Sometimes an old newspaper headline requires a little more investigation.
Such a case is this, from page six of the May 9, 1949 Post-Standard: “Cazenovia Group Urges Village as Site of Grid Hall."
“Continuing efforts to bring the national football shrine and hall of fame to Cazenovia, village and town representatives left Syracuse by plane yesterday for New York City where they will confer today with members of the site selection committee,” the article states.
Was it true that there were plans 70 years ago to build a football hall of fame in Upstate New York, joining the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown? And what were the connections between the small Finger Lakes community of Cazenovia and the game?
It was true.
From 1947 to 1949, Cazenovia battled with several communities to be the home of a new national football hall of fame. (The idea began as a place to honor professional, college and high school football, but eventually, in 1963, the Pro Football Hall of Fame would open in Canton, Ohio.)
New York’s governor, Thomas Dewey, got behind the idea, arguing that New York had the “greatest number of football enthusiasts,” as well as, more professional teams, playing fields and stadiums than any other state.
The Empire State already had baseball’s hall of fame, “it seems to me singularly suitable that their football counterparts should also be here,” Dewey said.
But why Cazenovia?
The town claimed to be the home of football’s founder, and unlike the dubious legend of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball at Cooperstown, there was a bit of truth to their story, although the game looked nothing like what we know today.
And it all began with John Brown’s Raid in 1859
****
Gerrit Smith Miller was born on Jan. 30, 1845 in Cazenovia.
He was named after his grandfather, the famous abolitionist Gerrit Smith of Peterboro.
As a young man, Miller, known as “Gat,” was a good athlete and enjoyed organizing sports teams.
At the age of 14, he organized the Bobolink Baseball Club in his hometown and was elected president of the team and captain of the club. He was a pitcher and was the winning hurler when they defeated their “deadly rivals,” the Young Americans of Canastota.
His grandfather’s anti-slavery work would soon disrupt things.
In October 1859, John Brown led a slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. It was learned that the raid had been financially supported by Smith after a check signed by Smith was found in Brown’s pocket.
The state of Virginia hung Brown as a traitor and wanted to extradite Smith south.
Smith said he was not aware of the raid and was said to have suffered a mental breakdown and entered the state asylum in Utica.
Possibly to remove his grandson from the scene, Gerrit Smith Miller was sent to the Dixwell School in Boston in 1860.
The young men at the school played a violent and chaotic game called “Boston football,” which was a lot more like soccer than American football.
“The ‘idea’ of the game was to kick the ball over the opponents’ goal line,” Miller told the Syracuse Journal in 1927. “If the ball was caught in the air, the catcher could run with it, as long as he was being chased by an opposing player, but as soon as the pursuer stopped, the ball had to be kicked.”
- Artist's rendition of an Oneida Football Club game played at Boston Common in the 1860s. Cazenovia native Gerrit Smith Miller organized and captained the team. Courtesy of WikipediaCourtesy of Wikipedia
The forward pass was outlawed and “after the ball was picked up off the ground could not be carried but could be dribbled toward the goal.”
There was no tackling, but Miller said “one player could grab an opponent by the shoulders and try to hurl him to the ground.”
The ball they played with was round and the winner was the first team to win three out of five innings.
The game was played during recess, a chance for the young men to blow off some steam.
But Miller grew tired of these games among classmates and thought that football should be organized.
In the fall of 1862, he formed the Oneida Football Club and was elected the team’s first captain.
“The name Oneida was adopted when the boys who were to make up the club were meeting in Peterboro,” Miller said. “In the distance they could see Oneida Lake, so one suggested they be called the Oneidas, which was approved.”
He would later say it was the first club of its kind in the world.
He organized games among the other local schools around the Boston area and were never beaten. In fact, they never allowed a single goal.
Gerrit Smith Miller would attend Harvard University before returning to Central New York. He lived at his grandfather’s estate at Peterboro and bred Holstein cattle. His herd was recognized as being the “basis of the Holstein industry of the United States.”
The soccer-like game he helped organize in Boston was eventually blended with rugby and would develop into the game of football we know today.
In 1923, Miller and his Oneidas teammates were honored with a monument in Boston Common for being the “first organized football club in the United States. “
For the rest of his life, Miller was called the “founder of football,” and as the college game exploded in popularity, he became a frequent commentator on the sport.
“I hope American boys always play football,” Miller said in 1933. “It’s good for them – makes men out of them.”
Gerrit Smith Miller, third from the left, poses with five of his Oneida Football Club teammates at the 1925 ceremony at Boston Common honoring the team and its role in the discovery of "football"
He followed the game closely and would often telephone legendary Colgate coach Andy Kerr to discuss the team’s games.
He predicted that professional football “cannot last” because it needed the “college spirit to make it a success.”
Miller died in 1937 at the age of 92.
Ten years later, Miller’s memory was invoked to bring a football hall of fame to Cazenovia.
“Inasmuch as Cazenovia was the birthplace of Gerrit Smith Miller, football’s founder, what could be more fitting than the suggestion that Cazenovia should be selected as the site for the proposed football shrine,” the Cazenovia Republican wrote on Dec. 11, 1947.
Other communities also submitted bids, including Boston, New Haven, Connecticut and New Brunswick, New Jersey, where, in 1869, Rutgers played Princeton in the first college football game ever played.
In September 1949, New Brunswick was chosen ahead of Cazenovia.
Originally scheduled to open in 1951, the now-called College Football Hall of Fame, did not open its doors until 1978 in Kings Mill, Ohio.
It closed in 1992 and relocated to South Bend, Indiana where it remained until 2012, when a $68 million facility was built in Atlanta, Georgia.
This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle: Email | 315-427-3958.