1874 Notman Composite Photo Hamilton / Argonaut Rugby Football

 

The pictured composite photo, titled “Hamilton and Argonauts: First Rugby Football Teams in Canada”,  is contemporary to the two more commonly viewed composite photos by  Notman, the Harvard versus McGill Football Matches, Montreal, October 23, 1874 and November 12, 1875, both of which are shown below (see also blog entry dated June 12, 2015). This 1874 composite by Notman and Fraser portrays the Ontario team made up of the Argonaut Rugby Football Club (established 1873 as an extension of the Argonaut Rowing Club), and the Leander Club of Hamilton (established in 1869) that played an interprovincial match against Quebec. The Argonauts included recently transplanted Englishmen Roger and Harold Lambe, pictured in the photos, who were two of the most notable rowers of the period (ex London Rowing Club) and who introduced English Rugby Football to the members of the Argonaut Rowing Club.

The inscriptions in the margin are original to the composite. 

These composites are an important part of documenting the England to Canada to the Unites States story of Rugby Football and how it morphed under ever-changing rules and adaptations, particularly through the 1870s.

We know of and have seen only the few football related composites mentioned in this entry.

 

The first step in creating a composite photograph is an artist rendering or drawing that places people and objects at the appropriate angles and distances that will exist in the finished photograph. Each individual has their photograph taken separately, in a studio setting, using head or neck rests to keep their likeness from blurring. Each of the sitters busts are then carefully trimmed out from the original photo and pasted onto a realistically painted background, in the case of exterior views in particular, and blended with paint to add realistic details to the sitter and the scene.

These composite photos involved an immense amount of planning, logistics and photographic and artistic work and the level of this work was proportional to the number of sitters, which could number into the hundreds. This process also allowed for the inclusion of individuals who may not be present at the time or who were deceased, in the finished product, as long as a photograph was available.

The hope of the photographer was to be able to sell copies of the photograph to all of the sitters in a composite photo.

Contact prints were then made from the original negatives and offered for sale in at least a half dozen sizes, including 8” x 10”, the dimensions of this piece.

Composites by Notman were made as early as 1864 and were exceedingly popular in the 1870s and 1880s. Notman established a number of branches in Canada in the 1860s and 1870s and opened an office up in Boston in 1883, which initially competed with the likes of Pach for the college photo market.

 

Close-up of title and margin

 

Composite Photo of Harvard - McGill October 23, 1874 Football Match

 

Composite Photo of Harvard - McGill November 12, 1875 Football Match

 

Note: the painted backgrounds in all three composites are very similar as all three composites pictured the Montreal Cricket grounds with Mount Royal in the background, although backgrounds were painted by two different Notman artists.

 

Syracuse Football Jersey c.1886

 

This jersey came with a family Syracuse provenance. Handmade rather than factory manufactured it has no label and pre-dates most other football jerseys we have seen. The script S in our experience normally dates a period jersey to 1886, plus or minus, which we believe to be the case here. This jersey was worn before Syracuse officially had a school team in 1889 and well before their official block S appeared on their jerseys. This jersey would have been worn in the rugby football intramural contests that were common at Syracuse at the time.
 

 

Truxton Hare / 1894 St. Marks Eleven

 

What we believe to be the earliest known football photos (4" x 3") of Truxton Hare while playing at St. Marks School in Southborough, Mass., identified on the back as the '94 Eleven. Hare played for the University of Pennsylvania from 1897 to 1900 and was one of the few to achieve All-American status all four years. He also took part in the 1900 and 1904 Olympics in various sporting events, and between the two Olympics came away with a gold, silver and bronze medal.

 

'94 Eleven team roster

 

You do not usually see any humor related to 19th century cabinet photos. This variation of the above team photo is identified on the back (below) as "Tommy in a puddle of water". See front center in the photo.

 

 

My apologies to followers of this blog for the lack of recent entries. We have been involved with two major football research projects that have taken up all of our free time. One of these projects may end up as a book if we do not end up putting it in this blog at some point down the road.

1858 Stereoview “The Wall Game”

 

The "Wall Game", an early  precursor to modern football, began at Eton as early as 1766 and later developed into the ‘Field Game”. This game, played with eleven men per side was credited with influencing the American game to be played with that same number of men.

One of the earliest stereoviews or photos from football’s beginnings.
 

Andover vs Exeter Broadside 1897

  Large and colorful broadside featuring one of the oldest football rivalries. The rivalry between Phillips Academy (Andover) and Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter) began in 1878 and is considered the longest running secondary school match up in the country. Traditionally these two boarding schools have been feeder schools for Yale and Harvard.   22" x 14"                                         

Fielding Yost / Ohio Wesleyan / 1897 / Part ll

This unusual souvenir program commemorates the 1897 championship season for Ohio Wesleyan. This posting relates directly to our April 18, 2015 blog entry (in fact the photograph from that entry is reproduced on one of the early pages of this brochure) and we chose to add this as a separate post due to the number of scanned pages. We did not include another ten pages of songs and advertisements. Interesting photo and  write-up on Yost.

 

 

 

William Henry Lewis

 

Pictured above is the earliest known photo of football legend William Henry Lewis when first playing varsity football at Amherst College, c.1889.

Lewis was a man of many firsts. Considered one of the first of three African American varsity college football players he is regarded as a pioneer in not only athletics but also law and politics. He was the first African American All-American in the history of college football (at Harvard 1892, 1893). Lewis  became the first African American to be appointed as an Assistant United States Attorney (in 1903),  the first African American United States Assistant Attorney General (in 1910) and one of the first African Americans to be admitted to the American Bar Association (1911). 

He attended Amherst College and was well-known as a ground-breaking student leader. W.E.B. Du Bois attended the Amherst graduation ceremony to witness Lewis obtain his diploma (along with a several other African American students). 

Lewis played varsity football for three years at Amherst beginning in his sophomore year (1889, 1890, 1891) and for two years for Harvard while attending law school (1892, 1893), most often as a centre rush.  He was the first African American to captain a predominantly white football team, at Amherst, and was the first African American football player and also possibly the first African American athlete at Harvard.  

After Law school, Lewis continued his association with football, coaching (assistant coach at Harvard from 1895 – 1906) and writing articles on the sport as well as penning one of the first books to ever discuss football strategy, entitled “A Primer of College Football,” which was published in 1896.

After a fairly exhaustive year and a half long search, we reviewed all of the known/documented photos of Lewis that we were able to locate. It was obvious that his looks were noticeably affected by age and weight, length of hair (longer during football season), and the fact that he was what was considered a “light-skinned black” man. Lewis exhibits marked ptosis (drooping of the eyelid) of the left eye, a characteristic aiding in the confirmatory identification of Lewis in many photographs. This is a fact we recognized from our research and have not seen reference to previously in any written work. There are a number of identified period photographs where it is not obvious to most that Lewis is African American - see photo above titled “1892 Center Trio”, picturing “W.C. Mackie, ’94 and M.S., W.H. Lewis, L.S., B.G. Waters ’94 and L.S.” - used here with permission of the Beale family – copied from  “The History of Harvard Football, 1874 – 1948”. Also pictured below is a close-up of the lower right corner of an oversized albumin photo c. 1894 by E. Chickering of Boston including Lewis, when playing for the Hyde Park football club (see June 27, 2016 posting).

 

In addition to Lewis, two other early African American varsity college football players that began playing in 1889 were William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson, also playing for Amherst (1889, 1891), and Thomas James Fisher, who played football at Beloit College in 1889, 1890 and 1892.

In the Amherst College Olio ’91 yearbook, the 1889 College Eleven is listed which included W.H. Lewis, Rusher and W.T.S. Jackson, HB. This was in their sophomore year. In the Olio ’92, the College Eleven for the 1890 season is listed and Lewis is listed again as a rusher (he was known as the centre rush, or in today’s terms, the center, a position he continued to play at Harvard). Jackson was listed as a director (one of four), but not as a team member, and was not present in the team photo. The ’93 Olio lists the College Eleven for 1891, and includes Lewis (centre rush) and Jackson, RH.

To put the significance of Lewis, Jackson, and Fisher playing varsity college football in 1889 into perspective, our research and utilizing research done by Gregory Bond specifically, as part of his Doctoral dissertation in 2008 “Jim Crow At Play: Race, Manliness, and the Color line In American Sports, 1876-1916”(certainly the definitive and most important work on African Americans in athletics during this period) suggests that it was not until the 1898 season that there were more than ten African Americans playing college football in the United States on predominantly white teams, only three African Americans played football in 1889, six in 1890, and either seven or eight for the years 1891 through 1897. This is also one reason for the extreme scarcity of pre-1900 college football photos with African American players.
The 1889 photo* at the beginning of this article may well be the earliest known photo to date of any collegiate varsity African American athlete that played football, in a football uniform or setting. 

*This photo may in fact be as early as 1888 as this is the year Lewis enrolled at Amherst and played on the freshman team. It is generally believed and cited in most sources that he began playing football in his sophomore year (and this was the case for him playing on the varsity team).  The source of the information referring to Lewis playing on the freshman team in 1888 was Morris Beale’s book on Harvard football (referenced in the above posting), in a reprinted article by Wilbur Wood. It likely is the case as Lewis himself was an acknowledged contributor to Beale’s book.