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John J. Cone serves as surpeme knight from 1898-99; he is a member for less than three years when he is elected to lead the Order.. |
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Father McGivney dies on Aug.14, 1890. His funeral Mass is celebrated in Thomaston, Conn., on Aug. 18. |
In 1892, the Order passes laws allowing noninsurance or associate members to join. |
In November 1893, The Columbiad, a forerunner to Columbia, begins publishing. Its editor, Thomas A. Cummings, is also the Order’s first national director of ceremonials. |
Ladies’ auxiliaries begin to emerge in the late 1890s. |
6,000 Knights march in an 1892 Columbus Day parade in New Haven; nearly 40,000 people attend |
The Vatican’s first acknowledgement of the Knights comes in 1895, when Archbishop Francesco Satolli, apostolic delegate to the United States writes a letter extolling the “merits of this splendid Catholic organization” and giving the Order his apostolic blessing. |
James E. Hayes, the Order’s third supreme knight (1897-98), joins the Knights in Massachusetts in 1892; during his tenure as a district deputy and state deputy, he presides over the institution of 75 councils.
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John J. Cone succeeds Hayes and serves from 1898-99; he is a member for less than three years when he is elected supreme knight. |
Under Cone’s leadership, the Knights subscribe to war bonds to support the Spanish-American War; at his direction, soldiers and sailors are not disqualified from being insurance members.
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| On Nov.25, 1897, Canada’s first council – Montreal Council 284 – is chartered. By 1905, the Order is established in every U.S. state, five Canadian provinces, Mexico, the Philippines and is soon to enter Puerto Rico and Cuba. |
Writing in the The Columbiad in 1898, a year before he was elected supreme knight, Edward L. Hearn says a Knight should live according to the virtues of loyalty, charity, courtesy and modesty, “self- denial and a careful respect for the feelings of others.” |
Hearn’s administration modernizes the Order’s insurance program, employing mortality tables and other tools of commercial insurers. |
