North Carolina Society of The Cincinnati
History of
NORTH CAROLINA
SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI
W. Keats Sparrow, Ph.D.
Hereditary Member and Historian
North Carolina Society of The Cincinnati
W. Keats Sparrow, Ph.D
Passed away on November 11, 2009
Introduction
Born in 1783 and regenerated in 1896, the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati has a long and storied heritage that is briefly recounted here for those who wish to become acquainted with the Society’s background. A fuller history is available in Curtis Carroll Davis’s Revolution’s Godchild: The Birth, Death, and Regeneration of the Society of the Cincinnati in North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC, 1976).The North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati:
Genesis and Death
Genesis: Before the close of 1783, the year in which the General Society was founded, all thirteen original colonies had formed state societies. The North Carolina Society was established on 23 October 1783 in Hillsborough at the James Hogg house. There were sixty-six charter members and later as many as ninety members; ten were honorary, including Governors Richard Caswell and William Richardson Davie. Brigadier General Jethro Sumner of Warren County was elected the first president, and upon his death two years later he was succeeded by Halifax Countian Lt. Colonel John Baptiste Ashe, the last known president of the original North Carolina Society.In addition to the organizational meeting, four meetings of the original North Carolina Society are known to have taken place: at Hillsborough on 18 April 1784; at Fayetteville on 4 July 1785; at Halifax on 4 July 1786; and at an unknown location on 4 July 1787.North Carolina was represented at the first meeting of the General Society in Philadelphia from 14 to 18 May 1784. It was also represented at the second General Society Triennial in Philadelphia in 1787 and again at the third General Society meeting in Philadelphia in 1790.During Washington’s Southern Tour of 1791, North Carolina Cincinnati entertained the new country’s chief executive in April at Halifax, Tarboro, New Bern, and Wilmington and on his return in May at Charlotte, Cabarrus County, and Salisbury. At Tryon Palace in New Bern, the Cincinnati toasted Washington fifteen times.Surely the most significant legacy of the early North Carolina Cincinnati was the influence of its members in leading and shaping the new state and nation. While the Society of the Cincinnati did not have a unified political agenda at either the state or national level and fraternalism and commemoration dominated the Society, so many Cincinnati filled state and national offices that the Society both in North Carolina and elsewhere nonetheless exerted considerable influence on the state and federal governments. For example, North Carolina’s second Constitutional Convention, held in Fayetteville in November 1789, was chaired by North Carolina Cincinnati President John Baptiste Ashe and among the convention’s most influential members were a large number of North Carolina Cincinnati. In addition, North Carolina Cincinnati held the posts of judge for the North Carolina district, collector of the port of New Bern, and state supervisor of internal revenue. Of the first five governors under the Constitution, two were original hereditary members of the North Carolina Society and the other three were honorary members. While feasting and toasting were important parts of the early meetings, by no means was the original North Carolina Society a mere “meet and eat” or “wine and dine” organization. Rather, it was an organization whose purpose was of a higher order whose members’ valuable experiences in the Revolution and whose own natural abilities led them to serve as leaders in shaping the republican principles of the new state and nation.Death: After the new U.S. Constitution had been ratified and Washington elected the new nation’s first president, the Cincinnati began to decline, for many reasons. The fraternalism that was the motivating factor in forming the Society was gradually eroded by western migration and by the deaths of most Revolutionary War veterans, so apathy ensued. Washington himself did not attend the 1790 Triennial, and two years later, in 1792, many original members of the French Society met their deaths at the guillotine. In 1802, the North Carolina Society’s second president, John Baptiste Ashe, died, and by 1837 Captain Martin Phifer, the last known surviving original member, had also passed away.As the nineteenth century dawned, one by one more than half of the state societies slowly and quietly became extinct, and the North Carolina Society was among them. Only six state societies endured—Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina—and the General Society itself failed to meet between 1812 and 1825, and when it met in 1838, only three members were in attendance. Moreover, sectional strife and the Civil War thwarted initiatives to revitalize the General Society or to reorganize the extinct state and French societies.The North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati:
Renascence and Highlights
Renascence: The 1876 Centennial celebrations sparked interest in lineage and patriotic societies, and this interest led to the resurrection of the defunct state societies and the revival of the General Society. Accordingly, the Rhode Island Society was reborn in 1878, the Virginia Society in 1889, the Connecticut Society in 1890, the Delaware Society in 1895, and the North Carolina Society in 1896.The effort to revive the North Carolina Society was led by Graham Daves, a New Bern antiquarian, and his older brother Edward G. Daves, professor of Greek at Trinity College, Hartford, who was a member of the Maryland Society. Both brothers conducted research into the North Carolina Continental Line and the defunct North Carolina Society and published their findings, among other places, in the state university magazine. After the death of his older brother, Graham Daves moved to Asheville, where he joined forces with Major Charles Luken Davis, a Pennsylvanian, in calling an organizational meeting to revive the North Carolina Society.That meeting took place at 10:00 a.m. on Easter Saturday, 4 April 1896, at the State Library in Raleigh. Presiding was John Collins “Jack” Daves of Baltimore, a member of the Maryland Society and son of Professor Edward G. Daves and nephew of Graham Daves, the brothers who had conducted the first research that led to the renascence of the North Carolina Society. Of the thirty-five descendants of Original Members invited to the meeting, thirteen indicated they wished to join and of this number five showed up. The North Carolina Society was declared revived, and all thirteen who had said they wished to join were elected to membership. Wilson Gray Lamb of Williamston was elected president and would serve in that office until his death in 1922. James Iredell McCree was elected secretary and Jack Daves, treasurer. Graham Daves and Major Charles Davis, the two men who sparked the renascence, were elected as the revived Society’s first honorary members, and each member was assessed fifty dollars for the Permanent Fund. Thus was the North Carolina Society regenerated.In the month of renascence, Major Charles Davis and Captain Henry H. Bellas published the first book on the North Carolina Society, History of the North Carolina Continental Line and Cincinnati (Philadelphia, PA, 1896).President Lamb has been described as “one of the noblest of the noble—a worthy scion of a knightly race.” Descended from a family long associated with the Albemarle Region of North Carolina, he had served in the Confederacy throughout the Civil War and had afterwards settled in Williamston, where he prospered in lumbering and merchandising. A man of commanding appearance known for his tact and charitable nature, he was an influential figure in state politics. Under the practiced hand of this solicitous gentleman, the revived North Carolina Society would begin to develop the solid foundation on which it exists today.A discouraging setback occurred a month after the reorganization meeting when President Lamb, his fellow officers, and Graham Daves attended the 1896 Triennial in Philadelphia. There they were told the North Carolina Society’s by-laws and admission rules, which were not yet written, would have to be approved by the Standing Executive Committee before North Carolina could be re-admitted.While disappointed, President Lamb and his fellow officers and members were undeterred. On arriving home, they set about advancing the nascent Society and preparing it for official recognition at the next Triennial.In February of the following year, 1897, the Society met in Raleigh to celebrate Washington’s birthday and in July held its first annual meeting in Asheville, for which the first roster was printed. At this first annual meeting, the Society’s by-laws were framed, and two Honorary Members were admitted who would play key roles in developing the society over the next thirty years—the Right Reverend Joseph Blount Cheshire, Jr., of Raleigh, the Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina; and Marshall DeLancey Haywood of Raleigh, librarian at State College and later of the State Supreme Court and a highly capable and prolific North Carolina historian. Cheshire would serve as the revived society’s first chaplain and as General Society chaplain from 1905 to 1917, while Haywood would serve many years as North Carolina’s Assistant Secretary. Also at this meeting, Jack Daves and his uncle Graham presented the North Carolina Society with its first historical artifact, a “beautiful gavel made of live-oak, grown at Fort Raleigh, on Roanoke Island, [and] decorated with silver.”At its 1898 Washington birthday celebration in Raleigh, the Society adopted a seal and passed a resolution calling for the Society to sponsor historical publications, a resolution whose spirit has led the North Carolina Society over the years to promote and issue numerous scholarly books.On 6 February 1899, the North Carolina General Assembly ratified the Society’s articles of incorporation, and on 11 May of that year the North Carolina Society was provisionally admitted to the General Society at the Triennial in New York. On 17 June 1902, the North Carolina Society was formally admitted to the General Society at the Triennial in Hartford, Connecticut.Highlights: And now some highlights of the North Carolina Society from its renascence to the present:
In 1904, the North Carolina Society arranged with A. H. Fetting Company of Baltimore to produce its own distinctive eagle with a seven-feathered tail, based upon the Georgia eagle which had been modeled on the Jeremiah Andrews eagle, manufactured from 1784 to 1791. Unfortunately, soon after the North Carolina eagle had been commissioned, the die was destroyed in a Baltimore fire, so examples are rare.The year 1907 saw the publication of the second book on the North Carolina Society—Charles L. Davis’s North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati (Cambridge, MA, 1907).On 7 May 1913, President Lamb, Vice President Jack Daves, and Assistant Treasurer Bennehan Cameron traveled to Washington and conferred an honorary membership on President Woodrow Wilson, a former North Carolina resident and Davidson College student.From 9-12 May 1917, the North Carolina Society hosted its first Triennial at Asheville, marking the 134th anniversary of the founding of the Society of the Cincinnati. By the time of the 1917 Triennial, the regenerated North Carolina Society had already become, in its twenty-one-year existence, the largest state society, boasting 139 members. Among these 139 were representatives of every single Original Member.On 5 May 1932, John Collins “Jack” Daves of Baltimore, by then a hereditary member of the North Carolina Society, was elected the ninth President General at the Triennial in Philadelphia. This courtly, reserved gentleman, who would serve seven years, from 1932 to 1939, was the first Southerner in 107 years to attain that august post. He also served as president of the North Carolina Society from 1922 until his death in 1939.An important and influential member from 1906 until his death in 1954 was William Eve Bush, an investment banker from Augusta, who helped the Society recover from the doldrums of the twenties and thirties. “Old Bill,” as he was called, insisted upon the exacting genealogical standards for which the North Carolina Society is now known and helped bring about the robust financial condition it now enjoys. As a North Carolina representative on the General Society’s Standing Executive Committee, he also arranged for the North Carolina Society to become a more integral part of the national Society.On 4 November 1950, the North Carolina Society held its first autumn meeting at Anderson House, a practice it has followed ever since, and in 1954 it awarded honorary membership to Presidential Candidate Adlai Stevenson, whose ancestors came from North Carolina.The year 1971 was an important one for the North Carolina Society. In that year, it helped publish Hugh F. Rankin’s North Carolina Continentals (Chapel Hill, NC), and on 28-30 April it hosted its second Triennial at Wilmington, with over 200 in attendance. To cap it all off, at the 1971 Triennial, Raleigh attorney Armistead J. Maupin—considered by many to be the member who has done the most for the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati—was elected the twenty-second President General.As mentioned earlier, in 1976, with the sponsorship of the North Carolina Society, Curtis Carroll Davis’s informative book Revolution’s Godchild: The Birth, Death, and Regeneration of the Society of the Cincinnati in North Carolina was published. It was the third book on the North Carolina Society in eighty years.At the 1995 triennial in Boston, North Carolina Cincinnati William Russell “Bill” Raiford was elected Vice President General and at the 1998 Triennial in Charleston was elected President General.Finally, in 1998, Lewis Castleman Strudwick, in his role as president of the North Carolina Society, arranged for Liberty Jewelry Company of Baltimore to reproduce the 1904 North Carolina eagle, thereby providing North Carolina Society members with a distinctive eagle for the first time in 94 years. This eagle is featured on each of the 2007 Triennial printed items and is complemented in textual items by the Caslon typeface used in the earliest editions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.Conclusion
The North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati has come a long way since that first meeting in 1896 with only five men in attendance. It has hosted two triennials and is now hosting its third. It has produced three Presidents General and a respectable number of other general officers and committee chairmen and members. It has regularly supported historic publications and educational projects, such as its recent educational film “First in Victory – First for Independence: North Carolina’s Role in the American Revolution,” indicating that it has never lost sight of its purpose and is well attuned to the General Society’s commitment to education as the Cincinnati’s primary mission. Like those Original Members who helped shape the character of the nascent state and union, its members today hold many leadership roles that enable them to help determine public policy. Its financial condition is remarkably sound; its prospects are bright; and, perhaps most importantly, even though its admission standards are among the strictest, it now stands as the second largest of the fourteen societies with a roster of approximately 450 members.W. Keats Sparrow, Ph.D.
Hereditary Member and Historian
North Carolina Society of The Cincinnati
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