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Skull and Bones

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For the pirate flag, see Jolly Roger. For the international poison symbol, see Skull and crossbones. For the Cypress Hill album, see Skull & Bones (album).
Emblem of the Skull and Bones society

The Order of Skull and Bones, once known as The Brotherhood of Death,[1] is a secret society based at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, and is one of the oldest student secret societies in the United States. Skull and Bones has maintained its selective membership, Masonic-inspired rituals, and other aspects for 175 years. The society's alumni organization, which owns its properties and oversees undergraduate activity, is the Russell Trust Association, named after one of Bones' founding members.

History

The society inducts only rising seniors during the late junior year prior to their graduation. By reputation, "Bonesmen" tapped the current football and heavyweight rowing captains as well as notables from the Yale Daily News and Yale Lit before the 1970s. However, the group's decision, after much dispute, to admit women eventually diversified the membership. Numerous undergraduate constituencies are better represented among the recently-tapped membership compared to the cohorts, or delegations, that included the 27th, 41st and 43rd Presidents of the United States. Such actions have been startling since the most recent induction of underage taps. These taps tend to be those of legacy members who would in their own right normally be members, but are then inducted at a much younger age in hopes to bring what views the order have to more of a bearing on their minds.

The Skull and Bones tomb in the 19th century, before adjacent Yale buildings and tree growth.
The Skull & Bones tomb today
Another vantage of the historic Bones tomb.
Bones tomb showing A.J. Davis' towers, right rear facade.

Members meet in the Bones "Tomb" on Thursday and Sunday evenings of each week over the course of their senior year. As with other Yale societies, the sharing of a personal history is the keystone of the senior year together in the tomb. Reputedly, members are assigned a nickname. For Bones, it is said that these names are associated with Roman mythology, while at Scroll and Key the names are associated with Greek mythology, and with Egyptian mythology at Wolf's Head.

Architecture

Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of the dispute over the identity of the architect in his 1999 history of Yale's campus. Pinnell relates how first the left-side block (1856), then forty-seven years later the right-side block, and ultimately the gothic towers salvaged from A.J. Davis' 1851–53 Alumni Hall were added at the time of the creation of their cloister. The salvage is also mentioned at [3].

Pinnell speculates whether the re-use of the Davis towers was evidence of an architectural "filial piety" suggesting that Davis did the original building; conversely, Austin was responsible for the atmospherically similar brownstone Egyptian Revival gates, built 1845, of the Grove Street Cemetery, on the opposite side of campus. Also discussed by Pinnell is the tomb's aesthetic place in relation to its neighbors, including the Yale Art Gallery. (p.42, "Yale University" 1999 Princeton Architectural Press ISBN 1568981678 [4].) Additional data at [5]

Bonesmen

Main article: List of Skull and Bones members
File:Skull and Crossbones c1947, GHW Bush left of clock.jpg
Skull and Bones 1947, with George H.W. Bush just left of clock

Judy Schiff, Chief Archivist at the Yale University Library and the most authoritative (and impartial) chronicler of secret societies at Yale has written that: "The names of (S&B's) members weren't kept secret—that was an innovation of the 1970s—but its meetings and practices were. The secrecy seems to have attracted fascination and curiosity from the start. The first exposé of Skull and Bones, published in 1871 by Lyman Bagg in his book Four Years at Yale, noted that "the mystery now attending its existence forms the one great enigma which college gossip never tires of discussing." [6]

Notwithstanding that resourceful researchers could assemble member data from these original sources, renewed attention may have been paid to leading families in Skull and Bones because in 1985 an anonymous source leaked rosters to a private researcher, Antony C. Sutton, who wrote a book on the group titled America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. This leaked 1985 data was kept privately for over 15 years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it. The information was finally reformatted as an appendix in the book Fleshing out Skull and Bones, a compilation edited by Kris Millegan, published in 2003.

Many influential figures have been in Bones and influential families have often had multiple members over successive generations, much like other societies at Yale. Bonesmen include U.S. Presidents such as George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and William Howard Taft, Supreme Court Justices, and U.S. business leaders such as Jerry S. Zullo

Both 2004 Presidential Nominees—Democratic Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Republican President George W. Bush—were members of Skull and Bones. The nominees were interviewed separately by Meet the Press's Tim Russert. When asked about the organization, both declined to give any details.[2]

Asset Management & Financial Associations

The Russell Trust Association is the corporate name for the Skull and Bones society.

In 1943, by special act of the Connecticut state legislature, its trustees were granted an exemption from filing corporate reports with the Secretary of State, which is normally a requirement.

From 1978 onward, business of the Russell Trust Association was handled by its single trustee, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. partner John B. Madden, Jr. Madden started with Brown Brothers Harriman in 1946, under senior partner Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush's father.

On its 2004 Form 990, the Russell Trust Association reported $3,205,143 in net assets.[citation needed]

Trivia

  • A letter, sent by member Winter Mead to member F. Trubee Davison in 1918, said Geronimo's skull and other remains were taken from the leader's burial site and deposited at the Skull and Bones headquarters.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Sutton, Antony C. America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. 2003.
  2. ^ Meet the Press[1]

Further reading

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