Paul Harris Foundation

Paul P. Harris

Founder of Rotary

Paul P. Harris was the founder of Rotary. He was born in Racine, Wisconsin, on April 18, 1868, and spent his early years in Wallingford, Vermont, before attending the University of Vermont, Princeton University, and the University of Iowa in 1891. He spent the next five years traveling the world and getting to know his fellow men before settling down to practice law.

He worked as a newspaper reporter, a business college teacher, a stock company actor, and a cowboy. He traveled extensively as a salesman for the marble and granite concern in the U.S. and Europe. These varied experiences broadened his vision and were material assistance in the early extension of Rotary.

In 1896, Paul Harris went to Chicago to practice law. One day in 1900, he dined with a lawyer friend in Rogers Park, a residential section of Chicago. After dinner, they took a walk, and he was impressed by the fact that his friend stopped at several stores and shops in the neighborhood and introduced him to the proprietors, who were his friends. Paul Harris’s law experience caused him to wonder why he couldn’t make social friends out of at least some of his business friends, and he resolved to organize a club that would band together a group of representative business and professional men in friendship and fellowship.

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