Sports in New England Sports in New England Two popular American sports were invented in New England. Basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. Volleyball was invented by William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895. Also, the first organized ice hockey game in the United States is widely believed to have been played in Concord, New Hampshire in 1883. The region is famous for its passion for baseball and the Boston Red Sox, as well as for the intense rivalry between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees. On November 1, 1924, the Boston Bruins of the National
William Morgan (anti-Mason) part of the background story of his popular scientific allegorical novel "Etidorhpa" (1895), on the kidnapping of William Morgan and the start of the Anti-Masonry movement. In his novel "The Craft: Freemasons, Secret Agents, and William Morgan" (2010), the author Thomas Talbot presents a fictional version of the William Morgan kidnapping. He portrays him as a British spy, includes rogue British Masons, and has presidential agents thwart an assassination plot. William Morgan (anti-Mason) William Morgan (1774 – c. 1826) was a resident of Batavia, New York, whose disappearance and presumed murder in 1826 ignited a powerful movement against the Freemasons,