Crawford Blagden

Crawford Blagden (March 2, 1881 – January 11, 1937) was an American football player. He played college football for the Harvard Crimson football team and was selected as a consensus All-American at the tackle position in 1901.

Crawford was born in 1881 in New York City.[1] His grandfather, Luther C. Clark, was one of the founders of the banking firm, Clark, Dodge & Co.[1] He attended Harvard University, where he played for the Harvard Crimson football team. In 1901 he was selected as a consensus All-American tackle.[2] The 1901 Harvard team defeated rival Yale by a score of 17 to 0.[3]

After graduating from Harvard, Blagden served as the line coach at Harvard under Percy Haughton.[1] In 1914, with the outbreak of war in Europe, Blagden and Grenville Clark developed the idea to develop camps to train civilians for potential wartime service as officers.[1] These camps at Plattsburgh, New York, became the Citizens' Military Training Camp. When the United States entered World War I, Blagden was trained at Plattsburgh and served as a lieutenant-colonel in the United States Army in France.[1] In 1918, he led an advance by the 317th Infantry to rescue the survivors of the so-called "Lost Battalion" from the Argonne Forest in France.[3][4]

After the war, Blagden worked for Atlantic Navigation Corporation and later for Joseph Walker & Sons, a stock brokerage company.[1] He retired in 1932.[1] Blagden was married twice. In 1911, he was married to Mary Hopkins, a granddaughter of Williams College president Mark Hopkins.[1] They had a son, Crawford Blagden, Jr. His first wife died in 1912.[3] In 1918, he married his second wife, Minna E. MacLeod of Nova Scotia.[1]

In January 1936, Blagden died at the Harkness Pavilion of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center after suffering an attack of influenza. He was 55 years old when he died.[1][5]