Bishop James Madison Society founded at William & Mary (1812)

Students at the College of William & Mary founded the Bishop James Madison Society in 1812, immediately after the death of Bishop James Madison, the college's eighth president and cousin of the U.S. president. The society, named in his honor, later went defunct during the Civil War. The 1 January date is a legacy placeholder; no passage states a specific day.

Episodes

Background and detail

Background. The College of William & Mary, a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, had a long tradition of student secret societies, beginning with the F.H.C. in 1750 and Phi Beta Kappa in 1776. Bishop James Madison, the college's eighth president and a cousin of the U.S. president, had led significant reforms there.

Founding of the Society. In 1812, immediately after the death of its namesake, students at William & Mary founded the Bishop James Madison Society, a secret society honoring the late president. The society reportedly considered the Bishop "the greater of the two Madisons." The legacy record's 1 January date is unsupported; no retrieved passage states a specific day.

Later Fate. Like other secret societies at the college, the Bishop James Madison Society went defunct during the Civil War, when William and Mary closed and was occupied by Union troops. The society is best known today through its Last Lecture Series, held each spring semester.

People involved

Sources

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.