Arthur Howe was an American football player and coach, teacher, minister and university president. He played college football for Yale University from 1909 to 1911, was the quarterback of Yale's 1909 national championship team, and was a consensus first-team All-American in 1912. He was the head coach of the 1912 Yale football team. Howe was later ordained as a Presbyterian minister and taught at Eastern preparatory schools and at Dartmouth College. From 1930 to 1940, he was the president of Hampton University. He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1973.
Howe enrolled at Yale University in 1908. He played for the Yale Bulldogs football team as a quarterback from 1909 to 1911. As a sophomore in 1909, Howe led the team to a perfect 10–0 record, as the Yale team outscored its opponents by a combined score of 209–0. At the end of the 1909 season, Howe was selected as a second-team All-American by Walter Camp. After another strong year in 1910, Howe was unanimously elected by his teammates as the captain of Yale's 1911 football team. As a senior, he set a collegiate record by returning 18 kicks in a November 1911 game against Princeton. After the 1911 season, Howe was selected as the first-team All-American quarterback by Collier's Weekly, The New York Globe, W.S. Farnsworth, Dr. Henry L. Williams, and Charles Chadwick. While attending Yale, Howe was, according to profile in the Boston Daily Globe, also a leader in religious life at the university, the strongest man in his class, an excellent scholar, and one of the best hockey players in college. At the end of December 1911, Howe agreed to return in the fall of 1912 as the school's head football coach, after graduating with Yale's Class of 1912. In his one year as head coach, Howe led the 1912 Yale football team to a 7–1–1 record, with the only loss coming against that year's national championship team from Harvard. During the period from 1899 to 1912, Yale had 14 different head football coaches in 14 years – despite compiling a combined record of 127–11–10 in those years. During that 14-year span, the Yale football team has also been recognized as the national championship team by one or more of the major national championship selectors on seven occasions – 1900, 1901, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1909.
Seminary and teaching career
After leaving Yale, Howe enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He graduated from the seminary in 1916 and became a Presbyterian minister. In June 1916, Howe was hired as a teacher and coach at the Loomis Institute in Windsor, Connecticut. In a draft registration card completed in June 1917, Howe indicated that he was living in Windsor, Connecticut, and was employed as the chaplain at the Loomis Institute. In 1918, Howe was the head football coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In approximately 1920, Howe left the Loomis School and joined the faculty of the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut. Howe was a teacher and the chaplain at the Taft School through most of the 1920s. At the time of the 1920 United States Census, Howe was living in Watertown with his wife Margaret and their two children. Howe's occupation at the time was listed as a professor at the Taft School. After leaving the Taft School, Howe became a professor of citizenship at Dartmouth College. He remained at Dartmouth from approximately 1929 to 1930. At the time of the 1930 United States Census, Howe was living in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife Margaret and their daughter and four sons. His occupation was listed as a minister and teacher at Dartmouth College.
Hampton Institute
In November 1930, Howe was selected as the president of Hampton Institute, a historically black university in Hampton, Virginia. The university had been founded by Howe's father-in-law, Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, in 1869. He served as the president at Hampton for nearly a decade. In the last couple years of his administration, Howe faced increasing agitation from students and alumni seeking reforms, including an increase in African-American faculty representation and equal pay for African-American faculty members. Howe resigned as Hampton's president effective June 1940. Howe's wife, Margaret Armstrong Howe, continued to serve as a trustee of Hampton until her death in 1971.
In August 1916, Howe was married to Margaret Marshall Armstrong in a ceremony held at the Chocorua Chapel on Chocorua Island in Lake Asquam, near Chocorua, New Hampshire. They had a daughter and four sons. In 1955, Howe died after a short illness at Sceva Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1973.
