Flat Hat Club

The Flat Hat Club is the popular name of a society founded after 1916 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and revived there in 1972. The organization was named after the F.H.C. Society, which had been founded at the College on November 11, 1750, and was itself known informally as the Flat Hat Club.

The F.H.C. Society is the first recorded college society within the territory of the present United States of America.

History of the original society

The initials of the original F.H.C. Society stand for a secret Latin phrase, likely "Fraternitas, Humanitas, et Cognitio" or "Fraternitas Humanitas Cognitioque" (two renderings of "brotherhood, humaneness, and knowledge"). The "brothers" of the F.H.C. devised and employed a secret handshake, wore a silver membership medal, issued certificates of membership, and met regularly for discussion and fellowship. The Society became publicly known as the "Flat Hat Club" in probable allusion to the mortarboard caps then commonly worn by all students at the College (now worn at graduation by students at most American universities).

William & Mary alumnus and third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, is perhaps the most famous member of the Flat Hat Club. Other notable members of the original Society included Colonel James Innes, St. George Tucker, and George Wythe. Jefferson noted that "When I was a student of Wm. & Mary college of this state, there existed a society called the F.H.C. society, confined to the number of six students only, of which I was a member, but it had no useful object, nor do I know whether it now exists."

A second Latin-letter fraternity, the P.D.A. Society (publicly known as "Please Don't Ask"), was founded at William and Mary in March, 1773, in imitation of the F.H.C. Society. John Heath, a student at William and Mary who in 1776 sought but was refused admission to the P.D.A., later established the first Greek-letter fraternity, the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

The student members of the F.H.C. suspended the activities of the Society in 1781, probably as a result of the suspension of academic exercises at the university as the contending armies of the American Revolution approached Williamsburg during the Yorktown campaign.

"The memory of this fraternity had entirely died out at William and Mary, but [after 1909, there was a] discovery of certain manuscript material in the correspondence of St. George Tucker, who was a student of the College in 1772.... These manuscripts consist of (1) a letter of Mr. Jefferson, written to John D. Taylor, of Maryland, giving some account of the club at the College, stating that he was a member, ...[;] (2) a list of the books described as compiled for the club's library, in 1772, by Rev. Thomas Gwatkin, Professor of Mathematics; (3) the credentials of Robert Baylor as a member in abbreviated Latin." Therefore we know the society existed for some years, and possessed a small library.

History of the subsequent societies

The name of the Society was revived in the twentieth century by application to a select group of twelve undergraduate men and several professors which had been founded in 1916 as the Spotswood Club (it thus differed markedly from the original Society, a fraternity of six undergraduate men with alumnus members "in urbe"). This society operated as a college honorary society. The Society suspended its activities in 1943 as the number of men enrolled at the College steeply declined because of American involvement in World War II.

The modern F.H.C. Society was revived in May, 1972. It remains an all-male fraternity, with most of its activities comparatively secret within the university.

The Flat Hat, the twice-weekly student newspaper of The College of William and Mary, took its name from the public nickname of the Society.

Bibliography

• Storm, Robert W. (1973). "In Token of Friendship: Early Fraternity Medals at the College of William and Mary". Typescript in university archives, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Jane Carson, James Innes and His Brothers of the F.H.C.; Charlottesville, Virginia: The University Press of Virginia, 1965.

See also

• Collegiate secret societies in North America

External links

• Thomas Jefferson's letter to Thomas McAuley regarding the F.H.C. Society, June 14, 1819.
• Flat Hat History from The Flat Hat, William and Mary's student newspaper
• F.H.C. Society Collection at the Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary.