Fraternal Organizations

The Rise of American Fraternalism: The Nineteenth Century

Prior to the nineteenth century, fraternal orders were relatively few in number in the United States. The first to appear was the Masonic Order, which established its first American lodge in 1733. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) followed in the early nineteenth century. Membership in these early male organizations was generally confined to white urban elites in the East, and these members could foster and reinforce their public power by cultivating friendships and acquaintanceships in the worlds of business and politics.

The popularity of fraternal organizations grew rapidly during the second half of the nineteenth century, especially among the middle class. Many new orders emerged in the United States: The Knights of Pythias (KOP; 1864), the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE; 1867), the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE; 1898), the Knights of Columbus (K of C; 1882), the Modern Woodmen of America (MWA; 1883), and the Order of Patrons of Husbandry (POH; 1867), also known as “The Grange.”

There were several reasons for the sudden popularity of fraternal organizations. First, a perceived “feminization” of the nation's Protestant churches, where women typically made up two-thirds of the membership, led many men to seek a homosocial spiritual community through the ritual and discipline of fraternal lodge life. Similarly, the growing mother-centered nature of the middle-class Victorian home left men seeking all-male social spaces outside it. Middle-class men also experienced a changing status in the modernizing workplace due to the growing mechanization of work and an influx of immigrants into working-class professions, fostering among them a desire for places of security, stasis, and refuge.

Lodge activities were essential to fostering particular notions of masculinity. The fact that lodges were both strictly homosocial and class- and race-based suggests that members defined their masculine identities in opposition to men of different races and classes. Lodges and their rituals, which took form in the nineteenth century and remained largely unchanged thereafter, provided a way to separate members from the outside world, establishing a secular religion free from the influence of women and the bustle of the competitive economic marketplace. Sworn to secret oaths to maintain the separation between lodge and home, and distanced from domestic life by changing work patterns, members constructed their lodges as a fictive second home and family in which they imagined themselves as brothers and where they could socialize and indulge themselves in drink, conversation, and revelry free from the prying eyes of their wives and families. By recreating the home, but simultaneously emptying it of femininity, men could remasculinize this traditionally feminine sphere without disrupting actual domestic life. Additionally, since the white middle-class “cult of domesticity” had situated morality within the sphere of women, lodge life gave men a place to create and exercise their own moral code based upon allegiance to fellow members, loyalty, trust, and self-discipline. They did this by maintaining lodge secrets and seeking advancement through the various membership levels.

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