Talk:Old Colony Club

Disambiguation

User:TexasAndroid reverted out, without discussion, my change to the previous redirect page Old Colony Club. I had made it a disambiguation page. It should NOT just point to the Colony Club in New York City which was never known as the OLD Colony Club. One of its buildings was apparently colloquially known as "Old Colony Club". The only reasonable usage for "Old Colony Club" is for the Old Colony Club in Plymouth, Massachusetts, founded in the 1700s and one of the oldest and pre-eminent social clubs in the USA. And "Old Colony" is defined as Plymouth, Massachusetts in the USA. Even though there's no article yet for it, I feel a redirect of "Old Colony Club" to "Colony Club" is misguided and inaccurate. I'd like it to go back to a bifurcated disambig page: to Old Colony Club (Plymouth) and Colony Club (New York). --- Wikiklrsc (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

He's right. The Old Colony Club is alive and well in Plymouth MA. This must be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.209.26 (talk) 03:15, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

status as "one of the oldest Gentlemen's Clubs in the United States"

I have some reservations about the claim that the Old Colony Club is "one of the oldest Gentlemen's Clubs in the United States". The article states that the club was founded in 1769, but that it fell into abeyance during the Revolutionary War (the website suggests that the last time it met was in 1775), which means that it existed for 5 or 6 years, and then didn't exist again until it was "revived" a century later! Also, there is no mention of the Club originally possessing its own clubhouse. This leads me to suspect that the original use of the word "club" referred to a group of men, rather than a freestanding organization. And of course, all of the original members were long dead by the time of the Club's "revival" in 1875, so I don't know how it can claim to be "one of the oldest Gentlemen's Clubs in the United States". It would be similar to me finding mention of some group of men who periodically met together under the name "The Presidio Club" in San Francisco's Presidio back in the last quarter of the 18th century, and then my starting a new club now using the same name, and declaring it to be "the oldest Gentlemen's Club in the West". I realize this gets close to WP:OR, but the onus is on the claimant to support their claim. It doesn't appear to me that the editor who added the claim that the Old Colony Club of 1875-present is actually being the same organization as that which may have existed from 1769-1775, has done this. I'd be genuinely interested to see any evidence or hear any justification of this. Bricology (talk) 00:04, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

+++++ Your reservations are justified. Our usage is local, traditional, and colloquial. For a long time we thought we were the oldest, and some still prefer to think that way although the Schuylkill Club definitely has a better claim and there are others with histories even shakier than our own. Today's Old Colony Club is, however, a direct descendant in that the club was revived to continue in a formal fashion the club's original mission of "honoring the forefathers". Many members have traced their lineages back to those of the original founders and their families have lived in Plymouth for many generations. (There's no place like Plymouth for genealogy!) The club and its members have always had much overlap with the Pilgrim Hall Museum, the General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Plimoth Plantation, the New Plimoth Garde re-enactors, and other groups, all a part of the history-minded community fabric of Plymouth. I guess there's a better way to write that. The whole page needs expansion, and those other groups should be written up and linked to give readers a better context for the history and the passion for history that runs through Plymouth today, 400 years after the Pilgrims arrived. I'll make it a project to get to before Thanksgiving - any help is appreciated!