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Percy D. Haughton

Staten Island, New York, 1876 - 1924

BiographyHaughton, Percy Duncan (11 July 1876-27 Oct. 1924), college football coach and baseball executive, was born on Staten Island, New York, the son of Malcolm Graeme Haughton and Mary Nesbit Lawrence. Haughton grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, and attended Groton School, where he captained the football team and played baseball. Entering Harvard University in 1895, he continued to play baseball, serving as team captain his senior year. He also played varsity football for three years, as tackle and fullback. Recognized as one of the great punters in football history, Haughton after his junior year was accorded second-team All-America status by Walter Camp. Following graduation in 1899, he coached football at Cornell University for two years, compiling a 16-5 won-lost record and achieving recognition by beating Princeton University twice. Haughton returned to the Boston area, where he entered a banking firm; in 1910 he joined a stock brokerage firm. In 1911 he married a widow, Gwendolen Whistler Howell, the grandniece of the painter James McNeill Whistler. They had one daughter.

On his return to the Boston area, Haughton had acted as a nonpaid assistant coach for Harvard's football teams until in 1908 he was asked to become head coach. Since 1876 Harvard had beaten Yale University only three times in twenty-six games, and Harvard had not scored at all against Yale in the past six years. In his first season as head coach, Haughton ended the string of Yale's shutouts. He coached at Harvard through 1916, and during his tenure Harvard won 5, lost 2, and tied 2 against Yale, won 5 of 6 against Princeton, and compiled a 71-7-5 record, including a 33-game unbeaten streak.

Not employed by the college, Haughton was highly paid through an alumni fund. For the decade preceding U.S. entry into World War I, Harvard's team under his guidance was a dominant competitor in college football. He was an innovative coach, who used ball-handling deception, popularized the trap play, and was one of the first coaches to deploy a five-man defensive line with linebackers shifting positions behind the scrimmage line. When he became part owner and president of the Boston Braves baseball team in 1916, Haughton stayed on for one more season as football coach at Harvard. In 1917, after the United States entered World War I, he resigned from the Braves to serve in the army. He was a major in the chemical warfare service, fighting in France in the Tryon Sector and the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

Following the war, Haughton reentered the investment business, but in 1923, since the position he sought as athletic director at Harvard was not forthcoming, he accepted an offer to coach the Columbia University football team. In the middle of his second season at Columbia, after having compiled an 8-5-1 record, he died unexpectedly of angina pectoris.

Haughton was known for his severe and highly organized practices. He wrote of football as "a miniature war game played under somewhat more civilized rules of conduct." Later, describing his coaching methods, he said: "I am a strict disciplinarian and my football squad is going to be like an army." His teams were well drilled in fundamentals, and they played with a marked team spirit. His combined coaching record was 95 wins, 17 losses, and 6 ties, a .831 winning record. In 1951 he was elected to the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame. He was also national squash racquets champion in 1906 and a doubles champion in 1913.

Bibliography

Materials related to Haughton, including sketches in the Harvard College Class of 1899, are in the Harvard University Archives. Haughton's views on football can be found in his book Football and How to Watch It (1922; rev. ed., 1924). Biographical sketches are in Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Mar. 1925; Edwin Pope, Football's Greatest Coaches (1955); and Ronald L. Mendell and Timothy B. Phares, Who's Who in Football (1974). See also Thomas G. Bergin, The Game: The Harvard-Yale Football Rivalry, 1875-1983 (1984); John A. Blanchard, ed., The H Book of Harvard Athletics, 1852-1922 (1923); Morris A. Bealle, The History of Harvard Football, 1874-1948 (1948); Tom Perrin, Football: A College History (1987); Donald G. Herring, Sr., Forty Years of Football (1940); Tim Cohane, Gridiron Grenadiers (1948); Allison Danzig, The History of American Football: Its Great Teams, Players, and Coaches (1956); and Alexander M. Weyand, American Football: Its History and Development (1926). Obituaries are in the New York Times, 28 Oct. 1924, and Literary Digest, 15 Nov. 1924.

Ronald A. Smith

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Citation:
Ronald A. Smith. "Haughton, Percy Duncan";
http://www.anb.org/articles/19/19-00076.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Fri Aug 09 2013 15:17:56 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
Copyright © 2000 American Council of Learned Societies.

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