Project Scroll Research Note 2026-21: Who brought E Clampus Vitus to Hangtown: George Penn Johnston in the El Dorado reunion of 1888, and a lodge at Young's Hill, Yuba County, in Charles E. De Long's journal, 1856

The order's histories credit Joe Zumwalt with bringing the ritual to Hangtown (Placerville) in 1849. The historical address read at the El Dorado County Society's reunion at Placerville in May 1888, written by Dr. John E. Kunkler, a pioneer of 1849, and read for him by Captain Alex. P. Murgotten, names a different man: "It was introduced into Hangtown by the late Hon. George Penn Johnston." By February 1856, they add, the order "exceeded all other orders, societies and institutions in El Dorado county combined," and when Johnston gave its oration on Washington's Birthday the members of the Legislature came up from Sacramento for its ball. Steve Gage, the district's legislator of 1857, credited "Penn Johnson" with the same at the Studebaker dinner of 1912. In the same spring, at Young's Hill in Yuba County, the storekeeper Charles E. De Long, later United States Minister to Japan, wrote in his journal that he "helped organize the E Clampsus Vitus Order on the hill" (27 April 1856), and recorded its first initiates in May. The journal was edited for print in 1930 by Carl I. Wheat, who read from it at the Clift Hotel that November and led the order's revival in 1931. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-21, version 2. 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/2026-21/.