Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis

The Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis was founded in Boston in 1878 by Charles E. Meyer (1839-1908) with a Mason from Pennsylvania. The Mason had headed the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the British branch of the society founded in the 1860s by Robert Wentworth Little. Within a few years the American group had established lodges, called colleges, across the country. With several others, Meyer traveled to England and was initiated at the college in Sheffield. When Sheffield blocked their request for a charter, they turned to the college in Edinburgh, which issued a charter in 1879. The next year a second charter was issued for a college in New York, and the two American colleges jointly founded the Society Rosicruciana Republicae Americae. Almost immediately, colleges were chartered for Baltimore and Boston. As did the English body, the American group limited membership to Masons.

The society remained stable for a generation but experienced a schism shortly after the turn of the century. At that time some of its members, led by Sylvester C. Gould and George Winslow Plummer (1876-1944), formed the Societas Rosicruciana in America, with membership not limited to Masons. However, the losses were compensated for by the chartering of new colleges in Duluth, Minnesota (1911), and Texas (1918). The society enjoyed a brief period of growth during the 1930s when new colleges were chartered for New Jersey (1931), North Carolina (1932), Virginia (1933), Illinois (1934), and Colorado and Long Island, New York (both in 1935). The society expanded to Canada with colleges chartered in Nova Scotia in 1936 and Ontario in 1937.

The society issues the periodical Rosicrucian Fama. The membership in 1990 was 1400 and as of 1996 there were 32 active colleges. Website: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2092/.

Sources:

Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2092/. April 14, 2000.

Voohis, Harold V. B. Masonic Rosicrucian Societies. New York: Press of Henry Emerson, 1958.