Backyard Games stamps are recognized with  eight designs, consisting of

Badminton,
Bocce,
Cornhole,
Croquet,
Flying disc,
Horseshoes,
Tetherball
A variation on pick-up baseball

Many people attribute the origin of the cornhole game to Native Americans living in the Midwest of the US. They weren’t exactly playing with duck cloth bags filled with whole kernel corn, though. Legend has it that the Blackhawk tribe in Illinois played a very similar game where they filled the bladder of pigs with dried beans and tossed them around for entertainment.

Some people claim that in the 14th century a German farmer named Matthias Kueperman, a Bavarian cabinetmaker, invented the game. Legend has it that Kueperman witnessed some kids playing a game where they threw rocks into a hole in the ground.

Kueperman thought the game possessed too much danger to the kids since these large rocks would ricochet up and strike them so he opted to make a safer version of the game. He reportedly utilized old furniture to create a board and made a hole in it for the kids to throw their rocks (and some even say he crafted bean bags).

It’s then thought that German immigrants brought the game with them to the US when they arrived likely in the 1800s. Cincinnati actually has Germanic roots from the many immigrants that resided there in the late 1800s and early 1900s and so that lends some support that the game was introduced to the US from Germany.

There’s also a camp of people who insist that it was in Kentucky where cornhole originated. It’s argued that cornhole surfaced somewhere in the hills of Kentucky during the late 19th Century. It’s not clear to me that the game originated here but it’s clear that the game was very popular in the region during this time. What surprised me is that seems to have been more popular with elites at the time.