Flat Hat Club

The Flat Hat Club or F.H.C. Society was the first of the collegiate secret societies founded in the present United States. It was established at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia on November 11, 1750. The organization's initials stood for Latin words, although the specific words are now uncertain. As members of a collegiate fraternity in the modern sense, 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. In time, 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 by students at graduation from most American universities).

Related Topics:
Secret societies - The College of William and Mary - Williamsburg, Virginia - 1750

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Another Latin-letter society, the P.D.A. Society (publicly known as "Please Don't Ask") was founded at William and Mary early in 1773 in imitation of the F.H.C. John Heath, a student at William and Mary who (according to tradition) sought but was refused admission to the P.D.A., in retaliation established the first Greek-letter society, the Phi Beta Kappa Society on December 5, 1776. In the chaos of wartime Virginia, the Phi Beta Kappa chartered chapters at other colleges before (as the two Latin-letter fraternities) suspending its existence at William and Mary during the Yorktown campaign; later, during the course of the Anti-Masonic controversies of the 1830s, the Phi Beta Kappa was changed from a social fraternity into the country's first collegiate honorary fraternity, which it remains today.

Related Topics:
Phi Beta Kappa - 1776

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The F.H.C. and P.D.A. Societies, however, remained social fraternities after their revivals; whether chapters of either exist at other universities is unclear. The F.H.C. was revived in 1916, suspended again in 1943, and revived yet again early in 1972. It is active today.

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The F.H.C. Society numbers among its members many notable Virginians of the late colonial period. Perhaps the most famous "brother" is Thomas Jefferson, who late in life noted that the Society had served "no useful object."

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