Continuing on my recent theme of the 150th anniversary of the creation of association football in 1863, I've now completed an identity parade of all 43 men who attended at least one of the six founding meetings of the FA.
   One of the key discoveries was the identity of James Turner of Crystal Palace, who was elected onto the FA's first committee and is therefore considered to be one of the FA's "founding fathers". Unfortunately, the FA and their researchers from University of Central Lancashire failed to identify him despite several months of a high profile campaign - but I'm happy to oblige.
   His story is published in his home town today, in the Croydon Advertiser, at this link. I also publish the full article below:

The FA’s first money man: James Turner of Crystal Palace

When the Football Association held its jubilee dinner in 1913, a big fuss was made over two surviving ‘originals’ from 1863, Ebenezer Morley and Alfred Mackenzie, who had a seat of honour on the top table and were presented with silver caskets.
   There should have been another man alongside them. James Turner of Croydon had played a key role in founding the FA, but his contribution to the early days of football was overlooked in 1913. Now, a century on, the FA still could not track him down for their ‘founding fathers’ project, but this pioneer footballer can finally be given the recognition he deserves.
   For four years Turner held the purse strings of our fledgling national game, having taken over the role of treasurer from a disgruntled rugby player. Yet when the inaugural meeting of the FA took place on 26 October 1863, Turner had other things on his mind as his eldest son had been born just two days earlier. However, he contributed to the next three crucial meetings as the rules were thrashed out and found himself elected to the FA’s first committee.
   Three office bearers had been chosen to lead the FA, Arthur Pember as president, Ebenezer Morley as secretary, and Francis Campbell as treasurer. Once the rules were agreed after six mammoth sessions, Turner was appointed as one of four additional committee members, alongside JF Alcock, GT Wawn and HT Steward.
   These men are now considered the Founding Fathers of the FA, but it was no easy birth. An irrevocable division between the kicking and handling codes caused the withdrawal of Blackheath, and that meant their rep Francis Campbell would soon stand down as treasurer. Campbell had so little involvement beyond those acrimonious early debates, that Turner can be considered as the first ‘proper’ treasurer of the FA.
   Not that looking after the accounts was a particularly taxing role: there were no gate receipts or sponsors, just subscriptions from a small number of clubs. The FA held few meetings (none at all between October 1864 and February 1866), and its membership dwindled to just ten clubs. In 1868, new blood was recruited to the committee and Turner stepped down.
   His club was Crystal Palace – no relation to the current Barclays Premier League side – who were formed out of the cricket club of the same name before football was codified, initially to give the cricketers some winter exercise. With a ground at Penge, their colours were black and scarlet striped shirts and socks, with dark blue serge knickerbockers. Drawing their membership from the merchants, accountants and stockbrokers of the suburban middle class in south-east London, Crystal Palace were hugely influential as founders of the FA, with representatives present at all six of the inaugural meetings. Later, the first two captains of England, Cuthbert Ottaway and Alexander Morten, would play for the club before it ran out of steam and folded in the mid-1870s.
   Turner’s dedication to football went far beyond financial matters in an era when administrators were also players. He is first recorded playing for the side in March 1862 against the Forest Club, which featured Charles Alcock and his brother. He took part in a special match to demonstrate the new laws of the game in January 1864 at Battersea Park, playing for an FA President’s team which defeated the Secretary’s select 2-0, and further honours came his way in 1868 when he was selected for Surrey against Kent.  Turner continues to appear in club line-ups throughout the 1860s, often as captain, and was still there when Palace met Hitchin in the first FA Cup competition in November 1871. He also sometimes opened the batting for the Crystal Palace cricket team.
   He was born in Croydon on 6 December 1839, son of Thomas Turner, an eminent vet who was first president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Educated at the nearby Streatham Academy, he was so close to the Crystal Palace club that he married Rachel, sister of the Lloyd brothers (Robert, Theodore, Henry and Alfred) who were all regulars in the team. In fact, Henry and Theodore accompanied him to a couple of those FA meetings in the autumn of 1863.
   James lived all his life in Croydon and built up a successful business in the wine trade. He and Rachel had eight children and ironically, having seen off the rugby faction at the FA, two of his sons, Howard and Errol, played rugby at county level for Surrey.
   After his wife died in 1907 he retired to nearby Addiscombe, while the family home for over fifty years, Netherton in Wellesley Road, was bought by the Croydon Labour Party and renamed Ruskin House. It was demolished in the 1960s, along with much of Croydon town centre, to make way for office blocks.
   James Turner was one of the last surviving founders of the FA, outlived only by Ebenezer Morley, and died aged 82 while visiting Eastbourne on 27 July 1922. He left over £9,000 in his will to his five surviving children.

Palace Originals

As well as James Turner, the original Crystal Palace FC was represented by a number of members at the FA’s six founding meetings in 1863, who were all prominent local businessmen.
   Club secretary Francis Day (1838-1886) was owner of the Bermondsey Brewery, and there were the Lloyd brothers Henry (1841-1869), an insurance agent, and Theodore (1834-1904), a stockbroker who refereed the 1873 England v Scotland match.
   The others were wine merchant Frederick Urwick (1842-1915), indigo merchant John Louis Siordet (1839-1882), and an accountant, Lawrence Vivian Desborough (1844-1892).

Did you hear about the Scotsmen, the Australian and the rowing club members? They all got together 150 years ago to found the Football Association.
   Of the 15 men who gathered the Freemasons’ Tavern on 26 October 1863, some are well known, but it has never previously been established who they all were. The FA has been researching their origins, and today unveiled a plaque at Wembley in their honour, but it only records those on the first committee. 
   I have taken that further and for the first time have identified everyone at the meeting. 
   The results will raise a few eyebrows for those who thought the FA had purely London origins. In fact, only five were born in the London area, the rest coming from the places as far away as India and Australia. Although not all their schools are known, there is a wide variety including two educated in Scotland. These factors would actually have helped the FA in its discussions, as the representatives had experience of football in many different forms – and there were many.
   The careers and backgrounds of the men were firmly in the affluent middle class bracket: army, civil service, legal profession, stockbrokers and architects. Several were in the drinks trade and there is a plantation owner.
   They were keen sportsmen, with no less than five being rowing devotees – Morley, Steward, Wawn, Bell and Gregory were much more active with their rowing clubs than in football – while others were keen cricketers. Their age is noticeably younger than the administrators of today, with twelve of the fifteen under 25 while four were still at school. Ebenezer Morley was the oldest at 32.
   Working out their identities has been a challenge to historians. The first newspaper report in Bell’s Life missed two men and noted there were also ‘several other gentlemen present who, although players, did not definitively represent any club’. The FA minute book lists more, but although they were named by Geoffrey Green in his monumental 1953 history of the FA, he compounded the error by misreading the copperplate script - for example, H Bell rather than Th Bell.
   Yet they deserve recognition as their impact on sport in this country has been immeasurable. They put in place a forum for agreeing how football should be played and, in the first of seven resolutions, agreed unanimously ‘that the clubs represented at this meeting now form themselves into an association to be called The Football Association’. With those words, they created the world’s first national football body.

Here are the 15 founders:

Arthur Pember, No Names (Kilburn)
Born Lambeth, 1835-1886.
The son of a stockbroker, the captain of NN Kilburn was first president of the FA. He emigrated to the USA in the mid-1860s and had an interesting career as an investigative journalist before his early death in North Dakota.

Ebenezer Cobb Morley, Barnes
Born Hull, Yorkshire, 1831-1924.
A driving force behind the founding meetings of the FA, Morley was elected secretary for three years, then president until 1874. A keen rower, he helped found the Barnes and Mortlake Regatta as well as Barnes FC. Brought up in Hull, he moved to London as a young man and worked there as a solicitor.

Thomas Dyson Gregory, Barnes
Born Wakefield, Yorkshire, 1835-1908.
A corn merchant in partnership with his brothers Frederick and George, he was on the committee of London Rowing Club (along with EC Morley) and treasurer of the Barnes and Mortlake regatta. He was also a founder of Barnes Football Club in 1862.

Francis Maule Campbell, Blackheath
Born Blackheath, Kent, 1843-1920.
First treasurer of the FA, but soon resigned his club after failing to agree on hacking. A wine merchant, like his father (who died before he was a year old), he expanded his business to become a merchant of continental produce. Married twice, first at the age of 58, and the second time just three months before his death.

Frederick Henry Moore, Blackheath
Born Perth, Western Australia, 1839-1934.
Brought up in Australia, he came to London as a 14 year old to finish his education, and worked as a wine merchant with Dalgety and Co, his uncle’s company. One of the founders of Blackheath club, he remained in England until 1864, then returned to the southern hemisphere where he was an insurance agent and company director in New Zealand, Tasmania and Sydney.

George Twizell Wawn, War Office
Born West Boldon, County Durham, 1840-1914.
On graduating from Durham University he moved to London in 1860 to work for the War Office as a Clerk. Having rowed for his university, he also joined London Rowing Club. From the War Office he joined the African commissariat in 1873, with postings in Sierra Leone and Ghana, retiring in 1889 with the honorary rank of Major.

Herbert Thomas Steward, Crusaders
Born London, 1838-1915.
Educated at Westminster School, he was an architect and surveyor. His primary passion was rowing and he was president of Leander Club, and wrote the history of Henley Regatta.

John Forster Alcock, Forest (Leytonstone)
Born Bishopwearmouth, County Durham, 1841-1910.
After leaving Harrow, he entered the family business as a ship owner and insurance broker. He has been overshadowed in football by his younger brother, Charles Alcock, but was a useful player and founder of pioneering club Forest.

Alfred Westwood Mackenzie, Forest (Leytonstone)
Born Leytonstone, Essex, 1840-1924.
An insurance manager with Guardian Assurance, with his brother Sir Morell Mackenzie he was one of the founders of the Throat Hospital in London. Attended the FA’s jubilee dinner in 1913 and was presented with a silver casket.

Francis Day, Crystal Palace
Born Westerham, Kent, 1838-1886.
Owner of the Black Eagle Brewery in Bermondsey, succeeding his father as a partner in the company of Day Noakes & Co, together with another Crystal Palace player, Wickham Noakes. Was also a good fast bowler for West Kent.

Theodore Bell, Surbiton
Born Uppingham, Rutland, 1840-1923.
Educated at Uppingham, where he was captain of football 1857-58. Although he represented the short-lived Surbiton club at the first meeting of the FA and signed them up for membership, he was better known as a rower and was for many years the secretary of Kingston Rowing Club. A solicitor, he had a legal practice in Epsom. [NB 

George William Shillingford, Perceval House School (Blackheath)
Born Purneah, Bengal, 1844-1896.
He and his brothers came to England for their education, but spent the rest of their lives back in Bengal where they ran an indigo plantation and were responsible for hunting Bengal tigers almost to extinction in the latter half of the 19th century.

Bertram Fulke Hartshorne, Charterhouse School
Born Cogenhoe, Northamptonshire, 1844-1921.
The only public school representative at the meeting and the only one to decline to join the FA. A barrister, he graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford, joined the Indian Civil Service in Ceylon, then became a District Auditor for the Local Government Board.

William John Mackintosh, Kensington School
Born Calcutta, Bengal, 1845-1923.
Born in India where his Scottish father was a merchant, he was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Kensington School. A career soldier, he won a commission with the Royal Artillery in 1867 but there is no evidence he ever saw action in 20 years’ service. He retired in 1887, with the rank of Lt Colonel, and lived out his days in Devon.

William Henry Gordon, Blackheath Proprietary School
Born Edinburgh, 1845-1929.
Educated at Edinburgh Academy, Cheltenham College and Blackheath Proprietary School, then took a degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. Qualified as a barrister, changed his surname to Lockhart Gordon and emigrated to Canada, where he was director of a major timber concern, the Canadian Land and Emigration Company.

With the approaching 150th anniversary of the founding of the Football Association, I've been digging into the origins of the men who attended those meetings in the autumn of 1863 - with some surprising discoveries.
   The first is that two of the 15 attendees at the inaugural meeting on 26 October 1863 were Scots. They had even been to the same school, Edinburgh Academy, before coming to London. My story about WJ Mackintosh and WH Gordon is in the Scotsman today, and the cutting is attached below.
   Going further, there seems to be a wealth of previously unknown detail about the founders of association football. A total of 43 players attended at least one of the six formative meetings, and many have never been identified before, perhaps not surprisingly as there are some very obscure and elusive individuals among them. More stories are underway, but as a taster: there is an Australian; a man who was responsible (later in life) for hunting tigers in Bengal almost to extinction; a brewery owner; and a large number of people whose primary sport was rowing.

It was a pleasure recently to meet 90-year-old Walter Fergusson, a retired company director living on the south side of Glasgow. He is, almost certainly, the only person alive who has met a footballer who played in the first international match between Scotland and England in 1872. 
   Walter recalls going to tea as a boy at the Cambuslang home of his great uncle, Willie Mackinnon, Scotland's first centre-forward, who also lived past his 90th birthday. Among his other claims to fame, he performed the first recorded overhead kick (above) and played for Rangers in their first game.

The story is in the Herald today at this link, but I also reproduce it below:

A pensioner in Glasgow has a unique connection to the world’s first football international. 90-year-old Walter Fergusson can remember, as a boy, being taken to tea at his great uncle’s house – his relative being Willie Mackinnon, Scotland’s centre forward in 1872.
   Walter is probably the last person alive who can say they met a player from the very first time Scotland’s football team took the field.
   His great uncle was a Scotland star throughout the 1870s, making eight consecutive appearances against England and one against Wales, scoring five times in the process. He won three Scottish Cup finals with Queen’s Park, and even made a guest appearance for Rangers in their first match.
   Mackinnon’s other claim to football fame is making the first recorded overhead kick, as described by a reporter at the 1872 international: Mackinnon, who is not tall, here made a very clever kick. The ball was on the bound higher than his head, when he leaped up and to the surprise of his opponent, who was waiting till the ball came over Mackinnon, kicked it well up the hill. The kick was much admired, and lustily applauded.
   He may have been a football legend, but surprisingly the talk in the Mackinnon household in Cambuslang was much more likely to be about music. Walter recalled: “The last time I met Willie Mackinnon was when I was 15 or 16, towards the end of my schooldays, I was taken to tea. My father’s mother was Willie’s sister and we were quite a close family.
   “Willie was an international class tenor. As a young man he auditioned for La Scala Opera in Milan and was invited over to join them. Nowadays the football is so good in Italy he probably would have gone, but then it meant leaving the family so he stayed at home. He also played the cello, and when I went to see him there was a cello propped up against the wall.”
   Mackinnon’s fame as a singer actually eclipsed his football talent, and towards the end of his life in 1938 was elected an honorary vice president of the Glasgow Choral Union – no mean accolade, as it also went that year to the famous composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. Mackinnon had joined the Choral Union as a boy alto even before his football career got underway, and became a tenor soloist in 1882. When he died in 1942, aged 90, his obituary in the Glasgow Herald was headed ‘Veteran Glasgow Musician’, highlighting his prominent role with numerous city musical groups.
   He was much in demand, and Walter added: “My father was in the choir at Pollokshields Church and once, when they put on a performance of the Messiah, Willie was invited to do the solo, which was fine. But then he carried on singing through the chorus and had to be reined in as he had such a powerful voice that nobody else could be heard.”
   Walter became a lifelong supporter of Queen’s Park thanks to his great uncle’s fame. “I first went to Hampden because of Willie Mackinnon,” he said, and his early memories of football recall a bygone age: “Although Queen’s Park were amateur, they could still compete at the top level before the war because they signed bankers and architects who had a career and couldn’t turn professional. Some of them were a bit eccentric: I remember Desmond White (later a director of Celtic) brought all his climbing gear to Hampden, then after the match went off to the hills to do some mountaineering.”
   He has a family anecdote about the pioneering days: “After the match on a Saturday, the Queen’s Park players would head to the nearest pub for their dinner and came out well stewed. Willie would stagger home to Cambuslang, but had to be in a fit state to walk all the way back to Glasgow Cathedral to sing in the choir on the Sunday morning.”
   Longevity runs in the family, and Walter has surpassed even his great uncle’s age. Now, 140 years after the first international, this means it is still possible to hear a first-hand account of one of Scotland’s earliest football pioneers.