can you help identify this team photo?

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Posted By: Paul

I'm hoping to find some information about this photo:

Approximate year.
What letters are on the uniform.
Names of any recognizable players.
What team could this possibly be.
Where it might have been taken (A long shot, but maybe somebody knows).

Thanks!

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

1870's.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Now that's a beautiful photo. Any way you could take a loop to the insignia and see if you can tell what the letters are? If I take a loop to the screen it all just disappears.

It looks like a serious team.

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Posted By: Paul

My first impression is a small "e" in front of a capital letter such as "T" or "J". The insignia letters are not easy to figure out even after zooming in.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

A good guess is that it's a college team.

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Posted By: Paul

A few of the players seem young and could be college age, but others such as the man on the bottom left appear older than that.

I like the symmetry and setting of this photo. If you picture an imaginary line down the middle, both sides of the photo look nearly identical. The photographer had a good eye for a nice photo!

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Posted By: barrysloate

They look older than college age to me.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I stick with my guess that it's a college team.

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Posted By: barrysloate

David- let's compromise and call it a graduate school team.

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Posted By: bmarlowe

I think that trying to determine the ages of players from a low res scan like this is pretty problematic.

The building could be a university building. The uniforms are pre-knickers - so the '70s seems about right.

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Posted By: Peter Thomas

The stone in the building makes New York, New England, New Jersey or Pennsylvania likely location and building is pre 1870.

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Posted By: Rhys

It is from the 1870's and most likely the early to mid 1870's. My guess would be 1874 give or take a year or two.

It is a College Team. I have yet to see a non-college team to pose in front of a building like this but I have literally seen hundreds and hundreds of images where they have. Colleges back in the 1870's would often consist of older men who would take years to graduate from prep-schools before finally being admitted, or would start later. Colleges would also employ non-students on their athletic teams in the days before formal requirements so dont let the ages of todays college students make you think that is the way it always was.

Rhys

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Posted By: barrysloate

Some of the guys in the photo look to be at least mid-twenties so that would explain it.

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Posted By: Jimmy Leiderman

Looks a lot like a cabinet card I once owned that pictured the Pine Tree Club from the Wesleyan Seminary in Bangor, Maine.

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Posted By: bmarlowe

Woody Wagenhorst, member of U of Penn team in 1891, at age 28