Letter signed by Wm. C. Church - Autograph

2 page handwritten Letter signed by Wm. C. Church on Century Club stationery. Very important man!

William Conant Church (August 11, 1836 – May 23, 1917) was an American journalist and soldier. He was the co-founder and second president of the National Rifle Association. 

Church was born in Rochester, New York on August 11, 1836, to the Reverend Pharcellus Church. He was educated in the Boston Latin School. While still a youth, he helped his father edit and publish the New York Chronicle.

In 1860, he became publisher of The Sun and of the New York Chronicle. In 1861–62 he was Washington correspondent of The New York Times.

He resigned his journalistic position on his appointment as captain in the United States Volunteers in 1862, and served for one year, receiving brevets of majorand lieutenant colonel.

In 1863, he and his brother, Francis Pharcellus Church, established The Army and Navy Journal, which published under various names for 151 years, ending its run in 2014 as Armed Forces Journal. In 1866, the pair founded the Galaxy Magazine.

He and George Wood Wingate established the National Rifle Association in 1871, and in 1872 he replaced its first president, the retired general Ambrose Burnside.

Church was government commissioner to inspect the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1882.

He wrote two biographies, of John Ericsson in 1891, and Ulysses S. Grant in 1899. He published the Army and Navy Journal. In one issue he criticized the living arrangements aboard USS Monitor, a vessel built by John Ericsson.

Church was also one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an original member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and became a director and lifetime member of the New York Zoological Society.

Church died on May 23, 1917. His funeral took place at Grace Church in Lower Manhattan.

Century Club

The Century Association is a private social, arts, and dining club in New York City, founded in 1847. Its clubhouse is located at 7 West 43rd Street near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. It is primarily a club for men and women with distinction in literature or the arts. The Century Association was founded by members of New York's Sketch Club; preceding clubs also included the National Academy of Design, the Bread and Cheese Club, and the Column. Traditionally a men's club, women first became active in club life in the early 1900s; the organization began admitting women as members in 1988.

Named after the first 100 people proposed as members, the first meeting on January 13, 1847 created the club known as the Century; it was incorporated in 1857. It was first housed at 495 Broadway in Lower Manhattan; the club gradually moved uptown, leading to the club's construction of its current location in 1899. During the Civil War, it became headquarters to the U.S. Sanitary Commission. 134 Centurions served in World War I; 110 served in World War II.

The clubhouse, a five-story Palazzo style building, was designed by McKim, Mead & White and built from 1889 to 1891. It became a New York City Landmark in 1967 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It was extensively renovated in the early 1990s, with a fifth floor and terrace constructed in 2009.

Members of the club have included artists and writers William Cullen Bryant, Frederic Church, Asher B. Durand, John La Farge, Winslow Homer, Paul Manship, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John Quincy Adams Ward, and J. Alden Weir. Architect members have included Calvert Vaux, Carrère and Hastings, Frederick Law Olmsted, James Renwick Jr., McKim, Mead & White, and York and Sawyer. Members are known for other endeavors, including eight Presidents of the United States, ten US Supreme Court justices, 43 Members of the Cabinet, 29 Nobel Prize laureates, members of the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Roosevelt, and Astor families, and noted individuals like Dan Beard, J. P. Morgan, Samuel Morse, and Anson Phelps Stokes.

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