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.