PLACERVILLE . INFO

Members are known as Clampers. Officially, they refer to their brotherhood as either “a historical drinking society, or a drinking historical society. The issue has never been resolved.”  Clampers take their absurdity seriously. The history of the organization is steeped in it. It is said that the organization was created in 1845 in West Union, West Virginia, when tavern and stable owner Ephraim Bee was given a commission from the Emperor of China to "extend the work and influence of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus." Bee claimed to have received his commission from Caleb Cushing, then the United States minister to China. West Union has a monument to Ephraim Bee on the site of the old Beehive Tavern, where the RailTrail comes through. The original tavern, the 'Bee Hive', was destroyed in the late 1800's during a flood.

Bee felt that an organization was needed in response to the pervasiveness of the Masons, Elks and Odd Fellows, a sort of fraternal antidote to organized solemnity. Hence, E Clampus Vitus. Clamper titles also reflect a parody of the rites of Freemasonry and other lodges. Clamper officers include a Noble Grand Humbug. The Humbug is aided in his duties by the Roisterous Iscutis, the Clamps Vitrix, the Clamps Matrix, the Royal Gyascutis, and my favorite, The Grand Imperturbable Hangman. All members are officers and all officers, the organization professes, “are of equal indignity.”

Ephraim Bee was the son of a clergyman and an Abolitionist. He was also a practical joker, and he played his greatest joke on his West Virginia neighbors. Occasionally, Bee invited the entire town to a party. After the Civil War, it was discovered that a nearby cave was a holding area for the Underground Railroad. When the cave was full, E. Bee gave a party to keep the town busy while runaway slaves were moved to the next stop.

Bee opened membership to any upstanding man who had come of age. Eventually there were E Clampus Vitus chapters in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri and Georgia. Some Clampers claim that brethren in the U.S. Army attempted to bring the Order as far south as Mexico City in 1848, following the Mexican-American War, as a gesture of reconciliation. But all records of the well-intentioned Chapultapec chapter have mysteriously vanished.

The organization is said to have been taken to California by a Clamper named Joe Zumwalt, who first heard of it in Missouri. Zumwalt opened an E Clampus Vitus lodge in the mining town of Mokelumne Hill in 1851. This was Lodge No. 1001.

As the Masons came to the mining country with their ceremonial garb, they looked down upon rowdy nature of E Clampus Vitus. Clampers looked right back and started wearing ceremonial garb of their own: red long johns and badges made from the lids of tin cans. This practice, called "wearing your tin," continues to this day, although the badges are more professionally-made, and members usually dress in a red miner’s shirt, black hat and black pants made by Levi-Strauss of San Francisco. Levi-Strauss earned a fortune in the California Gold Rush by selling rugged pants he made specifically for the miners from a cheap, blue canvas fabric imported from Niems, France, material labeled as being “de Niems.” Hence, Levis and denims.

E Clampus Vitus does not include Levi-Strauss in its historic membership rolls, probably because somebody forgot to include him. But the Order does include Mark Twain among its roster of past members. Twain mined a stake near Angels Camp, California. His “The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County,” is based on a story he heard at a meeting of E Clampus Vitus.

Another pioneer Clamper was Philip D. Armour, a butcher then working in Auburn and Placerville, who later founded one of the world's largest meat-packing firms in Chicago. John Mohler Studebaker of Sacramento was also a Clamper. Studebaker made wheelbarrows for Mother Lode miners in the 1850s. He later returned to his native Indiana, where his brothers owned a wagon shop, and began making automobiles in 1904. Clampers also claim Ulysses S. Grant, J. Pierpont Morgan, Horace Greeley and Horatio Alger as members. All of these historic figures did visit the California gold rush country, but it is doubtful they were Clampers.

Other Clamper membership claims are even more suspect. For example, there is no known record of Solomon, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Sir Francis Drake, George Washington, Andrew Jackson -- and even Adam himself, the alleged “First Clampatriarch” -- as having been Clampers, as E Clampus Vitus would have us believe. I don’t know how they overlooked Levi-Strauss.

Clamper meetings were held, then and now, in what becomes the Hall of Comparative Ovations, commonly in the back room of a saloon, and adorned with the Clamper Flag. The Clamper flag was a hoop skirt with the words "This is the flag we fight under." In parades they carried a seven-foot-long Sword of Justice and Mercy, and they toted an equally long "Blunderbusket," with a two-inch bore. Clampers also met in hotels, dance halls, and if the attendance was too large, in barns. Some chapters even constructed their own Hall of Comparative Ovations building. But most met in, as one newspaper put it, "libation emporiums, where they reached stages of well-being, free from pain and distress."

The brethren were called together by the tinny braying of the "hewgag," a big horn sounded in the street by the Royal Grand Musician. Strict Clamper rules required meetings to be held "at any time before or after a full moon."

As the popularity of E Clampus Vitus grew, Clamper lodges formed in nearly every town in the California mining districts. Many community leaders and business owners found it to their advantage to join the Order and follow the bray of the hewgag, for Clampers were loyal and tended to vote for their brothers and trade in Clamper-owned establishments.

When E Clampus Vitus was in full bloom, from the mid-1850's to about 1870, it was not unusual to find towns almost closing down at the call of the hewgag. Shops, banks, saloons, homes--and placer diggings--were temporarily abandoned when the summons of the sacred clarion shattered the stillness of the air. Indeed many mining towns in the Mother Lode, such as Downieville, Placerville, and Sierra City had more Clampers in residence than all the members of the serious lodges combined.

Much Clamper business involved taking in new members, called Poor Blind Candidates. The only requirement for a membership was a poke of gold dust. The amount depended upon the candidate's means, and in some cases it was waived entirely.

Whenever a new member was to be inducted, the hewgag brayed and the brothers headed for the Hall of Comparative Ovations. Townspeople lined the streets, bearing torches and chanting a dirge “Poor sons of bitches, E Clampus Vitus, Poor sons of bitches, E Clampus Vitus.”

After all were assembled, the Noble Grand Humbug, the Clamps Petrix, and the Clamps Matrix, all masked, began the solemn ritual of initiation, complete with elaborate phony Latin phrasing. The Poor Blind Candidate--right shoe off, pants leg rolled up, and wearing a blindfold--was then led into the hall and brought before the Noble Grand Humbug. His Eminence would ask the nervous candidate a series of questions, after which the newcomer was led around the hall, stopping at different points where he was lectured on various Clamper policies and rules. Next he was placed in the Expungent's Chair, a wheelbarrow padded with a large, cold, wet sponge, and taken over the Rocky Road to Dublin, a ladder laid on the floor. As the Poor Blind Candidate bounced over the rungs, the brethren sang out repeatedly, "Ain't you glad to get out of the wilderness, get out of the wilderness, get out of the wilderness."

Upon completion of his "soul cleansing" ride, the initiate was asked if he believed in the Elevation of Man. When he said he did, he was immediately lifted onto a saddle and hoisted by block and tackle to the ceiling. Often the "elevation" was accomplished by a blanket toss, where the candidate was bounced on a blanket that the brethren firmly held on all sides.

Finally, sometimes after several hours of good-natured torture, the Scales of Darkness--the blindfold--was removed from the fledgling member, and he was given the sacred Staff of Relief. Meanwhile, his new comrades sang to him the revered Clamper ode, "We'll take a drink with you, Dear Brother." Te new member was immediately appointed Chairman of the Most Important Committee to instill a sense of Clamper self esteem. With his new title he equaled all his brothers in rank.

The Noble Grand Humbug then completed the rite by explaining the importance of the Order's Clampatron, St. Vitus, and the significance of the Clamper sacred emblem, the Staff of Relief. He closed by asking the ritual question, "What say the Brethren?" to which the reply was "Satisfactory!" The initiation was over.

As the mining industry faded towards the end of the 19th Century, the Order started to fade as well. It was revitalized in 1931 by Carl Wheat and his friends G. Ezra Dane and Leon O. Whitsell in San Francisco, who founded Yerba Buena Number 1, or the "Capitulus Redivivus.” New chapters sprung up, Lodge 2 in Los Angeles and others elsewhere, numbered sequentially, until members became offended by the neat order of the numbering system. So some creativity evolved. The Pair O Dice chapter in Paradise in the northern Sacramento Valley became Lodge 7-11. The Pacheco chapter, halfway between Lodge 1 in San Francisco and Lodge 2 in Los Angeles became Lodge 1.5.

Clampers are ardent students of California history, and several were not above altering it. In 1935, a brass plaque was "discovered" near Drake’s Bay, north of San Francisco, purportedly left by Sir Francis Drake himself in 1579. The plaque stated that the land had been ceded to the "y Queene of England"  by Miwok Indians.

That’s nice, but there were two things wrong with that story. One, the Miwok were not a coastal people. They lived in the Sierra foothills and Sacramento Valley, Clamper country, and any contact with Drake was unlikely. Two, the plaque was planted by G. Ezra Dane, the Noble Grand Humbug of the Yerba Buena Clampers.

Two years later, in 1937, the chief of the Miwok, William Fuller, also a member of E Clampus Vitus, issued a Clamproclamation taking California away from England and gaving it to the United States.  This was the Clampers’ winking way of saying that Drake’s “plate of brass” was in fun. Chief Fuller’s Clamproclamation reached the desk of Franklin Roosevelt, who was said to have been delighted that California was no longer part of the British Empire. As for the brass plaque, well, it was accepted by the public as authentic until tested with radio carbon dating at the University of California in the 1970s.

There are currently forty-two Clamper chapters in California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington. The organization raised historical markers in many places throughout the West. Often those sites such as bordellos and saloons, overlooked by more traditional historical societies, with a traditional "doin's," or party, after each plaque dedication. These are now common in historical areas around California and the West. When in the Gold Country, a Clamper-placed plaque is never far away.

In its lapses from buffoonery the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus has a benevolent side. Frequently, and quietly, the brethren performed charitable acts, and though they would whimsically state that the purpose of their society was to "care for widows and orphans, --- particularly the widows."

Clampers are widely lauded for valuable services to the needy. They sponsored benefit shows and other fund-raising events for the sick and the destitute, with no hoaxes involved. And when the Mother Lode was struck with disaster, such as fires and floods that devastated whole towns, the Clampers were among the first to lend a hand with rescues and rebuilding. They were jokesters, but good citizens as well.

They still are, and a gathering of Clampers, with their red shirts and gaudy badges, always brings a smile to the faces of people who know who they are, and curious questions from those who don’t. The answers may or may not be, well, creative. It’s hard to say anything about the organization with great certainty, largely because its members have traditionally considered ambiguity a virtue and clarity a vice. An oft-repeated saying is that no one is ever in any condition to take minutes at a meeting, and afterward, no one can remember what happened.

One hopes that their existence, traditions and wholesale fun continues long past 2006, which is actually they Year 6011 in the Clampers’ idiosyncratic calendar.

And what say the brethren to that?

“Satisfactory!”

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Much of this text was edited from a web site, The Gold Camp of Foolery: E Clampus Vitus by Gary Meier, a Clamper who borrowed his information from elsewhere, too, including Lois Rather’s book Men Will Be Boys: The Story of E Clampus Vitus. Rather Press, Oakland, California, 1980. The Tomatoman Times also acknowledges the work of Dr. Albert Shumate, M.D., author of numerous books on San Francisco history, and a Humbug of Sublime, Noble, and Grand Proportions.