The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Howard's roster, 1907 · none of them in the present record
The machine, stated once: Six of the bodies in Howard's roster are local units of the fraternal-insurance industry, and they are taken together here because their real history is one history. Each was the sales force and the retention program of an insurance company organized as an order: a workingman joined a tent, hive or camp, took its degrees, paid small assessments as members died or fell sick, and held in return the promise of the same for his own household — the sick benefit while he lived, the death benefit when he did not, in an era when neither the state nor most employers stood behind either. The lodge room was the delivery system; the ritual was how the company kept its policyholders paying. Mishawaka's shelf of the industry, from the 1907 roster: the Maccabees, twice over — the order split in the era, and Mishawaka kept both halves. Mishawaka Tent No. 12 of the Knights of the Maccabees (W. J. Armstead, commander; F. A. Partridge, record keeper) and Twentieth Century Tent No. 1121 of the Knights of the Modern Maccabees (Elbert Robinson, commander; George Hitesman, record keeper), with the women's side in both orders as well: Mishawaka Hive No. 68 of the Ladies of the Maccabees (Mrs. Ella Middleton, commander; Allie Michael, record keeper) and Mishawaka Hive No. 907 of the Ladies of the Modern Maccabees (Carrie Diltz, commander; Bertha Beeman, record keeper). The tents were still meeting in 1914 — the News-Times' lodge column has a K. O. T. M. meeting set for the Wednesday of its week — and the 1921 directory puts the Maccabee tents in the First National Bank building and the Knights of Pythias Hall, tenants of the other orders' rooms. The Woodmen, likewise twice — Mishawaka Camp No. 4788 of the Modern Woodmen of America (Fred Schroeder, consul; B. Kranshanski, clerk) and the Woodmen of the World's Enterprise Camp (E. K. Reed, Consul Commander; A. C. Brown, clerk), with the Woodmen of the World's ladies in Home Grove Circle No. 10 (Mrs. Lizzie Philion, guardian; Mrs. Minnie Spaeth, secretary). The two Woodmen orders were rivals selling substantially the same contract, and the roster shows Mishawaka's men and women holding both. And the Court of Honor — the Mishawaka Court of Honor, District Court No. 167 (J. A. Rishel, chancellor; Mrs. Hazel Pontius, secretary), a district court of the fraternal benefit society of that name, classed with the benefit societies in the standard scholarly census of the industry. The Independent Order of Foresters' St. John's Court No. 1490 (B. F. Pew, chief ranger; P. A. Young, secretary) belongs by form to this same shelf — an insurance court, not a Catholic body, its "St. John's" name notwithstanding — and met in 1921 in Dixon Hall at 109 South Main, the Red Men's address.
Their end: None of these bodies stands in the present record reached for this section — no tent, hive or camp of Mishawaka appears in the modern directories or the orders' published survivals consulted — and that is printed as an absence from the record, not as a set of dissolution dates, none of which was reached. The industry's national consolidation, state insurance regulation and the coming of the welfare state thinned the whole shelf across the middle of the century; the Mishawaka units' particular ends rest in their orders' records — the Maccabees' and Woodmen's corporate archives and the Grand Lodge-era journals — named here as the settling sources. The roster of 1907 is their fullest surviving portrait, and it is a complete one: two rival Maccabees, two rival Woodmen, a court of honor, and a foresters' court, all selling security to the same few thousand households.
Sources:
- Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. I (1907), p. 345 — the two tents, the two hives, the two camps, Home Grove Circle No. 10, the Court of Honor's District Court No. 167, and St. John's Court No. 1490, with officers; read first-hand.
- South Bend News-Times, 25 March 1914 (Hoosier State Chronicles) — the K. O. T. M. meeting notice in the Mishawaka lodge column; read first-hand.
- R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory, 1921 — the tents' meeting places; Court Mishawaka No. 1490 in Dixon Hall, 109 S. Main, as carried in the Private Clubs section of this history.
- James M. White and Michael A. Boland, "Close Cousins of Cooperatives: An Overview of Fraternal Benefit Societies," Journal of Cooperatives 31 (2016) — the industry's form (the common bond, the lodge system as insurer) and the Court of Honor's place in its census of the benefit societies.