A guide to the history of physical education

[239] Mrs. J. H. McCurdy, “The History of Physical Training at Mount Holyoke College,” in the American Physical Education Review for March, 1909.

[240] See “Instructions in Gymnastics, containing a full description of more than eight hundred exercises, and illustrated by five hundred engravings. By J. E. D’Alfonce, late Professor in the Military School in St. Petersburgh, and in Paris.” New York, George F. Nesbitt & Co., 1951. The author speaks in the preface of “seven years’ practice with pupils of all ages,” and of “the debt which I owe to America for the freedom I enjoy, and for the hospitality and friendship I have received from her citizens....”

[241] Page 60 of “The University of Virginia: Glimpses of Its Past and Present,” by John S. Patton and Sallie J. Doswell (Lynchburg, Va., 1900). See also a letter (“Due Tribute”) published in The Outlook for May 18, 1907 (85, p. 122).

[242] In Bartlett and Gifford’s “Dartmouth Athletics” (Concord, N. H., 1893).

[243] The Princeton Book. A Series of Sketches Pertaining to the History, Organization and Present Condition of the College of New Jersey. By Officers and Graduates of the College. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1879. See p. 268.

[244] It was opened for use December 8, 1857, according to an item in the Deutsche Turn-Zeitung for 1858, p. 44.

[245] This is the date given in Jahrbücher der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Turnerei (New York), 3, 55 (December, 1893). See also a reference in 2, 267 (July, 1893).

[246] For references in the University catalogue and the records of the Board of Trustees, and for a copy of the report in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette I am indebted to the kindness of Professor J. E. Bradford, of the department of history at Miami. The first hint of any such episode as the above was gained from the Jahrbücher mentioned in the footnote preceding this one.

[247] The donor was Henry Bromfield Rogers, Harvard 1822.

[248] The Yale Literary Magazine of March, 1860 (25, 230).

[249] Follansbee Goodrich Welch was born at Concord, N. H., June 8, 1843, and graduated from Dio Lewis’s Normal Institute for Physical Education. In addition to his duties at Yale he served as “Instructor in Physical Culture” at Dartmouth College from the spring of 1867 through the year 1867-68, and instructor in gymnastics at Wesleyan University 1868-69, besides conducting for a number of years an eight weeks summer “Normal Institute for the Training of Teachers in Dio Lewis’s New Gymnastics,” at the Glenwood Ladies’ Seminary, West Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1869 he published “Moral, Intellectual, and Physical Culture; or the Philosophy of True Living” (New York, Wood & Holbrook), Part I of which deals with “The Gymnasium,” and Part II with “the Dio Lewis System of Gymnastics.” The New York Homeopathic Medical College conferred on him the degree of M.D. in 1870, and he afterwards practised medicine in New York City.

[250] See “Four Years at Yale,” by a Graduate of ’69 (Lyman H. Bagg) (New Haven, Charles C. Chatfield & Co., 1871), pp. 31 and 402-405; and Dudley A. Sargent in “Yale College: A Sketch of Its History....” (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1879), 2, pp. 458 and 459.

[251] He had been a student in Harvard College at the time when Follen introduced the Jahn gymnastics there, and was in Andover Theological Seminary while the “Mechanical Association” was still flourishing.

[252] It was 72 by 50 feet and two stories high, with walls of Pelham gneiss or granite. The first floor contained an office, dressing rooms, and bowling alleys, and above this was the main hall for gymnastic exercises. The architect was Charles E. Parkes of Boston, and the total cost of the building and fixtures amounted to $15,000.

[253] He was born May 23, 1828, at Amherst, Massachusetts, where his father had been appointed professor of chemistry and natural history in the college three years before and was afterwards to become its third president (1845-1854). Upon completing his preparatory studies at Amherst Academy, and at Williston Seminary, in Easthampton, eleven miles to the southwest, he entered Amherst College and graduated with the class of 1849. Then from 1850 to 1861, with the exception of a single year (1852-53), he was teacher of elocution and natural science at Williston Seminary, and early in this period obtained the degree of doctor of medicine from the Harvard Medical School (1853).

[254] See the “Manual of Gymnastic Exercises, Arranged on Hygienic Principles and Adapted to Music. Compiled by E. H. Barlow, Captain of the Class of ’66, Barrett Gymnasium, Amherst College” (Amherst, 1863). A second edition was published in 1866, and a third in 1875. It will be recalled that in 1864 Amherst College conferred on Dio Lewis the honorary degree of Master of Arts.

[255] The gift of a new gymnasium to Amherst College in 1884, by C. M. Pratt of the class of ’79, brought new and much-needed facilities, to which important additions have been made during more recent years; but the unique contribution of the College, and of Dr. Hitchcock, himself, to the advancement of physical training in America was made in the two decades which succeeded the trustee meeting of August, 1859. Dr. Hitchcock was chairman of the meeting in Brooklyn at which the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education was organized (November 27, 1885). He was also its first president, a member of the committee on statistics and measurements, and a frequent contributor to the early programs.

[256] Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1841, March 16; removed to New York City at the age of thirteen, and in 1861 became a professional gymnast; as a member of the New York Caledonian Club was a leading figure in its annual games, and at national Caledonian meets he twice won the championship medal. He died at Princeton February 23, 1920.

[257] See Dr. E. M. Hartwell, “Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities” (Bureau of Education, Circular of Information No. 5, 1885. Washington, 1886), pp. 39, 60-67. It is possible that Cornell University and Hamilton, Union, and Wabash Colleges should be added to the list.

[258] See “The Life of Daniel Coit Gilman,” by Fabian Franklin (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1910), pp. 70-73.

[259] See Bulletin 1918, No. 13 of the United States Bureau of Education (Benjamin F. Andrews, “The Land-Grant of 1862 and the Land-Grant Colleges”), and an article by Herman Balson in The Outlook for May 4, 1901 (pp. 81-85).

[260] See “Rowing and Track Athletics: Rowing by Samuel Crowther, Track Athletics by Arthur Ruhl” (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1905); and “Football, the American Intercollegiate Game,” by Parke H. Davis (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911).

[261] The idea of the pulley weight is an old one. See an illustrated article in the Deutsche Turnzeitung, 1902, pp. 289-292, and Captain Chiosso’s “The Gymnastic Polymachinon” (London, Walton & Maberly; Paris and New York, H. Ballière, 1855).

[262] The appointment as assistant professor was for the usual term of five years. After that period, and until his retirement in September of 1919, his title was simply “Director of the Hemenway Gymnasium.”

[263] See Dr. Hartwell’s Report on “Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities” (Washington, 1886), pp. 41-59.

[264] At the meeting in Brooklyn which resulted in the organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education, in 1885, Dr. Sargent was elected one of three vice-presidents. In 1890 he was chosen president, and held the same office again in the years 1892-94 and 1899-1901. He was also an active member of the Society of Directors of Physical Education in Colleges from the time of its organization in 1897, serving as president in 1899. Outside of these professional associations he has been busy with voice and pen in the interest of wholesome and nationwide physical training, and against excesses in athletics, the abuse of military drill in the public schools, and other unwise measures. A list of his more important papers and addresses would include no less than forty titles (see pp. 9-22 in the “Fiftieth Anniversary” volume prepared in 1919 and presented to Dr. Sargent at a dinner given in his honor at Hotel Vendome, Boston, on the evening of December 27th of that year). Twelve papers and essays were collected into a volume under the title “Physical Education” and published in 1906 (Boston, etc., Ginn & Co.), and two years earlier another volume, “Health, Strength and Power,” had appeared (New York and Boston, H. M. Caldwell Co. Reissued in 1914 by the Dodge Publishing Co., New York).

[265] See the reports of a standing committee of the Society of Directors of Physical Education in Colleges, based on questionnaires sent out in 1909, 1915, and 1920, and published in the American Physical Education Review for February, 1912, March, 1916 and November, 1921. These reports supply the other figures quoted in succeeding paragraphs.

[266] An important step looking toward effective faculty control of intercollegiate athletics was taken when the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was formed in 1906. Four years later the name was changed to “National Collegiate Athletic Association.” Annual conventions have been held during the Christmas holidays since 1906.

[267] An “American Students Health Association” was organized in Chicago March 4, 1920, and held its first annual meeting in that city on December 31st of the same year.