ReMarx on Genealogy and History: October 2020

Parke Hill Davis might be the most famous Eastonian who you’ve never heard of. He was a lawyer, an orator, a politician, and a nationally known expert on college football.

Intercollegiate football - in fact, football itself - began on November 6, 1869. The first football game was played on that day in New Brunswick, NJ, between Rutgers University and a team from the College of New Jersey (now known as Princeton University). Rutgers won with a score of 6-4. (There’s a local connection to that first game. One of the Princeton players was Easton’s David Mixsell - Easton’s football tradition goes back to the very beginning of the game!)

Football as it was played then was vastly different than the game of today. Each team had 25 players on the field. The field was larger, but there was no end zone. The scoring was different. There were no uniforms, although the Rutgers players reportedly wore red headbands. Running with the ball was not permitted; nor was throwing it. As the name of the sport implies, the early game emphasized kicking. Despite the disapproval of college faculties and administrations, football slowly grew in popularity, primarily among the Eastern colleges.

The game’s rules were inconsistent; the home team often dictated the specific rules for a game. By 1873, several colleges realized that standardized rules would be helpful, so representatives of Princeton, Rutgers and Yale met in New York to start the process.

Meanwhile, in 1871, Josiah and Susan Davis of Kiantone, NY, welcomed their seventh child, a son who they named Parke Hill Davis. The Davis family relocated to nearby Jamestown, where Parke graduated from high school in 1889. Princeton was his next stop; he played football for three seasons, as a tackle and an end. (The positions of that era don’t directly correspond with those of today.) One of the coaches during Parke’s playing days was Woodrow Wilson, a Princeton faculty member at the time. He was later elected as President of the United States.

Davis was a good athlete. In addition to playing football, he was a member of Princeton’s tug-of-war team. (Tug-of-war, using 4-man teams, was a serious sport in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. In fact, it was included in the Olympics for about 20 years.) He was interested in boxing; he reportedly sparred more than once with professional fighter Jake Kilrain. In 1890, he went to New York to take a boxing lesson from world-champion heavyweight John L. Sullivan - who promptly knocked one of Davis’s teeth out. (Sullivan reportedly felt badly about the incident and bought Davis some drinks as a form of apology.)

Following his graduation from Princeton in 1893, Davis headed west to Madison, WI, where he coached the University of Wisconsin football team to a winning record of 4-2. He returned east to Massachusetts for 1894 and coached Amherst College to a winning season, with a record of 7-5-1. While at Amherst, a student introduced himself to Davis by saying “Call me Red”. Red became an informal assistant coach for Davis; his actual name was Calvin Coolidge and in 1923, he became President of the United States.

In 1895, Davis came to Easton as the football coach and athletic director at Lafayette College. His 3-year tenure on College Hill was successful; 1895 saw a winning football record of 6-2. In 1896, the team’s record was 11-0-1. In 1897, the season came out at 9-2-1. His overall record for his three years was 26-4-2. Lafayette’s football success was not the result of chance. Davis and a few others worked diligently to build enthusiasm on the campus. As Davis described: “We bragged and blustered, orated and printed glowingly about our prospects. We worked the college and the town systematically up to a football frenzy.” In his role as the College’s athletic director, he used his energy to build success in baseball, in track & field and in intramural participation.

His most spectacular football success came in 1896. On October 24, Lafayette travelled to Philadelphia to play the powerful University of Pennsylvania. Already an underdog, Lafayette’s chances were further lowered when the team captain was stricken with appendicitis and hospitalized just a couple of hours before the game. Nevertheless, Lafayette shocked the football world with a 6-4 upset of mighty Penn. The win was not without controversy. Through some bizarre scheduling, Lafayette had played West Virginia University three times in the course of a few days and become familiar with the players. One of West Virginia’s best players was lineman Fielding Yost, who “transferred” to Lafayette just in time to play in the Penn game. Penn recognized Yost and questioned his eligibility, Yost and Davis somehow convinced them that Yost was now a legitimate Lafayette student and should be allowed to play. Within days after taking part in the big game Yost was back in West Virginia, not attending Lafayette classes. He eventually became the long-time coach at the University of Michigan, known as “Hurry Up” Yost.

In his spare time, Davis had been studying law and was admitted to the Northampton County bar in December, 1897. He resigned from his positions at Lafayette in order to work full-time at his law practice. He became active in politics, affiliating himself with the Democratic party. He was in demand as a public speaker, especially for occasions which called for patriotic orations. In 1901, he was elected as the District Attorney of Northampton County. At the end of his term, he returned to his private legal practice; his cases included defending accused suspects in several high-profile cases. He was suggested as a candidate for county judge and for mayor of Easton, although neither materialized.

Throughout his adult life, he was respected nationwide as a football expert and analyst, writing about the game for newspapers, magazines, and even the Encyclopedia Britannica. In 1911, he published a history of college football titled Football - The American Intercollegiate Game.

His special interest was historic football statistics. In the 1930s, he undertook a massive project of reviewing all college football records back to 1869 and choosing a national champion for each year. (The fact that he listed his own Lafayette team as a co-champion for 1896 did not appear to greatly bother anyone.) His interest in history was not limited to college football; he acquired, and then contributed, a valuable collection of early documents related to Northampton County and elsewhere.

For a number of years, Davis was one of Princeton’s delegates to the college football Rules Committee. He was involved in such decisions as adding end zones to the field, adding players’ numbers to jerseys, dividing games into quarters and reducing the use of the dangerous offensive tactic known as the wedge.

Princeton announced that October 13,1934 would be Parke Davis Day at the campus, but Davis died on June 5, 1934 at his Easton home, 241 Spring Garden Street. He was 62, and died of kidney disease. He was survived by his wife, Edith (Detwiller), three daughters and a son. His burial took place at Riegelsville Union Cemetery, Bucks County; his stone there is marked with the Princeton logo and what appears to be an incorrect place of birth. His wife is also buried there, along with the couple’s son John and their daughter Elizabeth. Two other daughters, Cynthia and Katherine, are buried elsewhere.