The Social Register

         The article Old Money refers often to the Social Register and the large role it played in society's past. The Social Register, which highlighted the achievements and success of society's elite, was the determining factor for whether a person truly was an upper-class socialite or not. Because a person could not simply ask to be listed in the Register, the Register maintained an elite status and only the most worthy were able to grace its pages. Despite its decline in popularity, the Social Register still exists today. The most recent cover of the 2010 Social Register has a wedding photograph of two influential families- the Sullivans and the Vietors.

            Even now, the Registry still focuses on family ancestry. Although David Brooks argues in his book, Bobos in Paradise, that today's high society has evolved from Old Money to Bourgeois-Bohemian, Old Money's presence can still be seen in the Social Register. While today's Bobos focus more on education and job occupoation as important characteristics, Old Money socialites emphasized social club membership and family lineage. As seen in this 2010 Register entry, the information in the Sullivan-Vietor marriage announcement includes parent names, church location, and hometowns. There is no mention made of either person's educational background or current employment. 

          Because the Social Register listed a person's social clubs beside his or her name, abbreviations were created for the various clubs in existence. These abbreviations signified how important a person's social participation was and allowed readers to judge how good of a socialite the person was. Examples of club abbreviations include "Dar" for Daughters of the American Revolution, "H" for Harvard Graduate, and "Rc" for Racquet Clubs. Through these abbreviations, the Social Register, which is viewed as an impressive achievement for upper-class socialites, manages to reduce each person/entry's existence to only their clubs, education, marriage, and family lineage. The fact that only a letter H is used to represent a Harvard graduate further emphasizes how exclusive the Social Register's entries were. Readers of the Social Register understood all these short abbreviations and knew which universities and clubs they stood for. I found an example of a Social Register entry to prove how difficult it is to decipher each entry if one does not understood the many different abbreviations. Charles Norton Adams' entry in 991 was "Unn.Nrr.Srb.BtP.Evg.Myf.Ht.Cw." To a high class socialite, this would mean Charles was part of the Newport Reading Room and the Spouting Rock Beach club, but to those of the lower classes, these entry would be meaningless. Thus, the use of the Social Register not only proudly exhibits the best examples of upper class society through its exclusivity, but also further separates the middle class from the upper class through its cryptic entry abbreviations.