by Larry LaTourette


When Chicago football fans think of the great names from the city's gridiron past, Augustus H. Hornsby doesn't exactly flash to the front of the list.  In fact, except for a few small mentions in a couple of football history books written by Alexander Weyand in the 1950s, A.H. Hornsby is now totally forgotten.

A shame, that, since A.H. Hornsby introduced organized football to Chicago in 1875, and is directly responsible for bringing organized football to Northwestern University.

I write "organized football" to distinguish what Hornsby accomplished from what passed for American football in Chicago before 1875.  Yes, football of a sort was being played in the Windy City even then.  As early as the mid 1860s, teams throughout the city were playing the crude soccer-rugby combination that would eventually evolve into American football.  However, the teams were not specifically football teams, but general athletic clubs, playing football as part of a set of games during picnics or field day events. 

Typical of such events is a notice that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on July 18, 1869.  In it, the Trib announced that the Irish Rides (Sheridan Guards) would hold a picnic at Haas Park¹ in August.  During the picnic there was to be "a grand game of football between the twelve of the Rides and the same number of Zonaves, the victors to retain the ball."

Hornsby wanted to form a team specifically made for football, and he wanted to play by the rules as they were being developed by schools in the East.  According to Weyand, Hornsby was born in India, and he learned soccer and rugby by playing in England.²  Hornsby was keenly aware, however, of the new game that had been developed by Yale and other schools.  Vital to the new game were matches that Yale played against Columbia in 1872 and 1874.

On October 23, 1875, Hornsby wrote the following plea to the Chicago Tribune³:


On a side note, the mention of the "Harvard College boys" in the text above refers to the now-legendary game that Harvard played against an all-star team in Canada, which was another critical game in the development of the rules of American football.

Hornsby got his wish: readers must have responded, because in a matter of days he had formed the Chicago Football Club and was preparing for what would be the very first organized game of football in Chicago history.  That game was supposed to be against the Chicago Barge Club, but the local boating and social club could not muster enough players. So, instead of a full game, the two clubs held a scrimmage in November 1875 According to the Tribune, the scrimmage was a "rather mixed-up affair," since both clubs were still somewhat unfamiliar with the (still evolving) rules. The two clubs swapped a few players and staged several football plays.

The Chicago Football Club, again taking its cue from the Eastern colleges, scheduled a Thanksgiving Day football game and made its second attempt at a game, again ending in a simple scrimmage.  Their third scrimmage was held on Christmas Day, but was not played against an outside team-- the Club simply played an extended intrasquad practice.  For the first full game with an outside team, and its first game of 1876, the CFC chose to play Northwestern on the Washington's Birthday holiday.

To prep for the game, the CFC informed NU of the new rules of football, and NU chose 20 students for its first organized football team.  The student group was led by a team president, Frank F. Casseday.  Casseday, a junior studying Latin and the sciences, came from Evanston and played on the school's baseball team.



Among the other members of the original Northwestern football team: senior Walter Lee Brown, who  studied chemistry at NU; Edward Kinman, a classics sophomore from Jacksonville, IL, who played alongside Casseday on the baseball team; and students named E. Monroe and Asher.⁴

The Tribune ran the following article leading up to the game⁵:


The article is particularly notable because it lists, for the first time anywhere, the earliest football players representing the city of Chicago.

And so football came to Northwestern on Tuesday, February 22, 1876.   NU hosted the game in Evanston.  The game was a relatively big event, and reporters from several Chicago papers as well as NU's student paper were on hand to cover the game.  The Tribune's account of the game, a three-goal to nothing loss for Northwestern, was as follows:


"The game was prolonged a quarter of an hour over the hour agreed upon, and when called the score stood 3 goals for Chicago, to nothing for the University.  The latter, though beaten, have some good material to make a team from if they will practice the game under the rules. . . . "⁶

The Chicago Times⁷ reported that the NU players were given the choice of goals to defend and chose to kick with the wind.

The school newspaper The Tripod⁸ later reported that the NU team "intend to give those representatives of 'Old Rugby' [the Chicago Football Club] a hard time to beat them in a scrimmage when they come here again."

It is unlikely that the CFC and NU met for a rematch.  The CFC continued to play during 1876, but nothing is recorded of them afterward.  Another Chicago Football Club appeared in the early 1880s, but this was a soccer club that was unrelated to Hornsby's group.  As for Northwestern, the players did not face another team from outside the university that year.  In 1878 they made several attempts to play an intercollegiate game, but did not do so.  NU did play a couple of games against high schools in 1879 and 1880, all unofficial.  Finally, in 1882 the school played its first intercollegiate game against Lake Forest, and this is where the official history of the team begins.



By the early 1900s, when the school began to keep historical records of the team, the 1876 game had already slipped from memory.  Walter Paulson does mention the game in his book, The Tale of the Wildcats.  Paulson, NU's sports publicity director, wrote the book in conjunction with the school's centennial celebration in 1951.  In that book, Paulison writes:

"The first evidence of any football activity at Northwestern appeared in an article in The Tripod of Feb. 24, 1876, which said: 'The trial game of football on Tuesday last enthused the boys so much that they formed a Football Association and intend to give the representatives of "Old Rugby" a hard time in a scrimmage when they come here again.'  Just who the representatives of 'Old Rugby' were is not known. . . ."⁹

While Paulson found and noted the Tripod account, he was clearly unaware of the Chicago Times or Tribune accounts of the game, which told exactly who played for the Chicago Football Club and showed decisively that the game was an organized event with a Northwestern team selected to represent the university against a functioning football club.