An Old Shape

This in an unnamed 1900 game by Annie C. B. MacDonald (usually, in these cases, we know the name and not the author). This game is described in US (or Canada) patent 653303.

The game is played on the following board:

The black area is just the description of the winning shape

Each player has twelve large pieces (to occupy the circles) and twelve small pieces (to occupy the little squares). 

Rules:

• Initially, each player drops one of his pieces in an empty circle/square
• Afterwards, each player moves one friendly piece to an adjacent empty circle/square
• Wins the player that first makes the winning shape

This is a kind of moku game, where the winning shape is not a segment line. It seems quite difficult to make a shape consisting of nine pieces, so I guess most games will end in some kind of drawish position.

Anyway, the game has some originality, and I don't know of an earlier game that uses this board tiling.

The original document: