Background:
On the evening of 23 February 1905, Paul Harris invited three friends to a meeting. Silvester Schiele, a coal dealer, Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor, and Gustavus Loehr, a mining engineer, gathered with Harris in Loehr's business office in Room 711 of the Unity Building in downtown Chicago on Dearborn Avenue. Thus, the Rotary Club of Chicago was formed, and the Rotary movement was born.

On 23 February 2005, that movement will celebrate its Centennial. For one hundred years, business and professional people around the world have gathered weekly for fellowship, service and Rotary. What do we know about those 100 years? Over 75,000 visitors a month are reading about how it started, on the Rotary's Global History Fellowship (RGHF) websites. Is this history important? Rotary International Past President Frank Devlin on 20 June 2001, wrote to the History of Rotary staff, stating, "Your web site is an instrumental tool for those forward thinking people who wish to learn from our history, in order to guide our future." To that end, we have created individual pages for each of the first 100 clubs at www.rotaryfirst100.org. One page lists those clubs in order of admittance into Rotary at www.rotaryfirst100.org/clubs. In fact, the project includes pages for the histories of over 500 clubs.

One other expanding and interesting part of the History of Rotary is the "room" where Rotary began. Our project is the host for "The Paul Harris - Room 711 Club" www.room711.org where those four men met, on 23 February 1905, to hear what was on Chicago attorney Paul Harris's mind.

The most popular feature of the project is a History Minute sent each week by email. What Paul Harris Said features quotes from the founderÕs writing with brief commentary and is used by clubs around the world. Subscriptions are free and can be obtained at www.whatpaulharrissaid.org.

In 2002, the website began a project to collect the contributions and stories of the early leaders of Rotary at www.earlyleaders.org to recognize the First Lady of Rotary with a website of her own at www.jeanharris.org and to follow the goodwill tour of Jean and Paul Harris at www.friendshiptrees.org.

You can get a quick orientation to the project at www.1905timeline.org and copy our most concise page of history at www.onepagehistory.org. A recent addition, with some history never published before, is at http://historynewsletter.org/women/ . This web site includes the recollections of the first eight women district governors, as well as a timeline for women regarding Rotary at http://historynewsletter.org/women/timeline/ .

Every president of Rotary International has a home page with links to the project's conventions, themes, theme graphics, home clubs, tributes and other web pages related to each president. Please see: www.presidentshistories.org .

This web-based project was started by the Rotary Club of Pueblo, #43, in October of 2000. Since that time, contributions have poured in from hundreds of individual Rotarians, Rotary clubs, districts, RI Directors past and present, RI Presidents past and present and families and friends of the movementÕs early leaders, from every continent on earth except Antarctica.

Rotary's Global History Fellowship (An Internet Project):
A Club Service project of RI Districts, Clubs and Rotary Organizations, including the Rotary Club of Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Texas.

Past President Doug Rudman 1995-1997, is a member of the Board of Directors of Rotary's Global History Fellowship (An Internet Project) (RGHF), and Carrollton-Farmers Branch was an original Host Club.

Doug Rudman is the History Department Manager, and Chair of the History Fellows of the Fellowship. He is the world's foremost authority on the "Admission of Women to Rotary." He has been quoted on Rotary History: "The vibrancy and viability of Rotary as the most important service club in the history of the world will not depend on membership numbers and mentions in news media. Rather, adherence to its core values will restore Rotary's standing in the affairs of mankind, and the numbers and mentions will occur naturally. There is an old saying, 'If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.' Rotary IS a better mousetrap. It's time that we started treating it that way."

www.historyofrotary.org/ – Voted "Best of the Rest" 2002 by ROTI & ICUFR
Websites:
General History - www.historyofrotary.org
The history of early Rotary Clubs - www.rotaryclubhistory.org
Rotary's First 100 Clubs - www.rotaryfirst100.org
Early Clubs on the Continents - www.rotaryglobal.org
Histories of Rotary's Presidents - www.rotarypresidents.org
The Women of Rotary - www.rotarywomen.org
Books, publications & exhibits - www.rotarylibrary.org

"This is a changing world; we must be prepared to change with it. The story of Rotary will have to be written again and again!" ~ Paul P. Harris Page 253 "This Rotarian Age"

Short-Cut Addresses:
www.onepagehistory.org (Copy This for Your Website)
www.rotarytimeline.org (Get Lost in Rotary History here)
www.room711.org (Where Paul and Friends First Met)
www.1905.info (The First Rotary Club)
www.rotaryfirstfifty.org (The Golden Jubilee on 23 February 1955)
www.whatpaulharrissaid.org (A Paul Harris Rotary Minute)
www.thefounderofrotary.org (Harris's first autobiography, complete & online) www.thisrotarianage.org (The story of Rotary, by Harris, online)
www.myroadtorotary.org (Rotary, In Paul Harris's Own Words)
www.paulharris.info (All About Paul Harris)
www.earlyleaders.org (Those who created Rotary)
www.friendshiptrees.org (The Goodwill trips of Jean and Paul Harris)
www.comelybank.org (Saving the Founder's Home)
www.jeanharris.org (The Founder's Wife

Your gateway to the global history of Rotary:
www.rotaryglobal.org
www.rotaryafrica.org
www.rotaryasia.org
www.rotaryaustralia.org
www.rotarynewzealand.org
www.rotaryeurope.org
www.rotarynorthamerica.org
www.rotaryireland-uk.org
www.rotarysouthamerica.org

Other Important History of Rotary Addresses:
www.rotaryhistory.org/hosts/index.htm (Project Host Page)
www.rotaryhistory.org/hosts/carrollton/index.htm (Club Host page)
www.rotaryhistory.org/committee/contributors/index.htm (Contributors Section)
www.rotaryhistory.org/committee/contributors/rudman.htm (Doug Rudman's History Contributions to the Project)
www.rotaryhistory.org/committee/index.htm (History of Rotary Board of Directors)

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