An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones - vHo

Memorandum Number Four: Who Is In This Secret Society
The membership list of about 2500 initiates into The Order has very obvious features:
● Most members are from the Eastern seaboard United States. As
late as 1950 only three members resided in Los Angeles, California, but 28 members resided in New Haven,
Connecticut.
● Members are all males and almost all WASPS (White Anglo
Saxon Protestant). In great part they descended from English Puritan families, their ancestors arrived in
North America in the 1630-1660 period.
● These Puritan families either intermarried with financial power
or invited in sons of money moguls, e.g., Rockefellers, Davisons, and Harrimans, whose sons became
members of The Order.
From this preliminary information we can derive Hypothesis One:
THERE EXISTS [N THE UNITED STATES TODAY, AND HAS EXISTED SINCE 1833, A SECRET
SOCIETY COMPRISING MEMBERS OF OLD LINE AMERICAN FAMILIES AND REPRESENTATIVES
OF FINANCIAL POWER.
The chart on page 19 presents a simplified layout of this hypothesis. Full information remains for a later
book - for now we'll give details of just two key families, the Whitneys and the Harrimans.
The Whitney Family
A key family is the Whitneys, descended from English Puritans who came to the U.S. about 1635 and settled
in Watertown, Mass. Eight Whitneys have been members of The Order. Of these, three had brief lives;
Emerson Cogswell Whitney died a few months after initiation and Edward Payson Whitney "disappeared in
1858" according to his biographer. However, three Whitneys, William Collins Whitney and his two sons, are the
core of Whitney influence in The Order which survives today through the Harriman family and intermarriage
with Paynes and Vanderbilts.
Whitneys In The Order:
Field
Initiation
Name
Education: "Died December
1851 Emerson Cogswell Whitney
1, 1851."
1854 Edward Payson Whitney Medicine: "Disappeared in
1858"
1856 James Lyman Whitney Library work: Boston
Library
1863 William Collins Whitney Secretary of Navy (1885-9)
Promoter and Financier
1878 Edward Baldwin Whitney Law: Justice, New York
Supreme Court
1882 Joseph Ernest Whitney Education: "Died Feb. 25,
1893"
1894 Payne Whitney Finance: Knickerbocker
(son of W.C. Whitney) Trust Co.
1898 Harry Payne Whitney Finance: Guaranty Trust
(son of W.C. Whitney) and Guggenheim Explora
tion Co.