New York's Sons of St. Tammany frolic and fire salutes at gathering.
Image and text source: Time Magazine - The Bicentennial Issue (1976)
-Social Notes
-Quaffing and Singing
*To the United States and the new era!
*May honor, virtue and patriotism be the distinguishing characteristics of the Sons of St. Tammany.
*May the industry of the beaver, the frugality of the ant, and teh constancy of the dove perpetually distinguish the Sons of St. Tammany.
With lusty toasts such as these (there were 13 in all, each accompanied by 13 blasts from a nearby gun battery), the members of the St. Tammany Society gathered on the banks of Hudson's River last spring and made it clear that their future in New York will be a noisy one. What else that future may be is considerably less clear.
The original St. Tammany - uncanonized by any church and now heavily shrouded in legend - was a sachem of the Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) Indians. He is said to have been the first chief to welcome William Penn to America in 1682, and to have granted the Schuylkill Fishing Company the perpetual right to cast their lines in that river. So every May 1, when the Quaker fishermen opened their season, they would toast the health of their benefactor. Gradually, Tammany became a kind of patron saint of Pennsylvania, and new fraternal societies named after the indian sprang up in New Jersey and Virginia.
Each had its own ceremonies, with wigwams, peace pipes and the like. Having no particular purpose, however, these societies duly died away - only to be revived in New York three years ago through the organizing energy of the first Grand Sachem, William Mooney, 33, an upholsterer and dealer in wallpaper.
Mooney's background is a little mysterious. Born of humble parents, he enlisted as a soldier in the Revolution, though some say that he later deserted and served with the British. Despite (or because of) these unproved rumors, Mooney now makes patriotism one of the Tammany Society's most vaunted purposes. Its main purpose still seems to be revelry. (Sample Tammany song: "...a full flowing bowl/ I'll quaff, and sing all the long day,/ And with punch and wine paint my cheeks for my saint...") But Mooney is thought to have political ambitions for his Society. Earlier this month, the group established a new system of regular meetings, speeches to the members and special initiation rituals.
Mooney's views are somewhat disorganized. He is known to oppose both Irish Catholics (Tammany officers must be "American-born) and New York's landed families. As one of his associates put it: "I [cannot] explain the principals of this Society further than that it is a political institution founded on a strong republican basis, whose democratic principals will serve in some measure to correct the aristocracy of our city." Just how the roisterers of Tamany plan to "correct" New York's established leaders remains to be seen.
