The Cyclopedia of Fraternities

THE CYCLOPEDIA OF FRATERNITIES, 1899. By Albert Stevens.

. . . but it is much more than that, its A Compilation of Existing Authentic Information and the Results of Original Investigation as to More than Six-Hundred Secret Societies in the United States of America. It is “Supplemented by Family Trees of Societies, Comparative Statistics of Memberships, Charts, Plates, Maps and the Names of Many Representative Members. This extraordinary book was compiled and edited by Albert Steven and published by Hamilton Publishing Co in 1899.

As is befitting its quintessential Victorian title, the Cyclopedia is, without a doubt, the single most important book on the history of American Fraternalism. It is as important to understanding the subject, as the Rosetta Stone was for understanding ancient Egypt.

Editor Albert Stevens, 33°  (1854-1919) was a journalist and magazine editor in New Jersey and New York. More especially he was an indefatigable investigator.

A second edition of the Cyclopedia was published in 1906, but there is not much more information added. The book was reprinted by the Gale Research Group in the 1970s and exists in PDF and on-line to day.

Without it, other compilers and historians, such as Arthur Preuss in the 1920s, Alvin Schmidt in the 1970s and even Wikipedia today, could never attempt their work.

The Historical Society of American Fraternalism reformatted Steven’s Cyclopedia for its on-line Encyclopedia.