Charles O. Gill

Charles Otis Gill (March 4, 1868 – June 2, 1959) was an American Congregationalist clergyman and college football player and coach. With Gifford Pinchot he co-authored two influential books on the state of rural churches in the United States.

Charles O. Gill
Biographical details
Born(1868-03-04)March 4, 1868
Walpole, Massachusetts, U.S.
DiedJune 2, 1959(1959-06-02) (aged 91)
Waterford, Vermont, U.S.
Playing career
1885–1889Yale
Position(s)Tackle
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1894California
1908New Hampshire
Head coaching record
Overall1–8–2 (.182)
Accomplishments and honors
Awards

Gill played football at Yale University from 1885 to 1889.[1] He was captain of the Yale team and was on the first College Football All-America Team in 1889.[2] Gill served as the head football coach at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1894, and for the New Hampshire football team in 1908,[lower-alpha 1] compiling a career college football coaching record of 1–8–2.[3]

Early life and college career

Born in Walpole, Massachusetts, on March 4, 1868, Gill graduated from Yale in 1889, where he was a member of Skull and Bones.[4][5] He played football at Yale from 1885 to 1889. In 1888 the team went undefeated and was not scored upon.[6] In 1889, Gill was captain of the team under coach Walter Camp and that year Yale scored 665 points while only giving up 31 points to their opponents.[2] That year, Caspar Whitney selected Gill and teammates Amos Alonzo Stagg and Pudge Heffelfinger for the first ever College Football All-America Team.

Minister, missionary, author

In addition to his accomplishments on the gridiron for Yale, Gill attended the Yale Divinity School from 1889 to 1890, then the Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1892 to 1894, where he received his graduate degree and was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church on July 25, 1894. He served as pastor of the Westmore, Vermont, Congregational Church in 1894 and 1895 and then as a foreign missionary for the Presbyterian Church in Peking, China, from 1895 to 1997. He returned to Vermont and served in East Fairfield, Vermont (1897–1898), Westmore, Vermont (1898–1902), Jericho, Vermont (1902–1904), West Lebanon, New Hampshire (1904–1906), and Hartland, Vermont (1906–1909). Remaining in Harland, he collaborated with his Yale football teammate Gifford Pinchot in writing The Country Church - The Decline Of Its Influence and The Remedy published by Macmillan Company in 1913. This led to his appointment as the Secretary of the Committee on Church & Country Life, Social Service Commission, Federal Council of Churches, in Columbus, Ohio, from 1913 to 1919. In that capacity he wrote a second book with Pinchot, Six Thousand Country Churches, published by MacMillan in 1919. While in Ohio, he was also Secretary of the Ohio Rural Life Association, a member of the Commission on Interchurch Cooperation, and Supervisor of rural church survey work for the Interchurch World Movement.[7]

He returned to Vermont as pastor in Hartland until his retirement in 1929, when he relocated to Waterford, Vermont, and took up farming. He remained in Waterford until his death on June 2, 1959.[8][9]

Head coaching record
Year Team Overall ConferenceStanding Bowl/playoffs
California Golden Bears (Independent) (1894)
1894 California 0–1–2
California: 0–1–2
New Hampshire (Independent) (1908)
1908 New Hampshire 1–7
New Hampshire: 1–7
Total:1–8–2

Notes
  1. The school was then named New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts; it would become the University of New Hampshire in 1923 and would adopt the Wildcats nickname in 1926.

References
  1. Yale Her Campus Classrooms and Athletics by Walter Camp, L. C. Page and Company, Boston 1899
  2. The Yale Football Story by Tim Cohane, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York 1951
  3. "Charles O. Gill Records by Year". College Football Data Warehouse. Archived from the original on August 15, 2004. Retrieved December 1, 2007.
  4. "Archived copy". FamilySearch. Archived from the original on September 28, 2012. Retrieved March 3, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. Catalogue of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. The Delta Kappa Epsilon council. 1910. p. 179. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
  6. "Charles Gill, 91, Retired Minister". The New York Times. June 3, 1959.
  7. Football Y Men 1872 - 1919, Men of Yale Series Volume I, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 1962
  8. Union Theological Seminary Alumni Catalogue, 1836-1947
  9. The Country Life Movement and the American Churches, Merwin Swanson, American Society of Church History, 1977
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