The first artifact the Society acquired is a mahogany document box the organization commissioned in 1787 to hold its growing correspondence and other papers. Over the following centuries, the Society has collected a wide variety of artifacts that document the history of the organization and the activities of its leaders, from the end of the Revolution through the upheaval and growth of the nineteenth century and into the Society’s modern years. Many of these objects are decorated with the Society’s Eagle insignia, demonstrating the popularity of the symbol among Society members and in American popular culture.
Thomas George and Daniel King, Jr., Philadelphia
1787
The Society of the Cincinnati Archives
During the Society’s second general meeting in Philadelphia in 1787, the group commissioned this document box to hold the Society’s growing archives of minutes, correspondence, and other documents. The Society paid Thomas George three pounds to make the box and Daniel King, Jr., seventeen shillings to fashion the engraved brass plate, handle, and escutcheons. The document box and its contents were initially the responsibility of each secretary general. The Society’s archives now fill more than one hundred boxes.
American
ca. 1790-1810
Museum Acquisitions Fund purchase, 2006
This Federal-period saber and scabbard are inscribed to Lt. Col. Hugh Maxwell (1733-1799), an original member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, whose name is engraved on the silver-plated brass scabbard along with “Society of the Cincinnati” and an Eagle insignia. The silver-plated brass hilt has an eaglehead pommel and bone grip with carved fluting.
American
ca. 1800-1825
Gift of Dr. DuBose Egleston, Society of the Cincinnati of the State of South Carolina, 1960
When the marquis de Lafayette toured the United States in 1824-1825, his fellow members of the Society of the Cincinnati celebrated him during many of his stops. Lafayette used this cut glass tumbler at a dinner given by the Society of the Cincinnati of the State of South Carolina at the Charleston City Hall in March 1825.
Whitehead & Hoag Company, Newark, N.J.
ca. 1897
The Society of the Cincinnati Collections
Asa Bird Gardiner (1839-1919), a hereditary member of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, successfully campaigned for district attorney of New York County in 1897 with handouts like this small celluloid button. Gardiner was the longest-serving secretary general of the Society, holding the position from 1884 to his death in 1919.
American
ca. 1920-1930
Museum Acquisitions Fund purchase, 2008
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, tobacco and cigarette manufacturers included souvenirs known as tobacco silks in boxes of their products. This tobacco silk printed with the Society’s Eagle insignia was from a series titled “Medals of the World.”
American
1936
Gift of Bryce Metcalf, Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut, 1936
For nearly one hundred years, marshals of the Society of the Cincinnati have carried this staff to open meetings and perform other ceremonial tasks. The staff—commissioned by Bryce Metcalf (1874-1951) while serving as the Society’s vice president general—was made from a branch of a fallen walnut tree from the Mount Vernon estate of George Washington, the Society’s first president general.