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Miss Rosa Jefferson
The champion women
chess player of the world
Although she was a significant historical figure in
chess in America, Rosa Bradford Jefferson has remained largely unknown. Miss
Jefferson edited a chess column for the Memphis Commercial Appeal for 30
years (as well a editing a music column). She won her games as a participant in
simultaneous exhibitions given by Frank Marshall, Emmanuel Lasker, Géza
Maróczy and Harry Nelson Pillsbury. She devoted a great deal of effort to
supporting chess in Memphis and chess as an educational tool. She was honored
for her chess skills by Theodore Roosevelt who was staying at the Peabody Hotel
during a visit to Memphis.
Rosa's brother, who was almost two years older, was Bradford
Jefferson. Bradford Jefferson won the city championship of Memphis in 1900 and
the U.S. Open in 1913 and 1914. Bradford was born around 1875, while Rosa was
born around 1876. Bradford died at the age of 88 on May 14, 1963; Rosa died at
the age of 86 on September 5, 1962
The New York
Times ran this article
on Sunday, March 3, 1901
Woman Beats Pillsbury at Chess
special to the New York Times.
Memphis, Tenn., March 2. -- Harry
W. Pillsbury [sic], the chess champion, was defeated here last night by Miss
Rosa Jefferson, a young woman expert of this city. Pillsbury gave his customary
exhibition of playing sixteen players blindfolded and simultaneously.
He had expected an easy contest from all, but, long after midnight, Miss
Jefferson declared a check on Queen and King, and Pillsbury bowed to defeat.
Miss Rosa Jefferson,
of Memphis Tenn., is visiting friends in Washington. Miss Jefferson enjoys
the distinction of being the champion woman chess player of the United States.
She also edits the musical and chess departments of the Memphis Commercial
Appeal.
 The New York
Times ran this article
on Sunday, April 1, 1906
WOMEN'S CHESS TOURNAMENT
First Open Competition Ever Held in
America Planned for May
For the first time
in the history of chess in America, women are to receive an opportunity to
compete in an open tournament during the second week in May. At the
suggestion of a permanent member of the Women's Chess Club of New York. which
has its headquarters in the Martha Washington Hotel, 29 East Twenty-ninth
Street, invitations are being sent to the fair players of the country to compete
in the tournament in this city for handsome prizes. Souvenirs are to be
presented to all the competitors irrespective of the scores they may make.
Among the better known women players here are Mrs. J. W. Showalter
of Georgetown, Ky., wife of the former United States champion; Mrs. Harriet
Worrall of Brooklyn, winner of the third prize in the women's chess congress
held in London several years ago; Mrs. F. W. Lynn of Chicago, a regular
competitor in the championship tournament of the Chicago Chess and Checker Club;
Miss Rosa Jefferson of Memphis, Tenn.; Miss L. M. Séguin of New Orleans; Miss
Estelle Whitney, formerly of the Brooklyn Heights Chess Club, and Miss Eva
Brenzinger of Staten Island, daughter of the Treasurer of the Staten Island
Chess Club.
The Charleston W. Va. Sunday
Gazette-Mail of June 13, 1976 ran an article entitled, "Playing chess Against
Men Might Aid Women Competitors," which included the following:
OUR GOOD FRIEND Robert Stoeve of
Minneapolis has sent some games and bits of information about other women
players:
an exhibition game a Mrs. Anderson won from Dr. Emmanuel Lasker at the London
Women's Chess Club in 1898. An exhibition game won by Mrs. F. W, Lynn from Dr.
Lasker in Chicago in 1902. An exhibition game won by Miss Rosa Jefferson from
Frank J. Marshall in Memphis in 1904.
(She also won exhibition games from Dr. Lasker, Maroczy, and Pillsbury). We
received additional information on Miss Jefferson from John Hurt in Memphis and
from a reprint of a "New York World" article in a Sept. 1905, issue of "Lasker's
Chess Magazine."
Indeed Rosa Jefferson deserves a whole column. Lineal descendent of Thomas
Jefferson and widely known as a musician, chess was her recreation. The "World"
referred to her as "the champion woman chess player of the world." Miss
Jefferson advocated teaching chess in the schools as an aid to education,
stating, "my knowledge of chess has made everything easier for me."
Rosa Bradford Jefferson
Lasker's Chess Magazine, September, 1905. pp.
224-5
(From the New York World, August 27, 1905)
Fads and frills in the school course are outdone! Miss Rosa
Bradford Jefferson, the latest advocate of an addition to the curriculum, would
have every child taught to play chess as part of the education given it by the
State.
But Miss Jefferson is no faddist. The gospel she preaches is one
impressed by years of practice and result, for she is herself a "chess child,"
and it is from the height of her position as the champion woman chess player of
the world that she is urging upon educators a list of reasons why chess should
be essential of a practical public school training.
Miss Jefferson will tell you all this in the most delightful of
Southern voices, with the soft drawl that lends the last touch of piquancy to a
girl from Dixie-land. A member of one of the foremost families of the old South,
she is a lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson; and in the maternal line counts
the distinguished Gen. A. P. Bradford [perhaps Major A. P.
Bradford of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry?] among her forbears. As a musician she is
widely know. Music is, in fact, her vocation and chess her recreation. But she
declares with absolute conviction that it is to her skill in chess she owes a
large share of her accomplishment in her art. She believes chess is the backbone
of all other knowledge whatsoever and is prepared to demonstrate it to any
doubting Thomas who strays her way.
It was at the home of Miss Clay, No. 560 West End avenue, where she
has been a guest for some days, that Miss Jefferson told the story of her chess
life, in which the word "checkmate" has been so gloriously missing. With the
defeat of such players as Pillsbury, Marshall and Lasker, Miss Jefferson has set
the seal upon her genius in handling the chessman.
Frank Marshall is the tournament champion of the world, having
defeated all competitors at the St. Louis Exhibition's International tournament
last year. Pillsbury's and Lasker's records are too well known to comment. But
all three have laid down their arms in surrender before this cool,
self-possessed little White Queen, who admits that she follows no system, but
first feels the temper of her opponent and therefore studies to beat his game.
"Men," said Miss Jefferson, slowly "are usually credited with being
gallant where a woman is concerned, and allowing her to win. But that is not the
case when it comes to chess. Somehow that is different." And a sudden smile
discovered the dimples. "All my family were chess players, and, I suppose a bent
in that direction came to me naturally. When I was six I already understood the
game, and by the time I was eight I had defeated some of the leading experts of
Mississippi.
Though I was born in Memphis, my early childhood was spent in Mississippi, and
my first victories took place there. All my opponents were grown men. Were they
amused to contest a game, avowedly scientific, with a child? Perhaps, but I
assure you they took me quite seriously before we ended.
"At the age of sixteen I laid low the then champion of Memphis, a
player who was well enough known throughout the South. And from then on, I met
and played many men with chess records.
"Except for the first few moves I rely on no set method. Everything depends on
my antagonist. There is no such thing as chance in chess. It is all a matter of
calculation. It is to the mind what physical culture is to the body, what manual
training is to the hands. It inculcated accuracy and sharpens observation to a
point that makes it photographic. Memory becomes a
series of pictures. The Germans are introducing it [into] their schools. Why
[shouldn't] we do likewise ?
"My knowledge of chess has made everything easier for me. It helped
me in music to understand the principles of harmony. It is a help in arithmetic.
It is a help in spelling. Just consider the intricacies of chess," continued the
enthusiast.
"The first move on either side can be made twenty different ways
and the possible combinations after that are practically beyond computation.
Success depends not upon luck, but upon brain. The attack, the defense and the
capture are made before the eye of the enemy."
The game with Dr. Lasker Miss Jefferson found the most interesting. It
did not reach its conclusion, Lasker being obliged to leave after three hours
play; but Miss Jefferson had the advantage and the judges awarded the game to
her.
This woman champion does not practice between games and has made no
attempt to attain a professional standing, though she has won against the most
noted professionals. She insists that in chess she is a dilettante - nothing
more. Often she does not play for months together. All her meets with the
experts have been at the Memphis Chess Club, of which she is an honorary member.
Each of the celebrities has visited the city at the instance of the club, and,
after others have been conquered, Miss Jefferson had invariably been called upon
to defend the honor of the city.
A year ago Miss Jefferson was entertained by President Roosevelt.
She was introduced by her musical associate, Mrs. Theodore Carroll Reynolds, of
Memphis, who gave a recital at the White House. But it was not as Miss
Jefferson, the musician, but Miss Jefferson, the champion chess player that she
was received. Mr. Roosevelt refused to consider her on any other basis than that
of a scientist, for chess, he said, was a science, not a game.
A brown-haired, gray-eyed young woman, with delicately modeled features and
slight, graceful figure, Miss Jefferson is typically Southern in appearance.
There is nothing in the softness of manner, which matches the voice, or in the
little smile that plays so continuously about her lips, to suggest the solver of
knotty problems. And all her chess battles have not succeeded in tracing a
solitary line across her forehead.
She is, however, tremendously in earnest in advocating chess as a
study for public school children and hopes to see the experiment tried.
"Once tried," she said, "it will prove it is all that is claimed
for it - the best possible organizer of the mental forces."
Miss Jefferson will leave soon for her home in the South. She has
no chess contests in view at present, but will disregard no opportunity to prove
her prowess.
According to Dwight Weaver, historian for the
Memphis Chess Club:
This logo, used by Memphis Chess Club member
Rosa Jefferson, introduced her chess news column each Sunday for over twenty
five years. Rosa's column ran in "The Commercial Appeal" for almost
thirty years with the first one appearing on December 6, 1903.
Mr. Weaver also offered this article that
appeared in Memphis Chess Club's "Mid South Advocate," Vol. 1,
No.6 October 1976, written by Oran Quintrell and Dan Mayes in their
Memphis En Passant column:
Rosa Jefferson
announced with "pride and pleasure" the opening of the Memphis Chess Club,
located on the second floor of the Exchange Building, in her first column
concerning the Memphis Chess Club in the Commercial Appeal on January 1,
1904.
But it was a sad opening as far as she was concerned
because she criticized the "home players" as having "manifested little
interest. . . in match contest in outer chess circles." As a result of this
she believed that Memphis Chess Club players, who were excellent chess
thinkers and "downright" good at scientific chess, remained obscure on the
national level instead of winning distinction for their play.
"The greatest chess celebrities of the world have
visited the club 'with sorrow' tested the strength of its players--never yet
has one left the city without sustaining a loss," she said.
Rosa Jefferson, who was considered women's world
champion caliber at this time, had defeated Pillsbury and fought with Dr.
Lasker to a three hour draw (in a game which he refused to reopen the next
day). "When I played Dr. Lasker," she said, "there were 15 or 20 peopled
standing around waiting to see the lamb--which was me--led to the slaughter.
Naturally I was a little excited, you know, he is considered to be a master
of the deepest method of playing. But Dr. Lasker's hands shook so toward the
last of the game that the pawns rattled."
"I suppose it was a bit unsettling to be baffled by a
mere woman before so many people," laughed the fair champion. "Perhaps he
accepted the challenge--and by the by how many friends did laugh at me for
throwing down the glove to the great man--just to take me down for my
audacity and put me in the corner. But what he may have considered a 'pink
tea' performance turned out to be, for him, three hours of strenuous life."
Rosa Jefferson also defeated Pillsbury in what became a
six hour battle of wits. "It was a veritable Trojan war," she later
recalled.
During the time she belonged to the Chess, Checkers and
Whist Club, which then had a membership of 100 and was located over the then
Southern Express office. She announced her intention to enter the American
Chess Congress Tournament which was meeting in St. Louis during the 1904
World's Fair, and the Commercial Appeal expected her to "narrow her
championship until it is qualified only be the adjective phrase 'of the
world'."
While writing her chess column for the Commercial
Appeal she would publish chess problems submitted to her by interested
readers."
In a later edition of the Memphis Chess
Advocate and the Memphis En Passant column Dan Mayes would write:
"In her weekly chess column Rosa Jefferson
set out to bring her Memphis readers the latest news and most interesting
games and problems from around the world. But since The Commercial Appeal
carried her column to points far from Memphis as well, Miss Jefferson would
occasionally bring to the chess world the latest news, games and composed
problems from the Memphis Chess Club." (Here is more from her column on Jan.
17, 1904.)
It is with pride
and pleasure that I wish to direct the attention of all chess payers to
the Memphis Chess Club. The spacious rooms of the club are located on the
second floor in the Exchange Building, and right here many of the most
notable games take place. Chess at the club is varied and interesting--you
will find some bowed in profound silence over single games, while others
are engaged in simultaneous exhibitions and blindfold chess.
The club numbers among its members some of the
brightest intellects of the city. Dr. D.D. Saunders, the president, has
been closely identified with Memphis chess for years and his zeal in the
cause has been an inspiration to Southern players.
Brilliancy and aggressiveness are the chief characteristics of his game
and for such it bears a reputation at home and abroad. In a recent
communication to this column a celebrated chess player paid the following
tribute to Dr. Saunders: "I played with Dr. Saunders many years ago; his
game is stubborn--it is powerful." Messrs. Jefferson, McDonald,
Peres, Poston, Levi, Harris, Coleman, Dockery, Darnell, and Rabbi
Sainfield are shining lights in the club. Jefferson has made a reputation
for himself by his games with Pillsbury, the American champion. He
defeated Pillsbury on two separate occasions and the last game was said to
have been the strongest ever played in Memphis. McDonald's great move on
the board of chess fame was the game he played Dr. Lasker last winter.
After the fortieth move Lasker resigned in favor of McDonald. H. Peres has
had a drawn game with Pillsbury. Dr. Posert owes much of his chess
excellence to the skill with which he maneuvers his pawns. There are many
other strong players in the club but not being sufficiently acquainted
with the style of their game, it is impossible to make intelligent
comments at present, but in due time each player will be weighed in this
chess balance and given a just rating.
Rosa Jefferson's name faded into
oblivion only to resurface after her death in 1962 when her brother accused her
care-giving of extorting her considerable estate. The nurse, Ethel Dorris,
claimed Miss Jefferson was an alcoholic at the time she was hired and that she
had cured Miss Jefferson of her addiction. No resolution to the case could be
found. However, Ethel Dorris' name turned up again in a 1968 lawsuit of an
unspecified nature.
Rosa
Bradford Jefferson first chess column, December 6, 1903, in the Memphis Commercial Appeal
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