…the origin of the Elks.
The story below is an abridged excerpt from more than one article found on elks.org.
The last two months of 1867 found a growing group of actors and entertainers becoming close friends in New York City. Of this group of 15 friends, seven were English by birth and were well familiar with an ancient fraternal order founded in England around 1010 AD named the Royal and Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. The friends frequently congregated at a boarding house kept by a Mrs. Giseman. A common form of entertainment for these actors and entertainers involved the use of three corks in a parlor trick designed to have the loser buy drinks. Very soon, this small group of friends was ordained “The Jolly Corks.”
At about this time the Excise Law was being strictly enforced and Sunday in New York City was a very dry day. Devotees of the cork trick formed the habit of congregating at Mrs. Giesman's on this day to hold social conventions under the inspiring influences of a stock of beer laid in the night before. Some think that one of the Jolly Corks named George MacDonald, as a means to avoid paying the Excise Tax, offered a motion to organize the Jolly Corks as a lodge along benevolent and fraternal lines and suggested a committee be appointed to formulate rules and regulations for its government, prepare a suitable ritual, and select a new name. The Jolly Corks were deeply divided about the name of this new organization, with about one half strongly in favor of being named the Royal and Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. The other half were determined to have the name bestow a distinctively American title upon the new organization.
In the latter part of December 1867 such a committee visited the Cooper Institute Library, where the Brothers found the ELK described in a work on Natural History as an animal "fleet of foot, timorous of doing wrong, but ever ready to combat in defense of self or of the female of the species.” This description appealed to the committee as containing admirable qualities for emulation by members of a benevolent fraternity and the title "ELK" was incorporated into its report.
On February 16, 1868, the committee reported, recommending that the "Jolly Corks" be merged into the "Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks" and the recommendation was adopted by a vote of eight (8) to seven (7). The loser by a nose…? “Royal and Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes!