Saint Tammany
and the Tammany Society

ALICE H. BONNELL
 

A LTHOUGH the Society of Tammany, or Columbian
/j\ Order in the City of New York, is the only Tammany
A )\ societ\' to have surxixed until today, there were at one
time a great number of these societies, some of which antedated
the New Y^ork organization by a number of years. In a collection
presented to the Libraries in 1942, Mr. Edwin Patrick Kilroe
(Columbia '04, Ph.D. '13) has gathered a great variety of mate¬
rials relating to the development of the Society and incidentally
to the history of New York City. The interests of Mr. Kilroe in
politics and collecting began in his undergraduate days at Colum¬
bia where he was one of the founders of the Columbia University
Democratic Club. Furtlier study in the history and development
of the Society resulted in his doctoral dissertation St. Tammany
and the Origin of the Tammany Society or Columbian Order in
the City of New York, and continued throughout his professional
career which included a number of years as assistant District At¬
torney for New York County. He became a member of the Tam¬
many Society in 1911.

Tammany societies after the Revolution and during the early
nineteenth century were \videspread over the country, reaching
from Massachusetts to Georgia and as far west as Missouri. The
earliest of the societies to adopt Tammany as its patron saint was
the Schuylkill Fishing Company of Philadelphia in 1772. Accord¬
ing to legend Tammany, or Tamanend, was an Indian chief of the
Delaware tribe, renowned as a mighty warrior and accomplished
statesman whose private virtues equalled his public ones. He ap¬
pears in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans as