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1864 — present
Lodges within communities: The Private Clubs section carries the B'nai B'rith lodge's outline — the organized social presence of Fort Wayne's Jewish community, meeting in the Bass Block — but the lodge's founding date is one of the record's open conflicts, and it belongs on this page: the 1873–74 city directory gives Emack Beracha Lodge No. 61 of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith as organized in March 1864, meeting in the Odd Fellows' Hall over the post office, while the directories of 1915 and 1923 give the same lodge, No. 61, as organized April 15, 1865. The lodge's own later tradition follows the 1865 date; the earlier directory stands closer to the event. Both are carried here, unsettled. The ethnic pattern repeated across the city: the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Irish Catholic order, kept Division No. 1 in Fort Wayne in 1915, meeting in Library Hall with its officers named in the directory like any other lodge. The German community ran its lodges inside the great orders — Concordia Lodge No. 228 of the Odd Fellows and Goethe Lodge No. 99 of the Pythians, both told above — and kept its own associational world of singing and gymnastic societies, told in the Music and Communities sections; the fraternal point is that in lodge-era Fort Wayne, an immigrant community's standing was measured partly in charters, and every community in the city held some.
Sources:
- R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne city directories, 1873–74, 1915, 1923 — Emack Beracha Lodge No. 61 under both datings; Ancient Order of Hibernians, Division No. 1.
- Private Clubs section of this history — the B'nai B'rith outline and the Bass Block years.