Did Rotary begin in 1905 or 1904?

On page six of the Proceedings of the First National Convention of The Rotary Clubs of America, held at the Congress Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, August 15, 16 and 17, 1910 one can read:

“Whereas, on February 25, 1904, there was founded Rotary Club of Chicago […]”.

In addition, there exists some letter-heading of the Rotary Club of Chicago stating that the founding took place fully a year before, on 26^th  February 1904, and since the man who printed that paper was Ruggles, one might reasonably presume he knew what he was doing, and that what he was doing was correct. […] Fifteen years later, however, Paul Harris wrote to Silvester Schiele, that Harry Ruggles’s work “completely overshadows all others in connection with the founding of the Chicago Club”.²

Hence we can also reasonably presume that Ruggles, who did most of the printing during the first years of the clubs’ existence, did not only print the Chicago letter-head, but the first proceedings, and that he advanced the founding one year, thus “merely staking a claim which others were tending to ignore”. 

From: “The Golden Wheel” by David Nicholl (1984)  Submitted by Rotarian Wolfgang Ziegler 1 February 2005