They don’t make Reunions like this anymore. The Class of 1887 paraded through campus during their 20-year celebration dressed as the Three Musketeers. Included in the photo, somewhere, is philanthropist and Wharton alumnus Samuel F. Houston, who played football and baseball and rode crew while at Penn. The Class of 1887 were captured again in photo in 1948. Houston is seated at the far right. The off year—it was their 61-Year Reunion—could explain why only six gentlemen attended.
According to The Record, the undergraduate yearbook from 1887, the “cream of the Class entered the Wharton School.” Out of 109 students in the Class of 1887, 15 finished with undergraduate degrees from Wharton.
“The collection is interesting, and worth a moment’s study,” the yearbook’s authors wrote. The Wharton class included: “the late Mr. Smaltz, so called for his way of coming into recitations after the hour had begun; Brock, who probably entered a School of Finance and Economy, thinking that he could economize in study; … Young, the great champion of Henry Clay, particularly of his private life; … MacLean, a lamb-like boy, who, for all the drilling of the Wharton School, will never make a bull or a bear; … and Sam Houston, who, owing to heart troubles, has not done himself justice the present year.”
