Project Scroll Research Note 2026-01: The earliest dated mention of E Clampus Vitus yet found: Connersville, Indiana, 27 February 1846

In February 1846 a letter-writer at Connersville, Indiana, defending mesmerism, turned on two newspaper editors who had ridiculed it: "To both of these learned expositors of news our citizens are universally of the opinion that they are naturally qualified members of the 'Eclampsus Vitus' society, an order of which, we have in our town." Printed in the Indiana American of Brookville on 27 February 1846, it is the earliest dated mention of E Clampus Vitus we have found anywhere. By July a "Tent No. 43" was meeting at Indianapolis "attired in full regalia," and that winter a bill to charter a lodge at Centreville came before the legislature, and a committee turned it down with a joke. The order was at home in Indiana before any dated record its own histories cite. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-01, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-01/.