This is the gateway to all of our club histories. But how did this collection get started?

     On 11 October 2000, Jack M. B. Selway, the webmaster of Rotary Club of Pueblo #43, in Colorado, USA decided to create a page listing the first fifty Rotary Clubs. The Rotary Clubs of Chicago (ROTARY/One), New York City, Hartford, Tacoma, Wichita and D5470 immediately got on board and the single page became a separate website at www.rotaryfirstfifty.org  (now a commemoration of the effort) with history pages for each club.

     Then it was learned that certain UK clubs, formed in 1911, would be left out if the list ended at "50." With the approaching "100" year celebration, the project became www.rotaryfirst100.org  with pages for each of the 100 clubs.  Soon, RGHF Senior Historian Basil Lewis discovered that club #100 had company. Five other clubs were arbitrarily assigned numbers that same day. Also added were clubs listed in the appendix to the first printing of "My Road to Rotary." Clubs 200, 300, 400, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 and 5000.

     As the project continued to expanded with the addition of all Rotary Presidents, their clubs and the host clubs of conventions were added. A special section had been added for the "First 100" clubs in Canada and also in the UK.

     On 13 May 1997, the Secretariat recorded the chartering of a club in Antarctica called Base Marambio-Antártida, Marambio. RI President Luis Vicente Giay (RGHF member) even visited this new club. It was at that point in May of 1997 that Rotary International could finally claim that there was a Rotary Club on every continent in the world. The club did not continue to meet and its status is unknown.

     It took 92 years, two months, two weeks and four days for Rotary to spread from Room 711 of the Unity Building in Chicago, Illinois, literally to “one of the ends of the earth.”

     In the early days of Rotary, 90 percent of the clubs AND the members lived in North America. Every one of the first 100 clubs came from one of five countries, the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain, and 91 of those were located in the U.S. and Canada.  Today, the ratio is down to one-third from North America, and two-thirds from the rest of the world.

     Now, we have the first ten or more Rotary clubs of every Rotary continent, as well as the first Rotary club of every Rotary country on earth, and you can locate the clubs you want by finding the Rotary year it was chartered, or in an alphabetical list of every Rotary country. There are also other international areas incorporated into “Global History.” Find the history of the entire world of rotary at www.regionalhistory.org Look for Wolfgang Ziegler’s work on the “History” in stamps, and don’t forget the United Nations. Rotary is very important to the establishment of this organization. 

     Also, all 530 districts of Rotary International can post their district histories and each of their club histories. Today, the project "Rotary Global History Fellowship" Rotary Global History continues under the leadership and effort of a dedicated group of Rotary historians from around the world.

    In 2010, our vice president of history, PDG Ian Campbell, Scotland, added an article on "International Clubs."  

Jack M. B. Selway, RGHF Founder and Doug Rudman, (left) past Manager of History for RGHF

A doctoral thesis, detailed history of Rotary and civic internationalism