Monday Evening Club records

The Monday Evening Club, a men’s literary and social society, was founded on Monday, January 18, 1869, at the home of the Reverend Caleb Sprague (1804-1884) in Hartford, Connecticut. The first formal meeting of the club was held the next week at the home of historian James Hammond Trumbull (1821-1897), where by-laws were drawn up and the first paper was delivered to the thirteen members present. Since that time, the club has met regularly over the winter and spring, generally six times per year, and the number of members has expanded and contracted over the decades. Each meeting has a host who receives the members at his home or another venue such as a restaurant or club, and an essayist who delivers prepared remarks or an academic paper meant to spur a discussion. The club secretary keeps the minutes, maintains the program schedule, and sends out meeting reminders. The club keeps no financial records as the month’s host provides a meal for the members, which exempts the need for club dues.

The membership has consisted of prominent learned men in Hartford or the surrounding towns, and historically has included theologians and clergymen, editors and publishers, authors and historians, attorneys and judges, educators and higher education administrators, manufacturers and businessmen, physicians, and military and civic leaders. Many members have been natives of the city, while others arrived for professional opportunities and stayed on. The mix has resulted in a wide diversity of topics presented at club meetings, ranging from personal narratives to examinations of current events of national and international scope. In every case, the essayist either drew from his own experiences, or chose to learn about his subject in enough depth to give a presentation twenty minutes in length and lead a lively conversation afterward. During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-2021, many of the meetings were held over Zoom or other video platforms.

The club members have been ever mindful of their past, and three substantial narratives exist in the records: “History of the Monday Evening Club,” by Edward M. Day (a paper read at the meeting on March 30, 1936); The List of Members of the Monday Evening Club Together with the Record of Papers Read at Their Meetings, 1869-1954, by Howell Cheney (Hartford: Privately Printed, 1954); and The Monday Evening Club of Hartford, Connecticut: Its Members & the Titles of Papers Read at Their Meetings, 1869-1970, by Francis Goodwin II (Hartford: Privately Printed, 1970). In addition, Charles H. Clark read his “History of the Monday Evening Club” at the meeting on June 3, 1914, and club secretary Charles J. Cole presented his personal observations in his paper “The Monday Evening Club: Revisited” at the meeting on May 2, 1983.

Recent club secretaries were Henry Edward M. Day, 1930-1945; Howell Cheney, 1946-1951; John C. Parsons, 1952-1981, followed by his law partners Charles J. Cole, 1981-1987, and Robert H. Smith Jr., 1987-2018. Sherwood Willard became the secretary in 2019.