Teaching Success Through Play: American Board And Table Games, 1840-1900.

In 1843 W. and S. B. Ives of Boston introduced Mansion of Happiness (see Pl. IV), one of the first board games published in the United States. The goal of the game was to be the first player to reach the "Mansion of Happiness," or heaven, by passing the virtues and vices of mankind along a sixty-six-space road of life. Fifty-five years later Parker Brothers of Salem, Massachusetts, published The Game of Playing Department Store (Pl. III), in which each player attempted to amass the most material goods during a shopping expedition. At first appearance, these two games have little in common but both taught nineteenth-century American children the value of success as it was ...