William “Big Bill” Edwards is best known for authoring one
of the best known books on 19th century football, Football Days, published in 1916. Edwards
played on two National Championship teams while at Princeton in 1898 and 1899, captaining
the later.
A little known fact was that Edwards’s first experience
playing football was at St. John’s Military Academy in 1892. Much better known
are his playing days at Lawrenceville and then for Princeton. The pictured
photo is the first team that Edwards played on (he is at the far right). He
wrote about this time that “I was only seventeen years of age and weighed 217
pounds”, large even for college players at this time.
This is the largest football albumin photograph we have come
across, by far. We had it framed to protect it, which matted out several inches to
the dimensions, and yet the sight still measures 21 1/2“x 16“. A significant photograph of a
significant football figure.
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