The Flat Hat Club or F.H.C. Society was the first of the collegiate secret societies or fraternities founded in the present United States, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The initials of the F.H.C. Society stand for a Latin phrase that translates into “brotherhood, humaneness, and knowledge.”
As members of the first American collegiate fraternity in the modern sense, the brothers of the F.H.C. devised and employed a secret handshake, wore a silver membership medal, issued certificates of membership, and met regularly for discussion and fellowship. The Society became publicly known as the “Flat Hat Club” in probably allusion to the motherboard caps then commonly worn by all students at the College.
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the most famous member of the Flat Hat Club. Other notable members of the original society included Col. James Innes, St. George Tucker, and George Wythe. A second Latin-latter fraternity, the P.D.A. Society was founded at William and Mary in March 1773 in imitation of the F.H.C. Society. The modern F.H.C. Society was revived in May 1972. It remains an all-male fraternity with most of its activities comparatively secret within the university.
