What is a Boilermaker?

For more about the sculptor of the above, click here.

Most people who aren't one usually ask: "What the heck is a Boilermaker, anyway?" Well, yes, it is a shot of whiskey in a beer, but it is also something much much more. Any Purdue fan knows the short story... But do you know the WHOLE story? Here it is.....

The traditional story is that the origin of the nickname "Boilermakers" had to do with an 1889 football game against Wabash College, a newspaper reporter and - maybe - the Monon Shops.

The facts:Wrong year, right school; It was a reporter - or rather a headline writer - who coined the term; and no way were players recruited from the Monon Shops. Unraveling the legend of the Boilermakers seemed necessary because it is told so many times in so many ways and - let's face it - it's part of Purdue lore, and we should get it right.

In short, this is the form the legend most often takes: Purdue traveled to Crawfordsville in 1889 to play the Wabash College team, prevailed 18 to 4, and the local newspapers proceeded to hurl epithets after the victors, including the term "boilermakers." The myth is further embellished by adding that the hulking brutes playing for Purdue were recruited from the Monon Shops in Lafayette.

The last part of the legend is the easiest, so we'll start there. Purdue football teams were first called the Boilermakers in 1891. It wasn't until four years later that the Monon Railroad Shops were relocated from New Albany to Lafayette. According to "The Monon Route," a history of the Louisville, New Albany and Chicago line, the citizens of Lafayette in 1892 approved a tax levy to help build the shops. They were completed in 1895. So the notion that sooty employees of the "Shops," as the repair depot was known, had a hand in the boilermaker mythmaking is impossible.

Next we'll take a look at the newspaper article commonly thought to have given the world the term "boilermaker" as a scornful nickname for the Old Gold and Black. For proof, we consult no less an expert than Robert Lackey, Class of 1891 and a player on the first football teams Purdue put on the field. Writing in the November 1922 Alumnus, Lackey attempts to trace the origin of "Boilermakers."For his story, he went to the trouble of typing in the entire Review account of the Nov. 23, 1889, Wabash-Purdue game. Although nowhere in the story are the Purdue players called "boilermakers," he concludes: "While the word 'Boilermakers' does not appear in this remarkable document, it started everybody using the terms 'corn huskers,' 'railsplitters,' 'haymakers,' 'log haulers,' 'blacksmiths,' etc., until these simmered down to the nickname 'Boilermakers,' possibly as a logical composite of all those expressive terms. In any event, we are proud of the name and extend our thanks to the writers of the above for the inspiration."

It would be two more years before the Purdue team in truth would be labeled "boilermakers," again by a protective local press in response to a defeat of Wabash. The 1891 score was a 44 to 0 drubbing, and the Crawfordsville reporters and editors tried to make up for the poor showing by the locals. The headlines in the Oct. 30, 1891, Crawfordsville Star: "A Human Bull Fight!" Beneath that: "The Wabash Reds Fall in a Big Soup Dish and are Stirred Up with Spike Nails - One Man Loses an Ear." In the Daily Journal, the reporter writes of the visiting team: "They came, they saw, they conquered, and what is more they cut from Mr. Gentry's ear a piece as large as a slice of roast beef of Old England."

But the greatest laments could be found in the Daily Argus News of Oct. 26, 1891: "Slaughter of Innocents," blared the main headline. Beneath that: "Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue." Almost immediately, the Lafayette papers picked up the unique moniker. In the Lafayette Sunday Times of Nov. 1, in a story about happenings on campus, we read: "As every one knows, Purdue went down to Wabash last Saturday and defeated their eleven. The Crawfordsville papers have not yet gotten over it. The only resource they have is to claim that we beat the 'scientific' men by brute force. Our players are characterized as 'coal heavers,' 'boiler makers' and 'stevedores.' "

By October of 1892, the name had entered the lexicon of the writers at the Exponent as they caution the team not to be overconfident after a 4-0 1891 season in which opponents were outscored 192 to 0: "So the 'Boilermakers' may rest assured that they will meet tactics and men far different from those so easily overcome last year.

So ends the unraveling of the legend of the Boilermakers. Now, go tell a friend.Stories by Jay CooperiderPhotographs courtesy of Purdue Special Collections