While fraternal organizations have been around, literally, forever, their numbers reached a peak in the 19th and 20th centuries. Depending on one’s interests, choice of organizational membership ranged from national groups with state and/or local chapters to strictly local societies with a narrow purpose for its existence.
Let’s look at the kinds of organizations that might have interested our ancestors, aside from lineage societies such as National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, which required members to provide proof of descent through a number of generations.
Veteran Organizations – The best known of the veterans’ organization is the Grand Army of the Republic, founded at the close of the Civil War on 6 April 1866 by Union Army veterans. Peak membership was in 1890 with about 410,000 members. It was dissolved on 2 August 1956 after the death of its last member. G.A.R. records were generally kept at the local level so may or may not still exist. However, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War has an on-going project to preserve these records with online catalog access.
Today, the largest veterans’ organization is the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), founded in 1899, with headquarters ii Kansas City, Missouri and organized into local Posts.
Trade/Business Organizations – These organizations provided support for both workers and the business community, in general. The National Grange, founded in 1867, originally supported the farming community and its families, but has expanded to support education and community service.
Social/Ethnic Organizations – With the Industrial Revolution and the proliferation of factories in the United States, immigrants from around the world settled in America. Many immigrant groups formed local social and/or ethnic societies to support each other in their new homes. There were the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, established in 1873, the Irish are represented in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) formed in 1882 and Dania was organized by Danish immigrants in Chicago in 1862.
Benevolent Aid Organizations – These groups provided charitable support to its members, including payments for serious illness/injuries preventing the member from work and payments to surviving families of those who died. The Slovak Catholic Sokol, established in 1905, was and still is headquartered in my own Passaic, New Jersey. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows is another benevolent aid society, formed in 1806 in the USA, is also still in existence.
Religious Organizations – Many societies were based on members’ faith or religion. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization, began in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut. B’nai B’rith was founded in New York City in 1843 to help Jewish immigrants. In addition to these large organizations, local churches formed many of their own participatory groups. There were choral groups, Bible studies, community charity aid, prayer groups and religious education.
Records for societies aren’t the easiest to locate. If the organization is still in existence today and you think your ancestor might have been a member, contacting the national office would probably be the quickest route to determining whether or not membership information is available.
If surviving records are located, in addition to member lists, there might be minutes of meetings, election of officers information, and perhaps even identifying new members.
However, since fraternal groups were popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, local newspapers should be a treasure trove of information. Local chapters often sent news clippings to be published about activities and events. Names of specific members were often in these news blurbs.
City directories and, later, telephone books, should have listings for local fraternal organizations.
If you are able to locate member documents for your family member, you will likely find the person’s full name, birth date, when and where local membership was first obtained, whether the member moved/transferred/quit, whether the person served in any leadership capacities and possibly a death date.
I found my great grandfather Charles E. Adams’ membership card in the Masons.
He joined in Calais, Washington, Maine on 7 May 1917 and died less than 5 years later, of a strep infection, also in Calais. I found this in a Maine historical collection.
Tombstones might include symbols of membership in fraternal groups, such as that of the Freemasons.
A number of my husband’s family were I.O.O.F. members and are buried in the International Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery in Noble, Cleveland, Oklahoma. The I.O.O.F. must have been very active to buy land for their own cemetery and there is an active lodge (#128) there today.
Be sure to ask family members if they are aware of any ancestral ties to fraternal groups. Older members might even have pins, awards or ribbons presented. I found this one in my grandmother’s belongings. It indicated membership in the National Slovak Society of the United States of America, a benevolent aid society, founded in Pennsylvania in 1890 and still around today:
Here are several resources to help you get started learning more about fraternal societies:
The cyclopædia of fraternities; a compilation of existing authentic information and the results of original investigation as to more than six hundred secret societies in the United States by Albert Clark Stevens and published in 1899 is almost 500 pages long.
Cyndi’s List has many links to resources pertaining to fraternal organizations.
Wikipedia has two lists – List of North American Fraternal Orders and List of North American Ethnic and Religious Fraternal Orders.
Be sure to check individual county histories, too, as they often contain details about local organizations and civic groups.
Happy Hunting!