Possumblog

Fun Auburn History!

I got an e-mail from Kenny Smith this morning, who noted that he'd managed to snag a nice bit of Auburniana over at Reed Books--a blue pennant with the Auburn name on it, along with the old Alabama Polytechnic Institute seal.

Kenny wondered when people started calling the college located in Auburn "Auburn" rather than "A.P.I." or "A&M" or whatever, and I got to wondering myself. I told Kenny I figured the usage probably predated the official name change in 1959 by several years, but still, there's nothing like doing some research.

SO, off to the Auburn University Digital Library, where they have all kinds of good stuff available online. First stop was the photos, where I found a couple that seemed to indicate the interchangeability of Auburn and A.P.I was relatively old, such as this one of some guys loitering at the train station. As you can see from the modern caption that quotes a book written in 1901--

[...] A seasoned conductor on the Atlanta & West Point line might have doubted this picture. "I believe they is wuss than Injuns!" such a conductor told Professor James P.C. Southall, who was taking his first ride to Auburn and a teaching job there in 1901. "They don't mean no harm, they's jes' full of life an' up to all kinds of devilment from mornin' to night, and at night too. They never wait for the train to stop, but climbs on board and jumps off again. . . Folks say Auburn's the bes' all-'roun school in these parts, not excep'in the University at Tuscaloosa or even Georgia Tech in Atlanta. . ." (Quotation reprinted from Southall's Memoirs of The Abbots of Old Bellevue with the permission of the University of Virginia.)

--it appears that even by 1901 or so, "Auburn" seemed to be common enough for the train conductor to use it when talking about the school, rather than the town.

But an even better source might be the yearbooks--Auburn has a nice online collection of Glomeratas, including one from 1897.

There are probably many pages where it has similar language, but if you look at this page from the athletic section and read all the way down close to the bottom, you will see this quote:

"In looking back through all these seasons of good and bad luck, it may not be difficult to pick out a team that would well represent Auburn's development in football [...]"

(coached by none other than John Heisman, Ed.), and if you flip through to the following page, it has similar wording about the baseball team.

Another quote of interest can be found on this page, which not only uses the name "Auburn," but also gives us some insight on the students enrolled there:

"The average Auburn cadet is 19 years, 1 month and 10 days old, is 5 feet 7 1/2 inches tall, and weighs 144 3/4 pounds. The average co-ed. is 5 feet 3 inches tall, weighs 109 pounds, and as to their age--well, for fear of trouble, we will leave that to be guessed." [...]

Heh. Indeed.

As I told Kenny, I think it's probably a pretty safe assumption that people have been using Auburn as the name of the school for a long, LONG time.

One place I also decided to look was the collection of old football programs, some dating back to 1938. None of them say anything other than "Auburn," and there's not an A.P.I. seal anywhere amongst them.

To spark a bit of controversy, many people express confusion over the term "War Eagle" and Auburn's official team name, Tigers. Want to make an Auburn fan mad? Say something like, "Boy, those War Eagles suck." They'll ignore the insult part and jump on you to correct you-- "HEY! We're the TIGERS! "War Eagle" is a battle cry!" or somesuch. Not that I have EVER done such a thing...

Anyway, what caught my eye was this program from the 1938 game against Birmingham-Southern. Look down there at the bottom--"The War Eagles."

Oops.

I think this was supposed to be the name of the program--The War Eagle--because it was corrected in subsequent programs, such as this cute one from the Mississippi State game. After the '38 season, it looks like they dropped that name for the more prosaic "Official Program" moniker.

To leave you with a final mystery, did Marilyn Monroe ever visit Auburn?

Posted by Terry Oglesby at July 25, 2006 10:13 AM