Fraternal and Benevolent Societies

Kyle Betit looks at the records held by voluntary societies, and the
genealogical information they can reveal.

A plaque certifying membership in the Loyal Orange Association.

Locating Society Records
The status of records varies with the society and its record keeping policies. Unfortunately, many records were disposed of over the years. Often if records survive it is because copies from local chapters of a society were sent to a state, provincial or national headquarters. As society membership declined in North America during the twentieth century local lodges, divisions and chapters closed. The records of a defunct organization could be almost anyplace if they were kept at all.

If the organization is still in operation, contact the local chapter to see if they have records. If not then contact the state, provincial or national society. You may find many current society headquarters’ addresses and descriptions in Encyclopedia of Associations, published by Gale Research, for organizations in the US and worldwide. An Internet version is available only through libraries (see galenet.gale.com). For Canada, you can consult the Directory of Associations in Canada/Repertoire des Associations du Canada, published by Micromedia Limited, and Associations Canada: an encyclopedic directory, published by Canadian Almanac & Directory Publishing Company Limited.

Contact libraries in the town or city where the local organization was located. Often old records of a community are stored in a special collections section of the library. Contact public, university, historical society, college libraries and religious institutions.

Identify in directories the officers of the organization at the time it ceased to meet. You may use city or county directories or a society’s national or district directory. Then determine if their families or descendants hold the chapter’s records among their private papers.

Search the Internet, and any printed or online catalog, which inventories manuscript collections. The Cyndi’s List website’s “Societies and Groups — General” page (www.cyndislist.com/soc-gen.htm) has links to websites for many ethnic, fraternal and other organizations.

The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) is a massive resource. NUCMC is a cooperative cataloging program operated by the US Library of Congress. The catalogs from 1986/87 to present are searchable online (lcweb.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/), while those dating 1959-1985 are in print form only. For example, using the online NUCMC search engine, you can find that the minutes of the Curtis Encampment No. 77 Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Newtown, Pennsylvania), 1882-1936, are at the Buck County Historical Society in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Contact organizations such as the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, which collect society records.

Freemasons
Freemasonry has long been a tradition which attracted many members in Great Britain, Ireland, North America and elsewhere. The Masonic Lodge is a fraternal organization which is open to persons of all religious faiths. “Organized” Freemasonry can be traced to 1717 when four London lodges formed themselves into the Grand Lodge of England. From 1751-1813 there was a rival Grand Lodge of Antients, and the two lodges came together as the United Grand Lodge of England in 1813. Around 1725, the Grand Lodge of Ireland was formed and, in 1736, the Grand Lodge of Scotland. These British and Irish Grand Lodges spread Freemasonry throughout the world, granting warrants to lodges in British North America. The Canadian provinces and the US states gradually formed their own Grand Lodges when many of the subordinate lodges were transferred to them from a British or Irish Grand Lodge. Artisans and shopkeepers were often Masons, and lodge membership did require dues beyond the means of the very poor. Papal Bulls denouncing Freemasonry as incompatible with Roman Catholicism were published in 1799, 1821 and 1825. This decreased but did not eliminate the membership of Catholics in Masonic Lodges.

For information about the records of Freemasons in England, see Pat Lewis’ book My Ancestor was a Freemason (London: Society of Genealogists, 1999). Her book deals with the history of Freemasonry and how to find the records of Freemason ancestors. For details about the lodges and records of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, see Philip Crossle’s Irish Masonic Records (Dublin: Grand Lodge of Ireland, 1973). and Dwight A. Radford’s article “Irish Masonic Records: A Protestant and Catholic Source” in The Irish At Home and Abroad journal [3 (4) (1995/96): 140-149]. This article lists the Irish lodges in 1804 by their civil parish of location.

The United Grand Lodge of England and the Grand Lodge of Ireland have membership and other records for each of the local lodges around the world to which they granted warrants. Membership records in Ireland generally begin in the 1760s. The membership records of Cork City and Dublin City through 1860 have been indexed. There is an alphabetical index of all new members of the Grand Lodge of Ireland since 1875. Since the Grand Lodges in Britain and Ireland oversaw subordinate lodges throughout the British Empire, the earliest records of Canadian or American lodges may be in England, Ireland or Scotland. Other types of Grand Lodge records include correspondence files, subordinate lodge minute books and orphanage records.

Masonic records may provide vital information such as birth place or death data and may document transfers between lodges. Two sets of membership records were kept by the lodges, generated at the local level, with one copy being sent to the Grand Lodge. The addresses of the various Grand Lodges can be found in the List of Lodges — Masonic (Bloomington, IL: Pantagraph Printing & Stationery Co.), published annually. The directory only includes active lodges. The individual Grand Lodges may be able to provide information about inactive lodges.

Grand Lodge record keeping varies. For example, the Grand Lodge of Utah has an index to all members in the state of Utah. Most of the Grand Lodges in Canada also have alphabetical card indexes to their membership records. Some local Masonic lodge records of Canada have been deposited in archives. Many old records for individual lodges in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are at the corresponding Provincial Archives.

Odd Fellows
With its roots in England, the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), as known today, began in 1819 with the institution of a lodge in Baltimore, Maryland. In the early days, membership in lodges of the IOOF was limited to white men (membership is now open to men and women of all races). Black men joined Odd Fellow Lodges that were chartered by The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. Each Grand Lodge and Rebekah Assembly keeps the annual reports from all of the lodges under its jurisdiction for as far back as the records survive. An annual report lists the current members and dates of membership change, such as when a member joined the lodge (by initiation or transfer) and when a member left the lodge (by death, resignation, or transfer). Details, such as what lodge the member transferred to or from, are in lodge records. When a lodge closed and surrendered its charter, its records were to be transferred to the Grand Lodge or Rebekah Assembly office. When a lodge consolidated with another lodge, its records were supposed to be transferred to the other lodge. For further details see the IOOF Family History Research Page (http://www.ioof.org/FamilyResearch.html).

Knights of Columbus
The Knights of Columbus is a Roman Catholic men’s fraternal organization. It was founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882. Since then the Knights have expanded widely with over a million and a half members today. The Order’s Supreme Council Office is still in New Haven. There are Knights of Columbus in various parts of the world: the US, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Panama, Cuba, Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Japan. A Knight must be a male over the age of 18 and a practicing Roman Catholic.

Copies of records from individual local councils are returned to the Supreme Council. The Supreme Council Archives has nine of the original insurance record books for the earliest councils, including one started in Montreal in 1897. All other insurance books and records are with the Director of Membership, to whom correspondence should be directed. To access records you will need to know the town where your ancestor was a member, and his division number if there was more than one division in the town. The “nativity” is given in some of the records, but outside the US and Canada, they only give the name of the country, such as “Ireland.” Other information may include occupation, the date initiated, the age at initiation, the beneficiary and the date of birth. These records are in order by council number, and then by initiation date.

Knights of Pythias
The Order of Knights of Pythias is an international non-sectarian fraternal order, founded in 1864 in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Lodge office does not keep records of individual members in its archives. The Supreme Lodge has jurisdiction over the entire Order in Canada and the US. A Grand Lodge has jurisdiction over all lodges within a particular province, state, district or territory. The best source for information about former members is either the Grand Lodge or preferably, the local subordinate lodge involved. Each state or province has its own method of record-keeping. For example, the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts’ files include each man’s biographical history since 1869 in a card system that records the man’s birthday, his address at the time of initiation, his occupation at time of initiation and the dates that he took his three ranks in the initiation process. The card also includes the dates he held various offices, the dates of honors he received, and his date of death. Order of the Knights of Pythias: The Official Pythian Lodge Directory includes lodges throughout the US as well as Ontario and Quebec.

A membership card for the veterans organization the Grand Army of the Republic.

Ethnic Societies
Hundreds of fraternal or mutual aid societies based on common ethnicity, such as the Sons of Norway, were formed in the United States and Canada. Just about every ethnic group had one or more associated societies, often organized to provide mutual aid in case of death or injury. For example, many cities in North America had 19th-century societies named after St. Andrew (for the Scots), St. George (for the English) and St. Patrick (for the Irish). Records of these societies may be in local or university libraries, such as the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library for some of the Toronto societies. The Croatian Fraternal Union, a fraternal benefit association that was organized in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1894, promotes the history and heritage of Croats and maintains scholarship and old age benefit funds. The Immigration History Research Center’s directory Records of ethnic fraternal benefit associations in the United States: essays and inventories (St. Paul, MN: The Center, 1981) lists ethnic fraternal benefit associations with their history, activities and extant records.

There are two notable repositories in the US that collect records of North American ethnic societies. The Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota gathers, preserves and makes available archival and published resources documenting immigration and ethnicity on a national scope. These materials are particularly rich for ethnic groups that originated in eastern, central and southern Europe and the Near East. Some IHRC collection profiles were published in The Immigration History Research Center: A Guide to Collections (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), edited by Suzanna Moody and Joel Wurl. John Andreozzi’s Guide to the Records of the Order Sons of Italy in America (St. Paul, MN: Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, 1989) describes the records of the large Sons of Italy Archives at the IHRC.

The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia collects documentation of American immigration, ethnic groups and ethnic societies. Manuscripts and printed works are included. For example, the Balch Institute has a significant collection from some Irish ethnic societies. The Balch Institute is the official repository for records of the Loyal Orange Institution in the US and also has records for some Ancient Order of Hibernians divisions.

Besides membership records, many of the 19th- and 20th-century ethnic societies published newspapers full of genealogically valuable details. For example, the Ukrainian National Association published a newspaper named Svoboda, and the IHRC holds A select index to Svoboda: official publication of the Ukrainian National Association, Inc., a fraternal association, compiled by Walter Anastas and Maria Woroby.

Irish Ethnic Societies
Irish immigrants, beginning as early as the 1730s, formed a range of specifically Irish fraternal, charitable, and political societies in North America. Some of these were Protestant and Loyalist, some Catholic and Nationalist, others with different purposes or agendas. Historical background and references for further study of these societies is given in Michael F. Funchion’s Irish American Voluntary Organizations (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983).

Successful 18th- and 19th-century Irish immigrants established organizations to provide relief to destitute Irish immigrants arriving in America. These included the Charitable Irish Society of Boston (founded in 1737); the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick for the Relief of Emigrants from Ireland of Philadelphia (founded in 1771); the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in the City of New York (formed in 1784), and the Hibernian Society of Charleston, South Carolina (founded in 1799). Members of these societies were successful businessmen, merchants, politicians and professionals. Membership and assistance were usually open to both Catholics and Protestants. The societies’ records tend to consist of minutes and published biographies of the members.

In the larger American cities of the 19th century, such as New York City, Philadelphia and Boston, Irish immigrants formed associations of those coming from the same county, often organized for mutual aid and sickness and death benefits. Some of these organizations were known simply by their county names while others had different titles, such as the Knights and Ladies of St. Finbar, the County Cork association in Boston. Some of the societies survive to this day while others went out of existence. Some, such as the County Roscommon Association of Boston, were revived after decades of inactivity. The county associations were generally composed of Catholics and could include immigrants and their American-born descendants.

The records of the county associations are often limited to minutes of meetings and lists of members. However, even this information is very valuable to the researcher since simply finding an ancestor or other relative as a member of one of these county associations identifies the county of origin. Membership applications may give more specific origins within the county. Commemorative histories published on the occasion of anniversaries (such as 50th or 100th) include biographies and lists of members, officers in particular. Examples include The Heart’s Own People: A History of the Donegal Beneficial, Social, Charitable and Patriotic Association of Philadelphia (Newtown Square, PA: Harrowood Books, 1988), edited by Dennis Clark for its 100th anniversary, and The Rebel, Diamond Jubilee, County Corkmen’s Association of New York, a memorial volume produced in 1959 for the 75th anniversary. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of the records of many of these associations are unknown. The older records of organizations that remain active may be retained by the organizations.

Irish Repeal Societies
In 1801 the Act of Union united Great Britain and Ireland as the United Kingdom. Many of the Irish, both those living at home and those abroad, opposed the union and eventually organized opposition to it in both Ireland and North America. They were most often known as “repeal societies” or “Friends of Ireland.” The North American societies were strong in the period 1841-1845 in cities such as Boston, Halifax, New York and Philadelphia.

The records left behind by the repeal societies in North America are primarily in the form of lists of those attending repeal association meetings, published in newspapers in the early 1840s, such as the Boston Pilot and the Halifax Register. These lists sometimes provided only the names of the attendees or the names and the amounts they contributed to the collection of funds for the movement. However, often these newspaper lists gave the specific origins of Irish immigrants. If the list doesn’t give origins, it may still suggest relatives or people who immigrated from the same place in Ireland. Most members were Irish Catholics.

The Boston Pilot, a Catholic Irish-American newspaper, published many reports on the repeal societies throughout the US and New Brunswick during the 1840s with lists of members and their origins in Ireland. In the early 1840s, the Register, the Catholic newspaper in Halifax, Nova Scotia, published a number of lists of members from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, usually giving places of origin in Ireland. For details of other known lists see Kyle J. Betit’s article “Irish Repeal Societies in North America,” in The Irish At Home and Abroad [5 (1) (1st Quarter 1998): 23-25].

The Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Coalton, West Virginia branch of which is shown above) was one of several Irish ethnic societies.

Loyal Orange Lodges
Orangeism is a Protestant fraternal organization formed in Ireland in 1795 on the basis of loyalty to Crown, Country and Protestantism. In the beginning, Orange membership was drawn from the laboring and artisan classes of the Church of Ireland. Orange influence was quickly spread by British military soldiers, and immigrants to America, Canada, England and Scotland. Later it was brought to Australia, India, New Zealand and South Africa. In each country, Orangeism is organized under a Supreme Grand Lodge within which each state or province has a Grand Lodge. The local subordinate lodges are organized under each state or provincial Grand Lodge. Orangemen arrived in Canada in 1800, and the Loyal Orange Association of British North America (LOA) was formed in 1830. Ontario and New Brunswick had the earliest and strongest Orange presence in British North America. In many early pioneering communities, the Orange Hall was the first building to be constructed. By the 1870s about one-third of all Protestant males in Canada were active Orangemen.

A pro-British stance would have been considered unpatriotic in the US, so the emphasis of the Loyal Orange Institution (LOI) there was on the Protestant aspect of the organization. Although Orangemen arrived in America perhaps as early as 1820, they were not fully organized until 1870 when the Supreme Grand Lodge was established. By 1873, there were 100 lodges with 10,000 members in the US. Around the turn of the 20th century, the center of American Orangeism was in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia where many Irish Protestants settled.

Records of interest to the family historian produced by the Loyal Orange Lodges include transfer certificates showing previous lodge membership, minute books with notations of transfers and proposals for membership, membership lists with biographical data, Orange newspapers and lodge directories and listings. The records of active lodges usually remain with the individual lodges. The official procedure in Canada requires records of defunct lodges to be deposited with the provincial Grand Lodge. However, there has been varying compliance with this procedure. The provincial Grand Lodges have some minute books and transfer certificates. Canadian Orange Headquarters in Willowdale, Ontario, while not an on official repository, has some minute books and transfer certificates from dormant lodge records, particularly from lodges in Ontario. The records of defunct lodges may also be found in private hands or in libraries and archives, such as the Archives of Ontario. The Balch Institute has acted as the official repository for the records of the dormant Orange Lodges in the US since the 1980s. Prior to this arrangement, many records were lost or destroyed when lodges were disbanded. Most of the current Balch Institute collection is for lodges in the Pennsylvania area with a few from New York.

Background material regarding the Orange order may be found in Houston and Smyth’s book The Orange Order in Nineteenth Century Ontario: A Study in Institutional Cultural Transfer (Toronto: Department of Geography, University of Toronto, 1977); and Gordon Keyes’ book Orangeism: Its Roots and Branches (Willowdale, ON: Canadian Orange Headquarters, 1980). OrangeNet includes a genealogy web page (www.orangenet.org/).

Society records hold great potential to provide important details about our ancestors. The challenge is to find records relating to the society your ancestor belonged to. As discussed previously, there are numerous tools and strategies to help you in this process. I would also like to suggest that you become a genealogical preservationist as well as researcher. Help get society records you discover preserved in an appropriate archives for which others will benefit in their future searches.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following for their assistance with information for this article: Dwight A. Radford, professional genealogist in Salt Lake City; Norman Ritchie, former Supreme Grand Secretary, LOA in Canada; Walter Wilson, Supreme Grand Secretary of the LOI; John Concannon, former Archivist of the AOH; Susan Brosnan, Archivist, and Larry W. Mitchell, Director of Membership of the Knights of Columbus; Alfred Saltzman, Supreme Secretary, Knights of Pythias; Margaret Atkinson, Secretary, GAR Civil War Museum and Library; Heather Muir, Assistant Curator, Immigration History Research Center; and the staff of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies Library. I would like to thank Suzanne McVetty, C.G., of Carle Place, New York, and John Yates, of Wichita Falls, Texas, for previewing this article and for their helpful suggestions.

Addresses
• Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, Grand Lodge of Iowa Masonic Library: 813 First Avenue, SE, PO Box 279, Cedar Rapids, IA 52406.
• Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, Office of the National Secretary, Thomas D. McNabb: 31 Logan Street, Auburn, NY 13021.
• Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Museum and Library: 4278 Griscom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19124-3954; Tel: (215) 289-6484; Internet: http://garmuslib.org/
• Grand Lodge of Ireland: Freemasons’ Hall, 17 Molesworth Street, Dublin 2, Ireland; Tel: (01) 6761337; Internet: www.irish-freemasons.org
• Grand Lodge of Scotland: Freemasons’ Hall, 96 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 3DH, Scotland; Tel: (0131) 225 5304.
• Grand Orange Lodge of Canada: 94 Sheppard Avenue West, Willowdale, ON M2N 1M5, Canada;
Internet: www.orange.ca
• Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland: 65 Dublin Road, Belfast BT2 7HE, Northern Ireland; Tel: (028 90) 322801; Internet: www.grandorange.org.uk
• Knights of Columbus Supreme Council: 1 Columbus Plaza, New Haven, CT 06510; Tel: (203) 772-2130; Internet: www.kofc.org
• Knights of Pythias Supreme Lodge: 59 Coddington Street, Suite 202, Quincy, MA 02169-4150; Tel: (617) 472-8800; Internet: www.pythias.org
• Loyal Orange Institution of the United States, Supreme Grand Secretary, Walter Wilson: 1315 Biggs Road, Wilmington, DE 19805.
• United Grand Lodge of England: Freemasons’ Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ, England; Tel: (0171) 395 9298;
Internet: www.grand-lodge.org

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2001 issue of Family Chronicle.