Scroll and Key

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The Scroll and Key Society is a senior or secret society established by "John Porter, William Kingsley, Samuel Perkins, Enos Taft, Lebbeus Chapin, George Jackson, Homer Sprague, Charlton Lewis, Calvin Child and Josiah Harmer" at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1841.^[1]

Contents 1 History 2 Architecture 3 Notable members 3.1 Diplomacy, national security 3.2 Business and industry 3.3 Scholars, writers and journalists 3.4 Politics 3.5 The judiciary 3.6 The sciences 3.7 Arts and architecture 4 References 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] History

The society, according to the New York Times, was organized by 12 members of the Yale Class of 1842, including those mentioned above with Theodore Runyon, Isaac Hiester and Leonard Case. (William Kingsley, the namesake of the alumni organization, the Kingsley Trust Association (K.T.A.), was a member of the Class of 1843.) The thirteen were "dissatisfied with the elections to Skull and Bones."^[2] For ten years, the society tapped annually twelve members; thereafter, "Keys," as the group is known colloquially, thought best to follow the tradition of fifteen (and sometimes, more) undergraduate members established by "Bones" for a Yale senior or secret society delegation or cohort.^[3]

Members meet Thursday and Sunday nights during their senior year in the Society's ornate, windowless "tomb,"^[4] distinguished by alternating dark and light bands of stone, pattern-pierced stone window screens and ornate column capitals at the entrance. Late at night traditionally after their weekly meetings, "Keysmen" gather on their front steps to serenade College Street with their "Troubador" song. "Keys" co-educated in 1989.

Tax records show an endowment worth several million dollars more than that of its elder counterpart, Skull and Bones.^[5] In addition to financing its own activities, "Keys" has made numerous donations to Yale over the years: the John Addison Porter Prize, awarded annually by Yale since 1872, and in 1917 an endowment for the Yale University Press which has funded the publication of The Yale Shakespeare and other scholarly works. George Parmly Day founded the Yale University Press.

Many "Keysmen" have been and would be considered members of the power elite. Membership has been defined by two differing and sometime overlapping demographics among the rising senior class: the leading architects, scientists, singers, and squash, crew or hockey athletes, and the descendents of the Mayflower families and families among Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor's "400."

[edit] Architecture

• Richard Morris Hunt. (1869-70, Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts.) Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of Keys' building in his 1999 history of Yale's campus, relating the then-notable cost overruns associated with the Keys structure and its aesthetic significance within the campus landscape. Pinnell's history shares the fact that the land was purchased from another secret society, Berzelius.

Regarding its distinctive appearance, Pinnell noted that "19th century artists' studios commonly had exotic orientalia lying about to suggest that the painter was sophisticated, well traveled, and in touch with mysterious powers; Hunt's Scroll and Key is one instance in which the trope got turned into a building."^[6]

[edit] Notable members

[edit] Diplomacy, national security

• Dean Acheson (1915) - 51st Secretary of State
• C.Tracy Barnes (1932) - Central Intelligence Agency; Bay of Pigs
• Cord Meyer, Jr. (1943) - Central Intelligence Agency; United World Federalists
• Frank Polk (1894) - Davis Polk & Wardwell; (acting) Secretary of State, managed conclusion to World War I
• Theodore Runyon (1842) - Envoy, then Ambassador, Germany; Battle of Bull Run
• Sargent Shriver (1938) - Peace Corps; Special Olympics; 1972 Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate.
• Cy Vance (1939) - 57th Secretary of State; Secretary of the Army; Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
• Allen Wardwell (1895) - Russian War Relief, Davis Polk & Wardwell; Bank of New York; Vice-President, American-Russian Chamber of Commerce.
• Thomas Enders, (1953) - Ambassador, Spain '83-'86, Assistant Sec. of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Ambassador to the European Union '79-'81, Ambassador to Canada, '76-'79; Salomon Brothers
• Winthrop Brown, (1929), Ambassador: Korea, Laos; Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
• Thaddeus R. Beal, (1939) Under-Secretary of the Army, Pres. Harvard Trust Co.
• William C. Bullitt, (1912) - US Ambassador, France, '36-'41, first US Ambassador, Soviet Russia, '33-'36.
• Huntington D. Sheldon, (1925) - Central Intelligence Agency; Director of the Office of Current Intelligence; President, Petroleum Corporation of America.
• Warren Zimmermann (1956) - US Ambassador, Yugoslavia, 1989-1992; author of book about the causes of Yugoslavia's dissolution.
• Roscoe Suddarth (1956) - President, Middle East Institute; US Ambassador to Jordan; American Iranian Council.
• Lewis Sheldon, (1895) - US Peace Commission, Paris Peace Conference, 1918; Olympic medalist, track and field.
• Stanley Riveles (1963) - Chief US Negotiator of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
• Raymond R. Guest (1931) - US Ambassador, Ireland; Special Assistant to Secretary of Defense, 1945-47; horse breeder; polo Hall of fame.
• Irwin Laughlin (1893) - US Ambassador, Spain, 1929-33.

[edit] Business and industry

• Bart Giamatti (1960) - Commissioner of Major League Baseball; 16th President, Yale University
• Peter Ligouri (1982) - President and CEO of FX Networks (Fox)
• Paul Mellon (1929) - philanthropist
• Robert Shriver - Baltimore Orioles
• Jock Whitney (1926) - New York Herald Tribune; J.H. Whitney & Co.; Ambassador, Court of St. James's
• Robert McCormick (1903) - Chicago Tribune; Kirkland & Ellis
• Noborne Berkeley, (1945) - President and Director, Chemical Bank (now JPMorgan Chase), Freeport-McMoRan
• Percy Chubb (1956) - Chubb Corp.
• James Cox Brady (1904) - corporate director
• James Cox Brady (1929) - Brady Security & Realty Corp
• Henry deForest (1876) Southern Pacific Railroad
• J. Peter Grace (1936) W. R. Grace & Co.
• Cornelius Vanderbilt III (1895) - Vanderbilt heir.
• James Stillman Rockefeller, President and Chairman, The First National City Bank of New York; Olympic gold medal for crew, 1924
• Avery Rockefeller, Jr (1949) - President and Chairman, Dominick & Dominick; Governor, NYSE.
• Brewster Jennings (1920)- Founder and President of the Socony Mobil Oil Company Standard Oil of New York; president, Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases and Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research
• George Sturgis Pillsbury (1943) - Pillsbury Company, Sargent Management Co.
• Hugh D. Auchincloss (1879)- Standard Oil
• Robert O. Hayward (1909)- Dillon, Read & Co., Rhodes Scholar.
• Samuel Sloan Colt (1914)- Bankers Trust
• Sidney Morse Colgate, (1885), Chairman of Colgate-Palmolive Co., President of Corporation of Colgate University.
• Gilbert Colgate, (1883), President and Chairman of Colgate & Co.
• Robert Stanton Brewster (1897) - major shareholder, Standard Oil; President of Metropolitan Opera
• George Stephenson Brewster (1891) - Financier, Standard Oil.
• Benjamin Brewster (1929)- director, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (later Exxon).
• Lester Armour, (1918) - Chicago financier, Chairman Harris Trust and Savings Bank, Chairman & CEO, Chicago National Bank, Director, Pure Oil Co. (now Unocal)
• Hugh Knowlton, Chairman and CEO, Smith Barney
• Seymour H. Knox (1920) - American retailer, F. W. Woolworth Company.
• Charles D. Dickey (1916) - Brown Brothers Harriman, Morgan Guaranty Trust.
• Donald R. McLennan (1931) Founder and Chairman, insurance brokerage firm Marsh & McLennan

[edit] Scholars, writers and journalists

• George Parmly Day (1897) - Yale University Press
• Ray Lorenzo Heffner (1945) - 13th President, Brown University
• William Kingsley (1843) - Yale Review
• Maynard Mack (1932) - Yale faculty, namesake of distinguished-speaker series of Yale's Elizabethan Club
• Stone Phillips (1977) - Dateline NBC
• Wayne J. Riley (1981) - Meharry Medical College
• Alexandra Robbins (1998) - Secrets of the Tomb
• Gideon Rose (1987) - Foreign Affairs
• Calvin Trillin (1957) - humorist
• Stephen Umin (1959) - Rhodes Scholar; law clerk, Potter Stewart
• Fareed Zakaria (1986) - Newsweek International
• Philip B. Heymann (1954) - Watergate Special Prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General; Professor, Harvard Law School.
• Joseph M. Patterson (1901)- founder,New York Daily News; manager, Chicago Tribune
• George Edgar Vincent (1885) - President of the University of Minnesota; President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
• William Frew (1903) - President, Carnegie Institute; Chairman, Carnegie Institute of Technology.
• Ethan A. H. Shepley (1918) - Chancellor, Washington University in St. Louis.
• Homer D. Babbidge (1946) - President, University of Connecticut.

[edit] Politics

• James L. Connaughton (1982) - Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)
• Robert D. Orr (1940) - Governor of Indiana; US Ambassador, Singapore.
• John Lindsay (1944) - Mayor, New York City; Representative, New York's 17th District
• Robert Wagner (1933) - Mayor, New York City; Envoy to the Vatican; Ambassador to Spain
• Joseph Medill McCormick (1900) - U.S. Senate '19-'24, Publisher, Chicago Tribune.
• James C. Auchincloss, (1908)- Represantive, US Congress 1943-1965, Governor of the NYSE., US Military Intelligence WWI.
• Herbert Parsons (1890)- US Congress '04-'10; leading suporter of League of Nations.
• Fred Dubois (1872) - First US Senator from Idaho 1891-1897, resigned, re-elected 1901-1907; Opponent of gold standard; Engineered statehood for Idaho.
• Peter H. Dominick (1937), US Senator 1962-1974 (Colorado); US Congressman, 1960-1962; US Ambassador, Switzerland.
• Richardson Dilworth, (1921), Democratic Party politician, Mayor of Philadelphia 1955-1962.
• Frederick B. Dent, (1944), US Secretary of Commerce.
• John Dalzell, (1865) - US Congress
• Wayne Chatfield-Taylor (1916) - President, Export-Import Bank; Undersecretary of Commerce; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
• William Nelson Runyon(1892) - acting Governor of New Jersey (May 1919 - Jan 1920)
• Newbold Morris (1925) - New York laywer and politican
• Randall L. Gibson (1853) - US Senator 1883-1992 (Louisiana); US Representative, 1872-1882; Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army; President, Tulane University.
• Mortimer R. Proctor (1912) - Governor of Vermont, 1945-47.
• Carter Henry Harrison (1845) - Mayor of Chicago, five terms 1879-93; US Representative, 1875-79; cousin of President William Henry Harrison.
• Andrew J. Samet (1978) - Deputy Under Secretary for International Affairs, Department of Labor.
• Thomas Hewes (1910) - Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

[edit] The judiciary

• George Shiras Jr. (1853) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice

[edit] The sciences

• Harvey Cushing (1891) - neurosurgeon considered father of brain surgery
• John Enders (1919) - shared 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• Dickinson W. Richards (1917) - 1956 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• Benjamin Spock (1925) - Baby & Child Care
• Edward Salisbury Dana (1871) - Leading American minerologist.

[edit] Arts and architecture

• George Roy Hill (1943) - 1974 Academy Award for Directing, The Sting
• Austin Pendleton (1961) - Circle Repertory Company; Drama Desk Award
• Cole Porter (1913) - composer and songwriter; original Whiffenpoofs
• James Gamble Rogers - (1889) collegiate Gothic architecture, favored architect of Edward Harkness
• Garry Trudeau (1970) - Doonesbury
• William Adams Delano (1895) - Award-winning Architect; designed many of Yale buildings.
• H. C. Potter (1926) - Stage and Film Director and Producer
• Richard Pearce (1965) - American film and TV director; South Pacific, CSI: Miami; Law & Order.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Collegiate secret societies in North America

[edit] External links

• Secret societies swimming in cash, IRS reports show
• How the Secret Societies Got That Way