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Founding Keysmen included Theodore Runyon (1842), later governor of New Jersey, Isaac Hiester (1842), a distinguished US congressman, and Leonard Case (1842), founder of Case Western Reserve University.

Each year, the Society's senior members choose fifteen members of the junior class at Yale to succeed them.

Tax records show that its endowment is several million dollars more than that of Skull and Bones.

Prominent members include three US secretaries of state, US supreme court justices, industrialists and financiers, US presidential candidates, Nobel laureates, and famous songwriters, writers, and movie makers:

• George Shiras, Jr. (1853) U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1892-1903
• Harvey Cushing (1891) is by many considered the greatest neurosurgeon of the 20th century and is considered the father of brain surgery.
• Frank Polk (1894) founded prestigious law firm, David, Polk, & Wardwell . Acting U.S. Secretary of State during World War I: negotiated the peace and headed American delegation to Peace Conference at Paris
• Cole Porter (1913), composer and songwriter
• Dean Acheson (1915), U.S. Secretary of State 1949-1952, architect of the Cold War foreign policy.

Cole and Dean roomed together at Harvard Law School, and Cole famously withdrew from that school to allow Dean to graduate.

• Dickinson Richards (1917), winner of 1956 Nobel Prize "for [his] discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system."
• John Enders (1919), winner of 1954 Nobel Prize "for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue." He discovered the Polio Vaccine.
• Benjamin Spock (1925), pediatrician, who revolutionized parenting, and Best Selling Author of Baby & Child Care, US Olympic gold medalist in 1924 crew.
• John Hay Whitney (1926), of Whitney family. Publisher N.Y. Herald Tribune, venture capital, founder of J.H. Whitney & Co., U.S. Ambassador to Court of St. James
• Robert F. Wagner, Jr. (1933), three-term Mayor of New York City, U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Personal Envoy of the President to the Vatican
• Sargent Shriver (1938), Founder of the Peace Corps, Founder of the Special Olympics, and US Vice Presidential Candidate

Shriver, a lifelong friend of Cyrus Vance, tapped him to join the powerbase in Scroll and Key:

• Cyrus Vance (1939), U.S. Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter (1977-1980) Secretary of the Army 1962-1964
• Cord Meyer (1943), CIA, president of United World Federalists
• John LindsayJohn Vliet Lindsay ( November 24, 1921 December 19, 2000) was an American politician who served as a Congressman ( 1959- 1966) and mayor of New York City (1966- 1973). John Lindsay was a upper class Anglo-Protestant lawyer trying to govern a working class (1944), Mayor of New York City, US Congressman, US Presidential Candidate in 1972
• Bart Giamatti (1960), President of Yale and Commissioner of Major League BaseballMajor League Baseball MLB is the highest level of play in professional baseball in North America. More specifically, Major League Baseball ("MLB") refers to the entity that operates North America's two top leagues, the National League and the American Lea
• Calvin TrillinCalvin Trillin is an American journalist, humorist, and novelist who was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 5, 1935. He is perhaps known best for his writings about food and eating, but he has also written much serious journalism, comic verse, and (1957), journalist, humorist, and novelist
• DoonesburyDoonesbury is a comic strip by Garry Trudeau, popular in the United States. The title comes from the name of one of the main characters, Michael Doonesbury, a character Trudeau originally modeled after himself. The character's name is a combination of the cartoonistA cartoonist is an artist who specializes in drawing cartoons (see also comic books and strips, anime, manga). They traditionally use pencil to sketch out their drawings, then go over the sketches in black ink, using either brushes or metal nibbed pens. Garry Trudeau (1970) infiltrated the Tomb (headquarters of Skull and Bones) sometime in the late 1960s and scrawled a picture of his football-helmeted character "B.D." in its guestbook.
• Stone Phillips (1977), Dateline NBC
• Fareed Zakaria (1986), Editor of Newsweek International