Wayman C. McCreery, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Wayman C. McCreery

Carom billiards player innovator and inventor

Date of Birth: 14-Jun-1851

Place of Birth: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Date of Death: 01-Jan-1901

Profession: composer, inventor, carom billiards player

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Gemini


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About Wayman C. McCreery

  • Wayman Crow McCreery (June 14, 1851 –1901) was a real estate agent, opera composer and the internal revenue collector of St.
  • Louis, Missouri.
  • However, he is most well known as the popularizer and possible inventor of three-cushion billiards.Soon after McCreery's 1897 appointment as St.
  • Louis' internal revenue collector, he was described as "probably the most accomplished officeholder in the service of the government.
  • He has held the college record for the long distance baseball throw, has been a champion amateur billiardist, is choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral, is a good singer [and] has composed an opera."Playwright Augustus Thomas' wrote of him in 1922: A moving spirit in the McCullough Club—in its organization, its management, and in its active expression—was Wayman McCreery, now dead.
  • I am sure that ten thousand of his surviving contemporaries in the city of St.
  • Louis will remember Wayman McCreery.
  • Few men are so physically and intellectually equipped as he was.
  • There was nothing that an athlete could do with his body that in a notable degree Wayman McCreery could not do.
  • He was boxer, wrestler, fencer, runner, and swimmer, and all-round athlete.
  • In addition to these he was a graceful step dancer.
  • Intellectually he was equipped with a college training and had an interest in everything that interested the intelligent people of his day.
  • He sang well enough to be a leading tenor in a fashionable choir.
  • He wrote music of good quality.
  • He was the author of the opera "L'Afrique," which was first done by amateurs in St.
  • Louis and subsequently produced in New York, although with not very great success, by Jesse Williams.
  • McCreery will be remembered by the sporting world as the inventor of the three cushion game of billiards, of which he was at one time the national champion.
  • As Hugh Chalcot in Robertson's comedy "Ours" it would have taken a professional to equal him.
  • Another part of McCreery's was Captain Hawtree in "Caste," by the same author. The very first tournament at three-cushion billiards took place January 14-31, 1878, in C.
  • E.
  • Mussey's Room in St.
  • Louis.
  • McCreery played in the tourney, which was won by New Yorker Leon Magnus.
  • The high run for the tournament was just 6 points, and the high average a .75. McCreery won the Amateur Championship of Missouri four straight times.
  • He posted high runs during competition of 336 at straight rail; 54 at cushion caroms, and 14 at three cushion—in which his "remarkable skill has given him a worldwide reputation." In the estimation of Willie Hoppe, a 51-time world champion in three forms of carom billiards, McCreery was "one of the finest performers [at straight rail] in the country."In February 1899, McCreery competed against Martin Mullen and Wilson P.
  • Foss in the American Athletic Union's Class A Amateur Championship of America, at 14-point balkline held at New York City's Knickerbocker Club.
  • They were described by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as "without doubt the best three amateurs in the country".
  • There, McCreery set two amateur world records: the first for a high run of 139 points in one game, and the second for maintaining a point average of 13.33, in the context of a race to 400 points.McCreery was secretary of the Security Building Company.McCreery composed a Te Deum Laudamus and the music to the libretto L'Afrique, also known as "the Tale of the Dark Continent".McCreery was married and had three daughters and a son.In August 2018, a 3-cushion tournament called "Champion of Champions" was organized under his name.

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