Fun at School
"Celebrating Matriculation," in The Yale Naught-ical Almanac for 1873 (1872).
Yale published its first yearbook in 1806. But later graduating classes at Yale and other colleges published less formal, more light-hearted compilations. Recently, we acquired such an item: a twenty-page pamphlet entitled The Statistics of the Class of 'Seventy-Three, Yale College (1873). Among the statistics listed are facial hair by category (e.g., "Moustache," "Sides and Moustache," "Thin Moustache," "Awful Thin Moustache," and "Moustache and Feeble Imperial"). Looking at another comic publication by Yale students (shown here), we located an image indeed showing a student with a mustache.
In the section on morals, the compilers write, "We are eminently distinguished for those lesser immoralities which shock old ladies. Out of the whole class [of 113 graduates] only 92 are addicted to card playing, but 53 punch billiards and 81 dance, of which number 7 (from principle) confine themselves to square dances. Eight neither play cards nor billiards, or dance, but one of these plays cards during vacation, and another has but just reformed." Under the category of music they write, "No less than 69 claim to be able to sing. These may be classified as 30 good singers, 30 who sing with a crowd, and 9 caterwaulers." All in all, it's a splendid example of 19th-century college humor. The compilers ("C.A.R." and "F.J.S.") went on to careers where an interest in statistics - and a sense of humor - probably helped them. Charles Addison Russell (1852-1902) served eight terms as a U.S. congressman from Connecticut, and Frederick Job Shepard (1850-1934) worked as a librarian in the Buffalo, N.Y., public library after many years as a newspaper journalist.
Graduating classes at our local University of Pennsylvania, roughly a third the size of Yale's during the early 1870s (and located east of the Schuylkill River until 1875), issued similar publications. The typology of facial hair is less well-defined in University Record (1872), published by the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania. The compilers write, "Thirteen moustaches, and six pair of 'sides' are currently reported." They also claim that, "In regard to chewers, smokers and billiard-players, we are happy to state that we have a clear score and a good conscience, i.e. we own none but splendid and successful specimens."
It appears that Penn and Yale men shared a common youth culture in the 1870s. But, perhaps in keeping with the somewhat more subdued tone, two of the three compilers of the Penn publication became ministers - one of the main career paths for college graduates in 19th-century America.