The Games My Grandfather Found by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

                             The Games My Grandfather Found 

Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.

25 September 2026

In the introduction to E. O. Harbin’s 1954 Games of Many Nations, I found my grandfather. Harbin thanks the Rev. Asa W. Mellinger of Chicopee, Massachusetts, “a minister who follows anthropology as a hobby,” and credits him with six games. I knew Asa as the gentle pastor of the parsonage at 302 Chicopee Street. I had not known that his interest in games had entered print.

Asa Wright Mellinger was born in 1897 in Washingtonville, Ohio, into a Pennsylvania Dutch–speaking Mennonite family. At Mount Union College he met Edith Marion Ford. He studied theology at Boston University and Harvard, earning a Master of Sacred Theology in 1925. His thesis was a play about the Apostle Paul, A Thorn in the Flesh; he also read several ancient languages.

Asa and Edith had two children: Margaret Mellinger Denison, born in Ipswich in 1927, and Paul Marius Mellinger, my father, born there in 1928. Asa ministered in Ipswich, then in Granville from 1937 to 1940. He served the First Congregational Church of Chicopee from 1940 to 1976, thirty-six years. In 1976 the church published his transcription and translation of Deacon Edward Chapin’s eighteenth-century diary.

I remember the parsonage for its baking bread, Bach and Handel at the piano, and an attic full of toys Asa built for his children: wooden marble runs, puzzles, and Chinese checkers boards. On Saturdays I helped him print church bulletins with a hand-cranked mimeograph. Harbin’s acknowledgment adds another dimension to that remembered house.

Harbin wrote practical books for church socials, clubs, and schools. He dedicated Games of Many Nations to missionaries and other workers devoted to “world brotherhood” and proposed programs such as “A World Playday.” Amid the international tensions of the 1950s, he hoped that similarities among games would teach players to recognize human kinship. It was liberal Protestant internationalism carried into the church basement.

His acknowledgments name contributors in Japan, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, India, Taiwan, and elsewhere. Helen Johnson suggested missionaries he might contact. This explains part of Harbin’s collecting network, though it tells us nothing certain about how Asa found his six games.

The Six Games

The following are my summaries of Harbin’s rules. His geographic labels often leave the particular community unidentified.

African Simon Says (Africa)

A leader and another player clap above their heads. The leader suddenly thrusts one arm forward; the other must instantly match right with right or left with left. In a group version, everyone imitates the leader and a player who errs takes that role.

African Game Trap (Africa)

Players circle beneath an arch made by two people joining hands, clapping and chanting about lions and leopards. At the final word the arch drops. Those caught form new traps until everyone has been captured. No one may stop or dash through: the shared rhythm makes the suspense.

Jarabadach (Africa)

Two players each place three contrasting stones on a square with nine playing points, trying to make a row of three. If neither wins during placement, they move stones along the lines to vacant adjacent points until one succeeds. Harbin compares it to ticktacktoe.

Spear the Whale or Eskimo Escapades  Alaska

A diamond-shaped target with a hole hangs at waist height. Two players stand on opposite sides and try to thrust blunt wands through it. Harbin describes an Arctic version made with whalebone and walrus tusk, then gives plywood-and-pine instructions for American readers. His dated label “Eskimo” does not identify the Indigenous community from which the game came.

Leopards and Cattle, or Diviyan Keliya (Ceylon)

On a board with forty-nine intersections, one player has two leopards and the other twenty-four cattle. Cattle enter one by one; once all are placed, they may move. The leopards move along the lines and capture cattle by jumping them. The cattle win by surrounding both leopards; the leopards win by taking enough cattle that they cannot be trapped. Harbin compares the game to Fox and Geese.

Scissors Chess or Hasami Shogi  Japan

On a grid, players move counters horizontally or vertically and capture opposing pieces by enclosing them between two of their own. Harbin describes one variation with a five-in-a-row goal and another centered on capture. He credits Asa and a Japanese student named Kuribashi with variations but does not say which supplied which. The book prints shogi as “Srogi.”

Harbin does not identify Asa’s sources. Earlier descriptions provide clues, but a matching name or rule cannot prove that Asa read a particular book.

The most revealing name is Jarabadach. G. Marin recorded a Somali three-in-a-row game called jara-badakh in 1931, and H. J. R. Murray discussed Somali board games in 1952. Harbin’s heading “Africa” obscures the more specific possibility suggested by the name. The diagrams and rules still need direct comparison before we can claim a line of transmission.

Henry Parker described diviyan keliya, including a version with two leopards and twenty-four cattle, in Ancient Ceylon (1909). Murray also discussed it. These books offer plausible textual paths to Harbin’s Leopards and Cattle, though we do not know whether Asa used either one.

Franz Boas and Stewart Culin recorded Arctic games involving pierced objects and sticks. Their accounts are worth comparing with Spear the Whale, but Harbin’s particular equipment and “Alaska” label cannot yet be traced to either source. I have found no earlier source for African Simon Says or African Game Trap, and the book’s broad label gives little help.

Missionaries were among the people who recorded languages, customs, and games before and during anthropology’s professionalization. Some produced close observations through years of residence, while their accounts also reflected the priorities and power of mission and colonial institutions. Harbin’s correspondents belonged to a world in which games could move from local play to church educational materials through several intermediaries. We have no evidence that Asa himself did fieldwork or participated in a mission network.

The book’s hope for “world brotherhood” deserves respect. Its broad headings also erase detail: “Africa” names no people, and “Eskimo” does not tell us who taught the Arctic game. Jarabadach’s probable Somali connection shows how a game can retain a trace of its origin even while its players disappear from the printed account. The collection preserved rules; it rarely preserved the chain of people who passed them on.

The early literature of games also drew on people outside university anthropology. Stewart Culin worked in museums after a career in business; Murray was a school inspector; Parker an irrigation engineer in colonial Ceylon. Their methods and authority differed. Asa’s documented place in this wider world is modest but real: a learned minister who supplied games to a recreation writer.

I read these games with a sociologist’s eye. Simon Says asks for a timely bodily response; Game Trap requires a common rhythm; Leopards and Cattle turns on coordinated enclosure. Those are readings of Harbin’s printed rules, not claims about what the games meant to their original players. They help me understand why my grandfather’s contribution catches my attention.

In the attic at 302 Chicopee Street were Chinese checkers boards my grandfather made. I cannot say that he showed me these six games. Harbin’s acknowledgment nonetheless adds something firm to my memory of the parsonage: Asa helped carry accounts of distant games into other people’s hands. I would still like to know who first taught them to him.

Works Cited

Boas, Franz. 1888. The Central Eskimo. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 399–670. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Chapin, Edward, and Asa W. Mellinger. 1976. A Transcription and Translation of the Deacon Edward Chapin Diary. Chicopee, MA: First Congregational Church of Chicopee.

Culin, Stewart. 1907. Games of the North American Indians. Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Harbin, E. O. 1954. Games of Many Nations. New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Marin, G. 1931. “Somali Games.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 61: 499–511.

Mellinger, Wayne Martin. 2025. “The Parsonage at 302 Chicopee Street.” The Dionysian Naturalist, October 13. https://thedionysiannaturalist.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-parsonage-at-302-chicopee-street-by.html.

Murray, H. J. R. 1952. A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Parker, H. 1909. Ancient Ceylon: An Account of the Aborigines and of Part of the Early Civilisation. London: Luzac.