National Conference of State Societies

The National Conference of State Societies is an umbrella organization for all societies representing states in the United States of America.

The National Conference of State Societies (NCSS) was charted by Congress on April 3, 1952 when President Harry Truman signed Public Law 82-293 (36 U.S.C. 1505). But the association was also known by other names in the early 20th and late 19th Century and the early roots date back to at least a listing of officers in the Congressional Directory of 1876 when the group was known as the Central Association of the States. NCSS is an umbrella organization for all state societies whose members include state and territorial expatriates including students, members of the military, active and retired lobbyists and government workers, members of Congress and staff living in the national capital region. The estimated membership of about 55 state and territorial societies in January 2009 was about 22,000 people. Only Rhode Island was not represented in the group in early 2009 for want of an active state society.

State societies have been nonpartisan since World War I. Before that, some were nonpartisan but there were some partisan clubs called state associations between 1854 and 1917. The first state club was the Illinois Democratic Club of Washington City which was founded in 1854 by government clerks from Illinois loyal to President Franklin Pierce. Clubs were formed for Maryland and Louisiana in 1856. However, partisan identification could change quickly as it did when the Illinois club quickly converted to the Illinois Republican Association when President Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861. Members of early state associations were mostly made up of government clerks in the days before Civil Service reform, who wanted to stay on the good side of whichever party controlled the White House. State clubs were considered to be an obstacle to Civil Service reform during the first administration of President Grover Cleveland whose Commissioner of Civil Service, Bishop John H. Oberly of Illinois, tried to abolish all state clubs but did not succeed due to their support on Capitol Hill, according to newspapers of the time.

...
Wikipedia