Scarsdale Lawn Tennis Club established (1883). Thomas F. Burgess elected first President (1883-1884)

Thomas F. Burgess. First President of the Scarsdale Lawn Tennis Club, 1883-1884

Thomas F Burgess (1863-1932)was a long-time leader in Scarsdale civic life and founded the Scarsdale Town Club. He retired as vice president and general manager of the National Sulphur Company of New York and had earlier been the vice president of the Dean Linseed Oil Company and secretary of the General Chemical Company. He married Laura Crane, a member of another old Scarsdale family (Alexander M Crane served as FMTC President from 1903-1904 and in 1906)

1883 was a time when America was feeling its industrial might, and when inventions and technical advances followed one another with breathtaking regularity. Chester Arthur, of the fluffy sideburns and Prince Albert waistcoats, occupied the White House, while Grover Cleveland was the governor in Albany. Down in New York City, that engineering marvel, the Brooklyn Bridge, opened with a full day of celebrations and fireworks.

Scarsdale, however, was still a rather somnolent country town of not many more than 600 residents. There was, as yet, no village center, no store, no high school, no police. Yet sprinkled throughout the rolling landscape could be found the manicured country estates of a growing number of wealthy families with the leisure to seek out new pastimes.

In 1883, about a dozen college-age men from these landed families decided to form a club for lawn tennis, a new game being played in Newport, Rhode Island. Modern tennis had been invented in 1873, just ten years earlier.

The Scarsdale Lawn Tennis Club, formed by those dozen young men, was the first tennis club in Westchester County and one of the earliest in the nation.

First officers were twenty-year-old Thomas Burgess, president; Cortlandt Fish, secretary; and James Bleecker, treasurer. Also in the founding group were Charles Fleming and “the six Butler boys, including Allan, Grenville, and Frank.”

In its first year, membership totaled about twenty young men who played on two courts at “Fair View,” home of a Mr. Hamilton. When membership was opened to women the second year, total enrollment rose to about thirty.

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983