Two handwritten and signed ("David S. Schaff" and "D.S.S.") postcards,
stamped "PRAHA" [Prague] 19. VII. and INNSBRUCK (Austria) 22. VII.
1913, both to his daughter Mary Louise Schaff. Exceedingly rare autographs.
Forget most of what you think you know or what you have read in the great majority of the books, David Schaff, Yale class of '73 never attended or played rugby at the Rugby school in England. He did however learn the game while at boarding school at Kornthal (near Stuttgart) where there were English boys in attendance who played the game on a regular basis. One of my favorite quotes that I read from his time at Kornthal related to rugby was as follows:, "The German and French boys at the school never entered the field; the play was too much like 'work' to them".
Schaff is properly credited with being one of the main forces reintroducing football (soccer) at Yale in the first years of the 1870s, after about a thirteen year hiatus from the time it was prohibited (banned by the faculty in October of 1857).
On November 3, 1872 Schaff was elected president of the newly formed Yale Football Club (captaining the football team this same year) and he was singly instrumental in arranging for the November 16, 1872 Yale - Columbia Football match (picked twenties), at Hamilton Park, which he was unable to compete in, having injured himself the Wednesday before.
Quoting Schaff in 1894: "As early as 1871, and perhaps as early as 1870, when I entered college as a sophomore, a number of us began playing football. Many in the class of '73 made a great deal out of it as a daily after-dinner sport. We then played on some large, open lots on Elm street, I think, and just in the rear of a young ladies' boarding school. Some of the leading boating and baseball men in the class joined in the sport and were prominent players, such as Boyce, Oaks, Meyer, McCook, Piatt and Hemingway. The ball used in the early part of this period was the round rubber ball, wound up by a key. In the fall of '71 I sent to a school friend, ' Babes ' Smith, of Bath, England, for a Rugby ball. Smith and I had played together in many a game at school near Stuttgart. He sent me an oval ball with leather cover. It came blown-up and incased in a wooden box. To his honor, as a football man, be it said, the ball came as a gift to the football interests of the class. It came with the freight paid in advance, and how it got through the custom-house remained a mystery to me. The coming of the new ball had been much talked about, and on its arrival was looked upon as a curiosity. So far as the tradition among us went, this was the first Rugby ball ever seen on the college grounds. I remember well the man who carried it out to the grounds with me for the first afternoon's play and the expectancy with which its first use excited us. Like some other good things in this world, the Rugby ball met with anything but general favor at first. It was tried, reprobated by some, put aside, but brought out again and kept before the players till it came to be regarded as the best kind of ball for a football field" (which was years away) - for the early history of rugby football see the blog entry for June 13, 2015.
Schaff cabinet photo from 1872/73
Reverse of the Notman cabinet photo
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