YMCA State committee records

Within a few years of the establishment of YMCA work at the national level, it became clear that a single organization for the entire United States and Canada could not meet the needs of local associations for "mutual conference and discussion." Numerous district conventions had been held prior to the Civil War, and the idea of state and local meetings was proposed by the Executive Committee to the Philadelphia Convention of 1865. The concept was formally adopted the following year at the Albany Convention, with the goal that conventions be held in every state and district. These conventions were intended to include not only established YMCAs, but individuals interested in the work of the YMCA where no YMCA was yet organized. The first permanent state organization was set up by delegates to a convention held in New Haven, Connecticut in May 1867. Other pioneers included the maritime provinces of Canada, Vermont, and Ohio, all of which organized later in 1867. The first state to obtain a secretary was Pennsylvania, which hired Samuel A. Taggart to fill that role starting in 1871. By 1895, more than fifty such positions were being maintained by twenty-eight state and provincial organizations. Much of the early state work was spearheaded by Robert Weidensall, particularly in the Midwest. Weidensall was responsible for founding eleven state committees and supporting many more.

The state committees worked closely with the International Committee, which rendered a wide variety of services to the states. Services included financial advising, coordination between two states working jointly, and the development of model constitutions, program outlines, and statements of purpose for state work. State organizations almost universally followed the structural organization of the parent agency, with an executive committee, an evangelical test of membership, the direct relation to local Associations, and incorporation including provision for property holding for local Associations.

The growth of state YMCAs climaxed in the early 1890s, and plateaued for a couple of decades before the outbreak of the First World War. Although some of the stronger state Associations -- Illinois, Massachusetts-Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Ontario-Quebec, Ohio, and New Jersey -- continued to flourish, developing intense supervisory relationships to boys' work, camping, education, student and county programs, many areas saw a serious decline in interest in the state conventions. With the growth of nationalism during the war and the appearance of "metropolitan" organizations in the larger urban areas, the appeal of the state as a unit of fellowship or of loyalty weakened and its logic as an administrative entity became more difficult to rationalize.

Regional districts, initially set up by the Convention of 1913 to work with the state committees, began during the 1930s to merge with and in many cases, take over the role of the state associations. In 1935, the North Central Area Council was organized, comprising the state associatons of Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Iowa. Other areas were established thereafter, with some state associations electing to remain independent. The purpose of the area and state organizations was to promote, organize, direct, and coordinate services to local associations.

This note is a summary of material from C. Howard Hopkins, History of the YMCA in North America,New York: Association Press, 1951.