The Order of the Society.—The successive Presidents General.—Departure for West Point.
"The state societies to have a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and assistant treasurer, to be chosen annually by a majority of votes at the stated meeting.
"In order to obtain funds which may be respectable, and assist the unfortunate, each officer shall deliver to the treasurer of the state society one month's pay, which shall remain forever to the use of the state society. The interest only of which, if necessary, to be appropriated to the relief of the unfortunate.
"The society shall have an order, by which its members shall be known and distinguished, which shall be a medal of gold, of a proper size to receive the emblems, and be suspended by a deep blue ribbon, two inches wide, edged with white, descriptive of the union of America with France."
I am indebted to the kindness of Colonel Joseph "Warren Scott, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, now (1850) the president of the society of that state, for the following information respecting the successive presidents general of the institution.
General Washington was the first president general, and continued in office until his death, in December, 1799. In May, 1800, General Alexander Hamilton was elected as his successor. He was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804, and, at the next general meeting, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, was elected as his successor.
He died in August, 1825. At a special meeting of the society, held at Philadelphia in November, 1826, Major-general Thomas Pinckney was elected president general.1 At his death, Colonel Aaron Ogden, of New Jersey, was elected to fill his place. He held the office until his decease in April, 1838, when General Morgan Lewis, of New York, became his successor. General Lewis died on the 7th of May, 1844, in his ninetieth year, and the venerable Major Popham, also of New York, was elected as his successor at the general meeting in November following. Major Popham died in the summer of 1848, and, at the meeting in November of that year, General Dearborn, the present incumbent, was elected to supply the vacancy. Such is the brief history of a society over which the venerated Washington first presided.