Early Board Game
Anne Abbot.
Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral
and Entertaining Amusement.
Salem, Massachusetts: W. & S.B. Ives, 1843
Rare Book & Special Collections
Division (107D.2)
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The Mansion of Happiness, designed by Anne Abbot and manufactured
in 1843, may be the first board game published in the United States.
The players hop along the spiral board, moving forward toward the
mansion of happiness if they land on temperance or generosity, backward
to the pillory if they land on idleness or immodesty. Mansion
of Happiness was played with a teetotem, a small top inscribed
with numbers, not dice, which would have been associated with gambling.
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