The 1893 Princeton Tigers football team finished the season a perfect 11-0 and being the undisputed national champions for that year. One of the great things about this cabinet is the intricate detail taken of naming each player listed on the back. Many of these players ended up in the 1894 Mayo set including Captain Thomas Trenchard, Langdon Lea, and Arthur Wheeler to name a few. Another interesting feature of this cabinet is the early image of Nielson Poe wearing his Groton School jersey.
I was excited to receive this one from a trade with a collecting friend who has an amazing early collection. Even though Rutgers was one of the first colleges to play in a game in 1869, very few early images exist. This is an albumen image of the 1882 Rutgers football team. The team itself went 6-4 that season playing some of the bigger teams in the country.
This is one of my favorite photos in my collection. It is a large crystal clear image of the 1896 Cornell Graduate football team photo. Clint Wycoff seen at the bottom of the image was the captain and selected All-American, the first not from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or Penn. Some other interesting things of not is the dog mascot and the individual wearing the Crescent Athletic club sweater.
Tillie Lamar was a hero on the field for Princeton College. In the 1885 championship of Princeton vs Yale in what became known as the “Lamar Game” he returned a 90 yard punt return to win the game in the last seconds. This play was one of the most notable of the 19th century as it was Princeton’s only win against Yale from 1879-1888.
This is one of my favorite individual player cabinets because I love the pose next to the prop Revolutionary War canon where the original is buried behind Nassau Hall.
Here is a very nice image of Hamilton Park at Yale University. Many of the historical first football games from the 1870s to the early 1880s were played here. This is where Walter Camp first roamed the field. I have seen a couple other early images of Hamilton Park but I was interested to see the lettering on the front of the entrance. In other images that is blocked out by the large tree.
The first HBCU football game was played in North Carolina in 1892 between Biddle and Livingston Colleges. There were not a whole lot of football games being played in the 19th century but started to pick up around the early 1900s until WW1. I just don’t see a lot of images out there at all pre 1920s of African American teams. This is the earliest I have seen in formation. Notice the early head harnesses and melon shaped football. On the back is notated Goldsboro, NC.
Livingston Cushing played football at Harvard from 1876-1879. He was captain of the 1877 and 1878 teams. I like this image because it shows Harvard’s first uniform style. This would have been one of the earliest uniforms during the transition from Association to Rugby style football.
