The Record of 1910 and 1911, School publications covering the 1910-1911 academic year,  provide some insight into what student life was like one hundred years ago.  The Reverend Dr. Henry Ferguson was Rector, only the third Rector in the School’s then fifty-four year history.  Interestingly, Ferguson served as Rector from 1906 to 1911, a one-hundred year parallel to our current – and retiring – Rector, William R. Matthews, Jr.

In 1910, Kimball Studio of Concord took this photograph of the entire School.  The Record tells us that there were 328 students, all boys,  with 1.5% of them listed as coming from outside the United States.  In 2010, the students number 537, with a roughly equal portion of girls to boys,  and 18% coming from outside the U.S.

Club sports were a very large part of student life in 1910, and The Record is full of statistics from the various competition results. For example, in addition to the main SPS football team of eleven students (whose average weight, The Record informs us, was 165 lbs.), each of the Clubs – Isthmian, Old Hundred, and Delphian – had three football teams: First, Second and Third Elevens.  That must have made for a lot of football games!  The Isthmian First Elevens won the championship that year with a 4 – 0 record, scoring a total of 33 points. In 2010, the Club Cup was organized to help renew interest in the long tradition of Club spirit at St. Paul’s School.

One hundred years ago, on December 5th, The Record notes the first skating on School Pond, and two days later the last two hours of classes were given off as a skating holiday.  On December 8th, Long Pond was “entirely open for skating.” Although Lower School Pond has only a thin skim of ice today, it won’t be long before the rinks are set up and the sound of freshly sharpened skates scraping against the ice will be heard outside Ohrstrom Library.  For all the differences that have emerged over the last one hundred years, there are still some things that would be comfortingly familiar to the students of 1910.

Related posts:

1. From the Archives: Delphian Football Eleven, 1897
2. From the Archives: Club Banners
3. From the Archives: Hockey on Lower School Pond

The first photo in this blog series is of the Delphian Club football team from 1897.  Each of the three clubs at St. Paul’s School – the Isthmian Club, the Old Hundred Club (both founded in 1859),  and the Delphian Club (founded in 1888), had three strings of eleven players on their club football teams.  This photo is likely of the first string, the Eleven I.  It is easy to imagine that the Delphian Club colors of maroon and black are being worn  in this photo.

Although there are no names listed on the photo itself, The Record, St. Paul’s School, 1898, lists the members of “The Delphian Club Foot-Ball Elevens, Fall, 1897″  as follows:

Henry Blackstone Farrar, Captain

Line: Prescott M. Metcalf, Ethelbert I. Low, Ernest T. H. Metcalf, Douglas Kimball, Peter F. Rothermel, Robert W. Glendinning, Franklin Farrel, Jr.

Quarter-Back: Henry B. Farrar

Half-Backs: William C. Douglas, William Frew

Full-Back: Lion Gardiner

Fall of 1897 was not a good season for the Delphians – they didn’t win any of the four games played, and scored zero points.  An average of the previous ten years has them in better standing, winning 18 of a possible 38 games, and putting them second to the Isthmian’s record of 30 out of 38.  This detail of the photo gives a better view of the clothing worn to play football at that time – very little padding and quite a few rips and  tears.

Related posts:

1. The Year in Review: 1910
2. From the Archives: Club Banners
3. From the Archives: Clearing the Ice