The Cincinnati _Turngemeinde_, the oldest German-American gymnastic society in this country, was organized November 21, 1848, at the temporary home and with the coöperation of Friedrich Hecker, now an exile, but the popular hero of a republican uprising in South Germany earlier in the same year. He had been one of the foremost leaders of the advanced revolutionary party. A week later another group of men, most of them turners before their migration and former followers of Hecker and Struve, met in Hoboken and organized the New York _Turngemeinde_. Other societies followed in rapid succession, so that within three years there were 25 or more in existence, with an aggregate membership of nearly 2000. These were scattered all the way from _New England_ (Boston), _New York_ (New York, Brooklyn, Poughkeepsie, Utica, and Rochester), _New Jersey_ (Newark), _Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, Reading, Pittsburgh, and Allegheny), and _Maryland_ (Baltimore), to _Ohio_ (Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland), _Kentucky_ (Louisville), _Indiana_ (Indianapolis), _Illinois_ (Peoria), and _Missouri_ (St. Louis) in the west, and as far as New Orleans in the southwest. Four societies, in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Cincinnati, contained about half of the total membership. The first steps looking toward union through the formation of a national _Turnerbund_ were taken in New York as early as July of 1850, and at Philadelphia on the 5th of the following October delegates from Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Baltimore effected a provisional organization, under the name of the “United _Turnvereine_ of North America.” The next August (1851) the Philadelphia _Turngemeinde_ invited all the societies in the country to join in a general _Turnfest_ (the first) in that city on September 29 and 30. Between six and seven hundred turners responded, and at a second convention held on October 1 and 2 delegates from nine societies completed the details of permanent organization. The name was now changed to the “_Socialistic Turnerbund_.” New York was made the headquarters of the Executive Committee (_Vorort_), the members of which were to be chosen by the New York _Socialistischer Turnverein_. The first number of the monthly _Turnzeitung_, the official organ of the _Bund_, was issued November 15, 1851, and reported that 11 societies, with 1072 members, had already joined.