The Flat Hat Club is the popular name of a collegiate secret society and honor fraternity founded in 1750 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The fraternity, formally named the "F.H.C. Society", was founded at the College on November 11, 1750. The society maintains relationships with societies at the University of St. Andrews and Amherst College.
The F.H.C. Society is the first recorded collegiate secret society in the United States.[1] Early in the 21st century, the Education section of The New York Times profiled America's oldest university clubs and societies and included a letter, now housed in the archives at Swem Library, which Thomas Jefferson wrote to Thomas McAuley, mentioning Jefferson's membership of the F.H.C.[2]
The initials of the F.H.C. Society stand for a secret Latin phrase, likely "Fraternitas, Humanitas, et Cognitio" or "Fraternitas Humanitas Cognitioque" (two renderings of "brotherhood, humanity, and knowledge"). The "brothers" of the original 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, especially at the Raleigh Tavern. The group became publicly known by the backronym "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).[3]
William & Mary alumnus and third American president Thomas Jefferson may be the most famous member of the Flat Hat Club.[4] Other notable members of the original group included Colonel James Innes, St. George Tucker, and George Wythe.[5] Late in life, Jefferson wrote that, "[w]hen 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. Still, it had no useful object, nor do I know whether it now exists."[6]
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.[7]
The student members of the F.H.C. suspended the group's activities in 1781, probably due to 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.[8]
The name of the group was revived in the twentieth century by application to a select group of twelve undergraduate men and four 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 -- that is, "in town", having graduated from the university). This society operated largely as a collegiate honorary society. It suspended its activities in 1943 as the number of men enrolled at the College steeply declined because of American involvement in World War II.[citation needed]
The modern F.H.C. Society was revived in May 1972.[9] It remains an all-male society, consisting of twelve undergraduate men and alumni in urbe. In recent years, an additional six members were added. Most of its activities remain comparatively secret within the university. Members receive medals of distinction upon graduation from William and Mary, showing their membership.[10] Contrary to the practice of some similar societies, alumni may disclose their membership after graduation.[11]