The orders founded here, tested: both foundings are South Bend's; none is this ground's

1904–1907 · TESTED AGAINST THE FOUNDING RECORDS; BOUNDARY TOLD, HOME GROUND NEGATIVE

Two orders were founded in this county — in South Bend, not here: the Order of the Owls, a fraternal benefit order founded at the law offices of Talbot and Talbot on 20 November 1904 by John W. Talbot and his associates — Joseph E. Talbot, George D. Beroth, J. Lott Losey, John J. Johnson, John D. Burke, William Weaver and Frank Dunbar — its "Supreme Offices" in South Bend into the 1920s before the move to Hartford, Connecticut by the 1930s, its local units called Nests under a Supreme President. The second founding the checklist names stands in Howard's 1907 society census at home-office strength: the Knights and Ladies of Columbia, a fraternal insurance society organised in South Bend — a March 1907 newspaper account reports its roughly seven hundred councils and 550 members as its books were mailed to policyholders — with its supreme officers seated in South Bend in Howard's census (Supreme Counsellor Ormond Kennedy; Supreme Scribe John Roth; Supreme Cashier Elmer Crockett; Supreme Medical Director Cornelius H. Myers), South Bend Council No. 1 and Winona Council No. 39 meeting in the city, and Mishawaka Council No. 2 across the river. Both foundings are the county seat's, flagged as foundings and told at boundary size. The founded-here test for this ground is printed at its result: no order's founding, home office or supreme seat is claimed or documented for Osceola or Penn Township in the register read whole, in Howard's society census, or in the founding records above — the Owls' and the Columbia order's nests and councils seated themselves in the cities, and this town's orders, when they came, came as other orders' lodges: the Masons of 1957 and the Knights of Columbus lines of 1940 in the register, each a chapter of a body founded elsewhere.

From the Order of Owls' founding record as carried in the fraternal references (the 20 November 1904 founding at Talbot and Talbot, South Bend; the founders named; the Supreme Offices in South Bend into the 1920s, Hartford by the 1930s); Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), society census (the Knights and Ladies of Columbia's supreme officers, South Bend Council No. 1, Winona Council No. 39, Mishawaka Council No. 2 — LDS Genealogy transcription, at transcription strength); a March 1907 press account of the order's organisation in South Bend (Danville Daily Democrat, 6 March 1907, OCR at search strength). The home-ground test: this history's register read whole; Howard's census read for the Osceola seat.