William Joseph Simmons, father of Dragons
The curious life of William Joseph Simmons is shrouded in myth. Scholarship on his life cites additional scholarship on Simmons which, in turn, cites more secondary literature in a near-infinite loop. At the end of the historiographical chain is murk and propaganda, tall tales and marketing, re-written post facto for popular consumption. From the few reliable contemporaneous sources available, the consensus appears to be as follows:
Simmons was born in Alabama in 1880, the son of a Confederate soldier, physician, and alleged officer in the original Ku Klux Klan named Calvin Henry Simmons. His family, while at times financially unstable, was able to afford to domestically employ at least two Black laborers. Between the stories of a "twelve foot" nay, a "twenty foot" tall klansman from the domestic employees and nostalgic stories told by his father beside the fireplace, Simmons grew up as many Southerners did: with a sanitized and heroic view of the murderous Reconstruction Era Ku Klux Klan.
One story, told by a Ku Klux Klan publicist to a newspaper editor in Atlanta, describes a vision by fifteen-year-old Simmons of white-hooded men on horses against the backdrop of a Southern sunset. Others describe an opportunist, bedridden by a motor vehicle accident in the first half of 1915, fantasizing about re-creating the Klan as birthed by D. W. Griffith for a theater audience. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
In 1893, Simmons' father died and left the family in financial ruin. Much of William's early life mirrors the shared plight of young men in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to become respectable, tough men in a world filled with shadows of Civil War heroism and humiliating urban assembly lines. For men coming of age around 1900 in the US South, masculine proving grounds were as scarce as the availability of vast unsettled territories out west, awaiting couragous trailblazers and cattle drivers in ten gallon hats. A new definition of manliness was needed, one with a robust claim to that elusive "cult of masculinity" and Simmons could feel it.
Nonetheless, Simmons repeatedly attempted to trace the steps of his father toward manhood. He may have attended John's Hopkins University with the goal of a medical degree, but dropped out due to financial hardship. Records at John's Hopkins neither confirm nor deny his attendance. He may have briefly worked as a farmer, a career his father held between the Civil War and returning to medicine.
Simmons enlisted to fight in the Spanish American War when he turned eighteen in 1898, but primarily saw death from disease while in service. Naturally charismatic and bright, upon returning home, he likely worked as a preacher in the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church, riding-circuits. Whether he was a provisional preacher, booted early for ineffectiveness or a ten-year revival tent staple who was similarly let go for failing to recruit new members, the reporting varies.
By 1912, Simmons left the religious world and began work as a fraternal salesman for the Knights of Pythias and Woodmen of the World. Again, reports on this work varies with some asserting he made very little money, others saying he took home up to $10,000 per year (nearly $300,000 in 2021 USD), while David Chalmers claims Simmons earned an astronomical $15,000 each year from the Woodmen alone.
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