Remembering Trinity College Football Team of 1891, Oct. 28, 1922

The Famous Trinity College Eleven of 1891, Champions of the South

Following are those who composed the famous Trinity college football team of 1891, which won the championship of the south: (1) T.T. James, (2) Jake Hanes, (3) Ben Black, (4) L.T. Hartsell, (5) Dr. J.P. Turner, (6) Carl Bandy, (7) Will W. Flowers, (8) Isaac Erwin Avery, (9) E.S. Whitaker, (10) M.T. Plyler, (11) Plato Durham, (12) Walter Murphy, (13) Stonewall Durham, (14) Doc Caviness, (15) Fred Harper, (16) tom Daniels, (17) Will Turner, (18) Billy McDowell, (19) Bob Durham.

Trinity’s ’91 Champions With Their Great Skill Crushed South’s Teams. . . Heroes by Might. . . Many Ministers and Well Known Me on Team Feared Far and Wide. . . They Wore Mustaches

Trinity college men, rallying to Greensboro Saturday for the great inter-denominational football game between the Davidson Presbyterians and the Trinity Methodists, will give many a long cheer for the hopefuls of the 1922 eleven. But those older Trinity men who knew the institution before the Duke millions moved it to Durham will wish for the presence on the field of those giants of that other Trinity who in 1891 blazed their name all over the football world and won by the might of their own brawn the championship of the south.

No matter what record Capt. Tom Neal’s team may make this year, it can never, in the estimation of the old Trinity, rank with the team which Capt. Tom Daniels of New Bern led to the highest peak of football glory the institution has ever known.

Those were the days of giants, and those giants of 1891, who played on the field in which a ditch had to be jumped before the goal was reached, scorned the protection of modern padding and never dreamed of a coaching system. What need of a paid coach when they had their own Tom Daniels, who knew more football than anybody else and proved it every day on the field, and when they had the three Durham boys, Plato, Stonewall and Bob, and those giants of the line, Erwin Avery, Doc Caviness, the Plyler brothers, the lamented Whitaker at center, Jake Hanes, Billy McDowell, and our own Anti-Saloon League Rye Licker Davis?

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From the front page of the Greensboro Daily News, Oct. 28, 1922