A Note from the Historian:

The Yale Club of Boston does not have a continuous, unbroken tradition of recording the names of its presidents. As a result, the foregoing list is compiled from several sources. A copy of the Boston Blue Book, published by the club in 1998, contains a list of the presidents going back to 1925, which remains consistent with the other sources we’ve been able to find as far back as 1947. In resolving inconsistencies among sources for earlier dates, we have favored the most contemporaneous materials. These include the Yale Club’s own paper archives from the 1940s and 1950s, and the collected papers of Yale University Presidents Kingman Brewster and Charles Seymour as well as those of Yale Club of Boston Presidents Howard Gambrill (who in 1957 compiled an invaluable list of former presidents still active in the club) and Harvey Cushing. These sources have together been sufficient to populate our list of presidents for the last hundred years. Our records are spottier between 1866 and 1920, further complicated by a period of coexistence between a Yale Alumni Association of Boston and a Yale Club of Boston; the two were merged in the early twentieth century, and the current organization encompasses them both.

Where known, we have included the residential college, graduate school, or professional school affiliation(s) of the presidents. An undergraduate affiliation may be assumed if not otherwise specified. A class year followed by the letter “S,” as in Howard Gambrill’s case, indicates a graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School.

Among those whose residential colleges are known, Silliman is in the lead with four presidents to date, followed by Ezra Stiles with three. As far as we are aware, Branford and Jonathan Edwards remain unrepresented as of 2023, as do the newest colleges, Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin.

Pat Nelson SPH’46 has the twin distinctions of being the first woman to serve as president and the first president whose primary Yale affiliation was a graduate rather than an undergraduate degree.

Notes on the below:

The most authoritative sources for names and years are in Manuscripts and Archives. I have photographed many of the YAAB documents as of autumn 2024; I have not yet had the chance to go through them in much detail, and have not touched the YCB/BYC documents there at all.

The next most authoritative source is the yearly Catalogue of the Officers and Students in Yale College 190[X]. Google Books has most of these, and they are linked individually in the spreadsheet I maintain entitled “Board Presidents Since Incorporation.”

These two together give me all the YAAB citations I have from 1866 through Cushing in 1920, as well as the YCB ones for 1903-1907. Terms of service are some combination of stated and inferred. Class years are sourced from wherever I happen to find them – sometimes the above sources, sometimes not.

Future historians should note that my new theory is that there was never a “Yale Club of Massachusetts” as such, but rather the “Yale Club of Central and Western Massachusetts,” which disappears from the historical record after 1908. I suspect it was this organization that was reported to have been absorbed into the Yale Club of Boston by 1909 – the timing lines up.

The YCCWM’s officers in the Catalogue have mostly Worcester addresses. In the same year that it disappears, a “Yale Alumni Association of Western Massachusetts” is hoven into existence. Its officers have mainly Springfield addresses. It survives at least until 1921, when I either ran out of sources or lost interest because I had connected this litany with our preexisting records at Harvey Cushing. (It was a couple of years ago that I spent all that time with the Catalogues.)

The Yale Club of New Bedford enters the record no earlier than 1914 and departs it no later than 1920. Following 1912-1913, the Yale Club of Berkshire County MA AND the Yale Club of Worcester begin to appear. Both survive at least until 1921, and I suspect are the same organizations that have persisted to the modern period.

If all this is true, the modern Yale Club of Boston is a composite of the following organizations:

1. The Yale Alumni Association of Boston (and Its Vicinity), founded 1866

2. The Yale Club of Boston of the First Creation, also called the Boston Yale Club, founded in the 1880s and merged back into the YAAB the same decade, I believe

3. The Yale Club of Boston of the Second Creation, founded ca. 1900 and merged with the YAAB ca. 1907 (with the name “Yale Club of Boston” surviving)

4. The Yale Club of Central and Western Massachusetts, merged into the 1907 Yale Club of Boston in 1908 or 1909

5. The Yale Club of Worcester, which (assuming it was the same one) was founded in 1913 and only merged into the modern Yale Club of Boston in (2020, I want to say?)

An additional tidbit: Alfred L. Aiken is the only person I have on record as a past president of the YCCWM who later became president of the YCB. In the former role, he had a Worcester address; in the latter, a Boston one. Perhaps we should consider calling our Worcester excursions the “Aiken Society,” or reserving a seat on the board for a representative of Central Massachusetts as the “Aiken Seat.”