Sleigh Racing.

Winter sports were especially popular among the Dutch and Swedish settlers who came to the Middle Colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,and Delaware). Frozen lakes and rivers provided not only easier access to neighbors since they could be walked over but also provided raceways for sleighs pulled by horses. In 1663 Jeremias van Rensselaer, living near Albany, New York, wrote to his brother in the Netherlands that the Hudson River froze for fourteen straight days, "so hard as within the memory of Christians it has ever done, so that with the sleigh one could use the river everywhere, without danger for the races, in which [the sport of racing] we now indulge [a good deal]." Colonists did not need rivers on which to race but could use roads or fields—any place where two or more sleighs could compete.

Ice Skating.

Another...