FRATERNAL SOCIETIES
The term fraternal society, used 
interchangeably with fraternal order, refers to 
voluntary associations that feature elaborate 
secret initiations. Some orders provide a simple 
form of life insurance; nearly all exclude women. 
Nowadays the most important fraternal societies 
are the Freemasons, Independent Order of Odd 
Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and the Benevolent 
and Protective Order of Elk.
Fraternal orders were once a significant — 
some observers believed characteristic — aspect 
of American society. Alexis de Tocqueville was 
struck by the “immense assemblage” of 
voluntary associations, including fraternal 
orders, in antebellum America. Henry David 
Thoreau complained that America was 
“dwindling” into a nation of “odd-fellows.”
The origins of fraternal orders are obscured 
by a tangle of implausible legends and dubi ous 
histories. Nineteenth-century Freemasons 
claimed to be heirs of a tradition extending back 
to the founding of King Solomon's temple. 
Historians of the Knights of Pythias made a case 
that Pythagoras was the first Pythian, despite the 
awkward fact that the order apparently had been 
founded in Washington, D.C., in 1864. The 
Improved Order of Red Men, established in the 
1830s, claimed descent from the Sons of Liberty 
of the American Revolution.
Without doubt, the Freemasons were 
entitled to claim that they were the nation's 
oldest order. But contrary to the claims of some 
enthusiasts, Freemasonry originated in London 
in the early 1700s as a stonemasons' trade guild. 
The order soon became a club for tradesmen, 
merchants, and a few much-celebrated noblemen. 
In the 1730s and 1740s a handful of Masonic 
lodges were established in coastal towns in 
America. Although these lodges were dominated 
by a mercantile elite, some tradesmen were 
admitted, such as Benjamin Franklin who, as a 
young printer, became grand master of 
Pennsylvania Freemasons in 1734.
Freemasonry became associated with 
patriotism during the Revolution, largely because 
George Washington and many of his generals 
belonged to the order. This patriotic association 
was strengthened when Washington took his 
oath of office as president upon a Masonic 
Bible.
Despite the order's association with the 
Founding Fathers and its profession of universal 
brotherhood, American officials refused to 
recognize the legitimacy of black Freemasons, 
who in 1775 had been admitted to a lodge 
composed mostly of Irish soldiers stationed in 
Boston harbor. The leader of the blacks, Prince 
Hall, subsequently received a dispensation from 
English officials and established African Lodge 
No. 459. Black Freemasonry, usually called Prince 
Hall Freemasonry, became popular among 
middle-class blacks.
During the early 1800s the number of 
Masonic lodges multiplied rapidly. The order 
especially appealed to an emerging middle class 
of lawyers, commercial farmers, and independent 
tradesmen, many of whom were growing 
impatient with orthodox religion and established 
political elites. Tensions between Masonic 
leaders and the conservative ministry smoldered 
until 1826, when a disgruntled ex-Freemason, 
William Morgan, announced his intention of 
publishing the secret Masonic rituals. Morgan 
was abducted by Freemasons and was never 
seen again. What happened to him has never 
been fully explained. Twenty-six Masons were 
indicted on murder and related charges. Only six 
came to trial; four were convicted of conspiracy 
and sentenced to terms ranging from several 
months to two years in jail. When it became 
known that many of the jurors and prosecutors 
were Masons, as was Governor DeWitt Clinton 
of New York, a coalition of ministers and 
opportunistic politicians formed to suppress the 
order. The Anti-Masonic party became the first 
significant third party in American politics.
Though short-lived as a political movement, 
Anti-Masonry generated intense public pressure 
and forced thousands of members to renounce 
the order and hundreds of lodges to relinquish 
their charters. By best estimate membership 
declined from 100,000 in the mid-1820s to 40,000 a 
decade later. Many renouncing Freemasons 
flocked into the Odd Fellows.
Odd-Fellowship originated in 
late-eighteenth-century Great Britain among 
industrial workers who sought to mitigate the 
effects of the Industrial Revolution and the 
English Poor Laws. The order assisted members 
in dire circumstances and provided them a 
decent burial. In 1819 English immigrants 
established the first American lodge of Odd 
Fellows in Baltimore. During its early decades the 
order met in taverns and functioned as little more 
than a drinking society. But the influx of 
ex-Freemasons during the 1830s and 1840s 
completely transformed American 
Odd-Fellowship. This “new and more refined” 
group, as one nineteenth-century historian 
described them, gained control of the order, 
raised fees beyond what most workers could 
afford, banned liquor from meetings, launched a 
program to build “temples,” and wrote and 
performed elaborate successions of initiatory 
rituals. By the 1850s Freemasonry, having just 
begun to recover from the Morgan debacle, 
adopted a similar program.
During the last third of the nineteenth 
century, fraternal orders, featuring reform and 
ritual, proliferated among the urban middle 
classes. By 1900 there were more than three 
hundred orders; total fraternal membership 
exceeded 6 million. Ambitious clerks, 
businessmen, and politicians used the orders to 
cultivate contacts and establish ties with clients 
and like-minded people elsewhere. Others found 
satisfaction in the exotic rituals, which provided 
a religious experience antithetical to liberal 
Protestantism and a masculine “family” vastly 
different from the one in which most members 
had been raised.
Partly to attenuate women's complaints 
about the secrecy, the cost of membership, and 
the time members spent away from home, most 
orders supported creation of ladies' auxiliaries. 
The Odd-Fellows established the Daughters of 
Rebekah (1851), and Freemasons, the Order of 
the Eastern Star (1869).
Early in the twentieth century, however, 
many young middle-class men, preferring the 
recreational clubs and service organizations such 
as Rotary and Kiwanis, refused to follow their 
fathers into the lodge. Robert and Helen Lynd, in 
their study of Muncie, Indiana, in the 1920s, 
reported that “the great days of the lodges have 
vanished.” Aggressive recruitment policies and 
relaxed admission standards temporarily masked 
the weakness of most lodges. But the onset of 
the Great Depression brought about the collapse 
of the institutional foundations of the fraternal 
movement as members could no longer afford to 
pay dues and thousands of lodges, unable to 
meet mortgage payments, went bankrupt. The 
major orders together lost nearly a million 
members; hundreds of others passed out of 
existence entirely.
After World War II, social activities, 
philanthropy, and community service took 
precedence over the rituals, which were 
abbreviated or occasionally abandoned. Most 
orders languished and increasingly became 
identified in the public mind with the televised 
antics of Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden, 
member of the fictional Loyal Order of Raccoons. 
In recent decades, however, Freemasonry has 
gained many new adherents, especially from 
among white-collar workers and immigrants.
Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and 
Manhood in Victorian America (1989); Dorothy 
Ann Lipson, Freemasonry in Federalist 
Connecticut, 1789–1835 (1977).
MARK C. CARNES
See also Anti-Masons.