Congratulations, you’ve made it to the first site on our journey—The Statue of Nathan Hale. Nathan Hale is widely known as one of America’s first spies. He lived in Connecticut Hall, where you currently stand. For a while, he was a member of Linonium. But he soon grew dissatisfied with the club’s elitism and ostracization from the rest of the community. The day before his graduation from Yale, Hale decided to leave Linonium and join The Society. His former Linonium members took the news of his transfer as a betrayal of the highest degree. When he began spying for the American forces during the revolutionary war, they found the perfect opportunity to strike.
An anonymous letter was delivered to a British captain on September 21, 1776. It had but one line: “All Hale the rat -- L.”
Nathan Hale was executed the following day at the hands of the British forces. It was then that he uttered his famous last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” He wore The Society pin in his final moments.
In the years following, Hale became somewhat of a martyr for our society—and a warning against the dark, outside forces that wish us harm. As we came to learn, openly being a member meant being a potential target. So The Society began meeting in secret, no longer out in the open in front of Phelps Gate. Most assumed we disappeared—that we disbanded. But some rumored that we started meeting elsewhere…