were then associated with Satan and gambling. While the Puritan view forbade game playing on the Sabbath, The Mansion of Happiness and similar games with high moral content would have been permitted for children in more liberal households.
The game’s rules note:
“WHOEVER possesses PIETY, HONESTY, TEMPERANCE, GRATITUDE, PRUDENCE, TRUTH, CHASTITY, SINCERITY…is entitled to Advance six numbers toward the Mansion of Happiness. WHOEVER gets into a PASSION must be taken to the water and have a ducking to cool him… WHOEVER posses[ses] AUDACITY, CRUELTY, IMMODESTY, or INGRATITUDE, must return to his former situation till his turn comes to spin again, and not even think of HAPPINESS, much less partake of it.”
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