1876 Harvard Freshman Football Team (Class of 1880)

 

Very early and rare Harvard rugby football photo from 1876

The class of 1880 freshman team played the Yale freshman twice in 1876. The first game, in November, was played in New Haven. The roster was listed as Osborn, Clark, W. Hopper, Jordan (Captain), Winsor, Nickerson, A.W. Hopper, Tebbits, Tiffany, Holden and Davis.

The second meeting with the Yale freshman was in Boston, in December, in front of several hundred spectators.

The Harvard roster for this game was much the same and was listed as rushers: Davis, Tibbits (Tebbets), Bacon, Holden, W. Hooper, Nickerson; halfbacks Blanchard, E.D. Jordan (Captain (pictured with the ball)), Grant; backs Winsor, Osborne. Substitutes are listed as Tiffany, Hooper and Clark.  Harvard won the game by a score of 3 goals, 2 touchdowns to Yale’s 0 goals and 0 touchdowns.

The most noteable player in the photo is Robert Bacon, top right, who played on the University football team for three years, 1877,78 and 79 (captain in 1879). He rowed crew in 1880. Bacon was an Assistant Secretary of State for four years followed by a three year stint as Ambassador to France. Bacon had a lucky streak which included “missing the boat”, which happened to have been the Titanic.

Note: In the photo to the right of captain Jordan is John Sever Tebbets. A good number of different sources list him as Tibbits or even Tebbits, which are incorrect. Tebbets did play for the varsity University team in 1879.

Besides being one of the earliest Harvard football photos (we know of only six earlier photos of  Harvard football teams, including those from the Harvard - McGill games of 1874 and 1875, and the Harvard - Tufts stereoview from 1875 (see blog post dated December 26, 2019)) , this photo is of great rarity in that it shows players wearing pillbox caps. We've only seen a handful of football photos with team members wearing pillbox caps. These include the later 1878-79 University of Michigan and the 1878 Brown football teams.  In the case of the Brown team, the caps very well could have been based on the pillbox caps in the Harvard photo. New to the game in 1878 (apparently no one involved  had seen a game), Brown sent Alfred Eddy and George Macom to Harvard to view practice and pick up on the particulars of the game.  Uniforms, a last minute consideration were made by a local tailor and finished just days before their first and only game of the year.  

The original label from the back of the frame. Of particular interest to us is the last line of the label, referencing the framing of "college shingles of all types" (see our blog post dated June 13, 2015, "The H.F.B.C. and the Foundations of Football: Beginnings of a Game: 1873 Membership Shingle"). Beck Hall, referred to on the label was a Harvard residence hall.