Most were white, male squads, though there was an all-female, African-American team from Chester PA, assembled by barber-turned-sports entrepreneur John Lang in the 1880s.
"[2] Apparently, there were two different semi-professional Dolly Varden teams, and one of them played a third club known as "Captain Jinks" in a game declared a draw after 15 innings.
A newspaper report of the game included a long description about the opening coin toss plus a "lengthy discussion about a player getting a thorn stuck in her foot after chasing a foul ball into the woods, but not a ton of attention was paid to the quality of play.
[3] (MLB official historian John Thorn notes, "Lang’s Dolly Vardens, created in the 1880s, are sometimes confused with several Philadelphia-area all-male clubs bearing that name as early as 1867.
Dolly Varden is also the name of a Hell's Kitchen, NYC restaurant as well as the moniker of the last passenger train locomotive to run up Manhattan's West Side.