Rutgers defeated Princeton in New Brunswick on November 6,1869. No image here is presented as a photograph of play that afternoon. The gallery begins with a contemporary newspaper and follows the people, changing sport and later commemoration, with each item’s date stated separately.
Topic: Sports History
01 / 06
The report before the legend
The Targum reported the November 1869 contest while the players were still students. This newspaper page offers a contemporary record of the match that Rutgers won, six goals to four. Its dense columns are a useful counterweight to the spectacular scenes imagined for later anniversary illustrations.
George Large played for Rutgers in the first match against Princeton. This portrait is cataloged to the 1890s, long after his student days. Later accounts of the game recalled his collision with a Princeton player; the portrait itself records the older man who helped carry the memory of the encounter.
William Stryker Gummere captained the Princeton side that traveled to Rutgers. This portrait is dated approximately 1870 in the archive record, close to his student years. His later career led to the chief justiceship of New Jersey, a reminder that the original players’ lives extended well beyond one afternoon of football.
Photo details
Date
Circa 1870
Location
Princeton, New Jersey; portrait location not separately documented
Photographer
Photographer unidentified
Archive / collection
Princeton University Archives, via Wikimedia Commons
Princeton University Archives, via Wikimedia Commons
04 / 06
A team ten years later
Princeton’s football players pose around 1879. The clothes, ball and number of men belong to a later stage of collegiate play. The photograph does not show the 1869 team. It records the continuing institution that grew from the early matches while the rules of football were still changing.
Photo details
Date
Circa 1879
Location
Princeton, New Jersey
Photographer
Photographer unidentified
Archive / collection
Princeton University Archives, via Wikimedia Commons
Princeton University Archives, via Wikimedia Commons
05 / 06
Football becomes an illustrated spectacle
Arthur Burdett Frost’s engraving depicts the 1879 Princeton–Yale game, ten years after Rutgers and Princeton first met. Bodies crowd around the ball while spectators gather behind them. The scene belongs to rugby-style collegiate play of the later 1870 s; it must not be captioned as an eyewitness image of November 6,1869.
Photo details
Date
1879
Location
United States; Princeton–Yale match
Photographer
Arthur Burdett Frost, artist
Archive / collection
Arthur B. Frost / Harper’s Weekly, via Wikimedia Commons
Arthur B. Frost / Harper’s Weekly, via Wikimedia Commons
06 / 06
The first players return
Surviving members of the original Rutgers team were honored on the field decades later. The source catalogs this photograph to 1918. Their dark coats and the gathering around them show how the college had begun to treat its former students as participants in a historic event.
Photo details
Date
1918, according to the source catalog
Location
Rutgers, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Photographer
Photographer unidentified
Archive / collection
Rutgers University Athletics, via Wikimedia Commons
