he first formal institution called The Society of the Sons of Saint George was founded in Philadelphia on April 23, 1772. They met at Patrick Byrne’s Tavern on St. George’s Day and adopted a constitution to govern the society. The extended title of the association reveals the main aim of the society: For the advice and assistance of Englishmen in distress.
The introduction of the US Constitution states that “numbers of Englishmen have arrived in this city and being disappointed in their expectations have been reduced to the lowest ebb of distress; and not knowing where to apply for relief or advice, have sunk into ruin almost unnoticed.” The members hoped to provide distressed Englishmen with “good counsel or a small pecuniary assistance.”
With some claims that they first met in 1720 at Tun Tavern, it was officially founded with 85 members in 1772, the first meeting held at Patrick Byrne’s Tavern on Front Street below Walnut. Robert Morris—signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and financier of the Revolution—was its most prominent member and served as the first vice president of the society. At the second meeting, Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Penn and the future first Episcopal bishop in America Reverend William White joined.
The Tale of St. George & The Dragon
The Tale of
St. George &
The Dragon
In a legend, St. George, a soldier venerated in Christianity, defeats a dragon.
The story goes that the dragon originally extorted tribute from villagers. When they ran out of livestock and trinkets for the dragon, they started giving up a human tribute once a year. This was acceptable to the villagers until a princess who was chosen as the next offering. The saint thereupon rescued the princess chosen as the next offering.
The narrative was first set in Cappadocia in the earliest sources of the 11th and 12th centuries, but transferred to Libya in the
13th-century Golden Legend.
With pre-Christian origins (Jason and Medea, Perseus and Andromeda, Typhon, etc.) it is recorded in various saints’ lives prior to its attribution to St. George specifically. It was particularly attributed to St. Theodore Tiro in the 9th and 10th centuries. The story was first transferred to St. George in the 11th century with the oldest known record of him slaying a dragon found in a Georgian text.
The tale and iconography spread rapidly through the Byzantine cultural sphere in the 12th century, then reached Western Christian tradition via the crusades. The knights of the First Crusade believed that St. George, along with his fellow soldier-saints Demetrius, Maurice, Theodore
and Mercurius had fought alongside them at Antioch and Jerusalem.
The legend was popularized in Western tradition in the 13th century based on its Latin versions in the Speculum Historiale and the Golden Legend. At first limited to the courtly setting of Chivalric romance, the legend was popularized in the 13th century and became a favorite literary and pictorial subject in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, and it has become an integral part of the Christian traditions relating to St. George in both Eastern and Western tradition.
Tun Tavern
An early meeting location
The society’s connection to St. George was evident in its celebration of St. George’s Day and its symbols.
They met quarterly on the 23rd of April, July, October, and January. The most important meeting occurred on St. George’s Day, an occasion to deliberate on official business and to elect new officers: president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, the stewards, and messenger. April 23rd was also a festive and social occasion to celebrate English nationalism. Symbols depicted the patron saint of England, its seal consisting of the arms of England, St. George and the dragon, and the words Libertas et Natale Solum on the top along with “I was a stranger and ye took me in” on the bottom.
The young institution was disturbed by the chaos of the Revolutionary War. The battles of Lexington and Concord occurred on April 19, 1775. During the annual meeting on St. George’s Day Robert Morris announced news of the fighting. The society was torn between loyalists and supporters of independence. Some members left the meeting depressed by the report of hostilities while others greeted the news with rejoicing. The following meeting on July 24, 1775, was poorly attended and it was decided via vote to suspend its activities temporarily. Tension between members escalated as the colonies moved closer to declaring independence, with one member—the outspoken royalist John Kearsley—arrested for his political activities.
Part of the record of the first meeting when the first rules were adopted.
An emergency meeting was held in March 1776 and, among other business, he was expelled.
It was decided to hold the annual St. George’s Day dinner on April 23, 1776, and the division between loyalists and patriots
was evident during the celebrations. John Adams wrote a letter to his wife on that day in which the renowned statesman described the festivities:
This is St. George’s day, a festival celebrated by the English, as St. Patrick’s is by the Irish, St. David’s by the Welsh, and St. Andrew’s by the Scotch. The natives of Old England in this city heretofore formed a society which they called St. George’s Club or St. George’s Society. Upon the 23rd of April, annually, they had a great feast. But the Tories and politics have made a schism in the society, so that one part of them are to meet and dine at the City Tavern, and the other at the Bunch of Grapes, Israel Jacobs’s, and a third party go out of town. One set are stanch Americans, another stanch Britons, and a third, half-way men, neutral beings, moderate men, prudent folks; for such is the division among men upon all occasions and
every question.
The chaotic celebration in 1776 marked the end of the society’s activities for the rest of the revolutionary period. The revolutionary era reveals a complex relationship between the English heritage of the colonists and their political views. Perhaps surprisingly, Americans insisted on celebrating St. George’s Day, the national day of England, even as they prepared to break from the empire. Their push towards independence did not consist of a rejection of English culture. As with the case of St. George’s Day, rebels saw the Revolutionary War as being consistent with English political traditions. In the future, St. George’s societies continued the difficult act of balancing their pride in being English and loyalty to the American state.
The society reconvened on April 23, 1787, beginning a long period of growth and stability. The first matter of business was to amend the constitution to accommodate the changed political situation. A reprised set of rules were approved on April 23, 1788, removing the arms of England and Libertas et Natale Solum from the seal, and in their place adding thirteen stars, the eye of providence, a wreath, a young phoenix, and the motto add to brotherly love, charity.
A shift from pounds to dollars, and province to state, was also required. The revived society grew in numbers, with the most respected new member being Benjamin Franklin, who joined in 1787 just around the start of the Constitutional Convention on May 25.
City Tavern
A popular meeting place for the society
Bits & Pieces
The society won recognition from the state of Pennsylvania in 1813, receiving a charter from Governor Simon Snyder.
In 1837, upon the accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne, the society commissioned Thomas Sully of Philadelphia to paint her portrait.
During WWI and WWII, the society raised funds for the relief of British war sufferers, including war brides and distressed widows and children of soldiers and sailors.
In 1923, a history of the society was published and is still available for purchase today.
The society celebrated its bicentennial in 1972 with a reception and tea at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on April 21, and on April 22 held a reception and banquet at the Union League.
On April 22, 2023, the 250th anniversary of the society was celebrated (a year later than originally scheduled due to the remnants of the Covid 19 pandemic).
Meeting Places
Merchant’s Exchange Building
Once served as a home for the society
Until the late 1860s, The Society of the Sons of St. George had no permanent location and met at various places around the city.
Its first permanent home from 1868 to 1872 was a rented room at the Merchant’s Exchange at 3rd and Walnut Streets, then moved to the Continental Hotel for four years. In the 1870s the Society purchased the Mathew Newkirk Mansion at 13th and Arch Streets and renamed it St. George’s Hall. The building sold in 1896 to Henry Lea, who the Society then rented the hall from. In 1902, Lea sold the building and the Society was forced to move out. The building was torn down, and the columns and portico were moved to Princeton University.
The Continental Hotel
Once located at 9th and Chestnut
St. George’s Hall
13th & Arch Streets (purchased in the 1870s)
Inside St. George’s Hall
13th & Arch Streets (purchased in the 1870s)
The society then purchased and renovated a building at 19th and Arch Streets. The renamed St. George’s House opened April 16, 1903. In 1920, it was agreed to sell St. George’s House due to the changing nature of the neighborhood, its inadequate size, and a great increase in its value. Meetings were held at the Manufacturer’s Club, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Rittenhouse Hotel from 1921-1924.
St. George’s House
19th & Arch Streets, opened in 1903
A building at 19th and Spring Garden Streets was purchased, and the society took up residence in 1924. It served the society for over eight decades until it came down in May 2008. In the following years, The Society of the Sons of St. George held its annual St. George’s Day Dinner at the Philadelphia Club, with its annual meetings at the Franklin Club and the Corinthian Yacht Club. It shared offices with the Philadelphia Branch of the English Speaking Union (ESU) at the Racquet Club of Philadelphia until 2018.
Over 80 Years
The society’s home at 19th and Spring Garden
The society currently shares offices with the ESU and other non-profits at The Tiger Building located at 1221 Locust Street in Philadelphia.
During the years of the Covid-19 pandemic (approx 2020-2022), members met at various other locations in and around the city as well as through video conferencing.
Tiger Building
Located at 1221 Locust Street in Philadelphia
St. George and the Dragon Statue
St. George and the Dragon Statue
When The Society of the Sons of St. George decided to purchase its own property in 1872, a statue of St. George and the Dragon was commissioned. Cast in bronze by Elkington & Company of Birmingham England, the statue measures 8’ in height, 4’ in width, and 12’6” in depth. The base is 6’ in height, 11’6” in width, and 6’6” in depth. It was installed on St. George’s Hall in 1877 then moved to the new St. George’s Hall at 19th and Arch Streets in 1903. Placed in storage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1935, and eventually donated to the City of Philadelphia, the sculpture was revived in time for the US Bicentennial of 1976. It was placed in 1975 in West Fairmount Park along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive near Black Road. The statue sits mere feet from a path where walkers and bikers can easily spot the magnificent recreation of the classic tale. In 2021, members began efforts to beautify the area around the statute.
Volunteers
Beautifying the statue
The statue, originally cast in England in 1877, was removed from St. George’s House on May 22, 1923.
The Foundation
The society’s foundation was created in 1986 as a 501(c)(3) to make use of Albion Society’s Scholarship Funds to provide underserved University of Pennsylvania students the opportunity to study in England, and in return allowed English students to study at the university. In 1984, the society provided funding for kneelers in St. George’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey in London.
In October 1986, Educational Assistance Program Guidelines were first developed. The requirements to receive a scholarship were much broader than is currently required. In the late 1980s, the Scholarship Assistance Committee of the society established a relationship with Arcadia University (then Beaver College). The late David Larsen, former Director of Beaver College Center for Education Abroad and a member of the society, was an integral part of the program.
Since the inception of this program in 1987-88, a total of $350,000 has been awarded in scholarship aid to nearly 90 students from nearly 50 colleges and universities. To qualify for a scholarship, students must: 1) live in the Philadelphia area 2) have a good academic record 3) demonstrate financial need and 4) be of English descent. Applicants from outside Arcadia are also accepted.
In addition to its college scholarship program, the society through its foundation has supported and is supporting other worthwhile endeavors, including St. James School for underresourced students in the neighborhood of Allegheny West, and Philadelphia Outward Bound School’s partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award USA Program. Outward Bound is a flexible and proven youth development program for students 14-24, and complements formal classroom learning with a focus on real world experiences that build essential life skills.
Royal Society of St. George
The Royal Society of St George, founded in 1894, is the premier patriotic society in England, its patron Queen Elizabeth II. In January 1983, The Society of the Sons of St. George became a Life Affiliate member thanks to the work of Society member Robert Sewell. He was also a founding member of the city of Westminster Branch of the Royal Society when he returned to London after working in Philadelphia.
The Thomas Sully Portrait of Queen Victoria
Commissioned by the society in 1837
Article from National Gallery of Art
Thomas Sully was born in 1783 in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England, the youngest son of nine children born to the actors Matthew and Sarah Chester Sully.
At the suggestion of his father’s brother-in-law, a theater manager in Virginia and South Carolina, the Sullys emigrated to the United States in 1792. Sully attended school in New York until his mother’s death in 1794, when he returned to live with his family in Richmond. From there they moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where the future artist performed on the stage with his parents and siblings.
Following the example of his older brother, the miniature painter Lawrence, Sully resolved to become an artist. He first received art lessons from his young schoolmate Charles Fraser. After an unsuccessful attempt to learn the business of insurance broking, Sully was apprenticed to his brother-in-law, a French emigrée miniaturist named Jean Belzons. After a violent quarrel with his teacher in 1799 Sully left Charleston and joined his brother Lawrence in Richmond. Inspired by the sight of portraits by Henry Benbridge, he continued to study art and opened up his first studio at Richmond in 1804. When Lawrence died in September 1804 Sully assumed responsibility for the family and eventually married his brother’s widow Sarah.
In 1806 Sully accepted a commission to paint at a theater in New York, where he met William Dunlap, John Wesley Jarvis, and John Trumbull. He invested one hundred dollars to have Trumbull paint a portrait of his wife so that he might learn something of the senior artist’s technique. In 1807 he travelled to Boston and spent about three weeks studying with Gilbert Stuart, who encouraged his efforts to become a portraitist. Later that year Sully moved to Philadelphia, where he remained for the rest of his life.
His portrait practice flourished, and in May 1809 he entered into an agreement with a group of prominent citizens that enabled him to embark a year-long trip to study art in London. Sharing a room there with Charles Bird King, he studied under Benjamin West and Henry Fuseli, met the circle of British artists who were active at the Royal Academy of Art, and familiarized himself with collections of old master paintings. When Sully returned to Philadelphia in 1810 he quickly set about establishing his future reputation as one of America’s foremost portraitists by painting a number of full-length commissions, beginning in 1811 with George Frederick Cooke in the Role of Richard III. In 1812, one year after the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts acquired the painting, Sully was elected to an honorary membership in the organization, in which he played an active role until resigning from its board of directors in 1831. From 1819 to at least 1846 he and his partner, the restorer and frame maker James S. Earle, ran a successful commercial art gallery.
Sully’s artistic activity was not confined to Philadelphia, and throughout his long career he made numerous protracted trips to Washington, Baltimore, Boston, New York, and West Point.
At the height of his fame in 1837, a Philadelphia association of British expatriates called the Society of the Sons of St. George sent him to England to paint a full-length portrait of the recently crowned Queen Victoria.
Sully’s professional stature was such that he attracted many pupils, most notable among them Charles Robert Leslie, John Neagle, and Jacob Eichholtz; he also trained several of his children to become competent artists. In 1851 he prepared a short practical guide for portraitists entitled Hints to Young Painters and the Process of Portrait Painting, which was revised in 1871 and published two years later.
Sully was America’s foremost exponent of the highly romanticized, painterly, and fluid style of portraiture practiced by the two contemporary British artists he had most admired during his year of study in England, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Although he painted many of the most prominent politicians, clergymen, and military heroes of his era, Sully’s fame rests mainly on his exaggeratedly elegant and idealized portraits of fashionable society women, and, to a lesser extent, his sentimental group portraits of children and “fancy pictures.” Often painted with a nearly flawless mastery of technique, these ultra-refined images are fundamentally decorative, and the deliberately self-conscious affectations of the sitters create a sense of artificiality that precludes the achievement of any penetrating psychological insight into their characters. This aesthetic, however, appealed greatly to the elite social stratum from which Sully drew his patrons, and earned him the status of being the most successful American portrait painter following the death of Gilbert Stuart in 1828, until his gradual decline in the 1850s.
Sully was born in 1783 and died in Philadelphia in 1872.
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An oil portrait of Thomas Sully as captured in a daguerrotype produced by Mathew Brady’s studio between 1851 and 1860
Philadelphia City Council Resolution
September 29, 2022
Recognizing And Honoring The 250th Anniversary Of The Society Of The Sons Of St. George
For Its Longstanding Contributions To The English American Community In Philadelphia
…now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That it hereby recognizes and honors the 250th Anniversary of the Society of the Sons of St. George for its longstanding contributions to the English American community in Philadelphia.
RESOLVED FURTHER, That an Engrossed copy of this legislation be presented to the Society of the Sons of St. George as evidence of the respect and admiration of this legislative body.
CERTIFICATION: This is a true and correct copy of the original Resolution adopted by the Council of the City of Philadelphia on the twenty-ninth day of September 2022.
Introduced by: David Oh | Sponsored by Councilmembers: David Oh, Cindy Bass, Kendra Brooks, Mike Driscoll, Jamie Gauthier, Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Mark Squilla
Other Societies
The Society of the Sons of St. George was one of the last immigrant assistance societies to be formed, following The Welsh Society of Philadelphia (1729), St. Andrews Society of Philadelphia for Scots (1747), The Hibernian Club of Philadelphia for the Irish (1759), The German Society of Pennsylvania (1764), and Sons of St. Patrick (1771). The first aid society specifically for the English was formed in Boston when the now named Boston Episcopal Charitable Society was established in 1724 by charter from the king of England; it was focused on recent English immigrants. It is now an arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The St. George Society of New York was established just two years prior to Philadelphia’s in 1770 and is still very active today.
Amendments
In 1796, a committee was appointed to revise the rules and constitution, approved on April 24, 1797. The society was first incorporated in 1813 and reincorporated on April 24, 1856. The charter was once again amended and restated in March 1910. A Certificate of Summary of Record was filed on November 26, 1980. The society began admitting women in the early 2000s. In 2017, amended and restated articles of incorporation were adopted and filed for a 501(c)(3) public charity, and the name was changed to the Society of St. George, Philadelphia, to reflect that its membership was no longer limited to men. The society then opened its membership to those who are not of English ancestry and interested in the organization’s mission and activities. Historical text from St. George’s Day, Cultural History of England’s National Day by Hanael Bianchi and former society secretary Roger A. Brown, Esq.