The Order of the Owls: founded in South Bend

November 20, 1904 — headquarters here into the 1920s

A national order from a law office: One American fraternal order was invented in South Bend. On November 20, 1904, in the law offices of Talbot and Talbot, a group of South Bend men — John W. Talbot (the name is also spelled Talbott in some accounts), Joseph E. Talbot, George D. Beroth, J. Lott Losey, John J. Johnson, John D. Burke, William Weaver, and Frank Dunbar — adopted a constitution and founded the Order of the Owls. Howard, writing three years later, said it plainly: "The Order of Owls was recently established at South Bend and is chiefly the work of John W. Talbot." The local units were called nests; the supreme offices sat here, Talbot as supreme president, Beroth as supreme secretary, Losey as supreme treasurer, and the Home Nest met every Tuesday evening. Howard judged that the order "evidently supplies a need in fraternal club life."

The growth, in the order's published figures: The reference accounts carry the order's own arc: more than 600,000 members in 2,148 nests at the early-1920s peak; about 40,000 members by 1979; more than 5,000 by 1994; and nests remaining in five states, Indiana among them, in the present record. The headquarters — the Home Nest — stayed in South Bend into the 1920s and had moved to Hartford, Connecticut, by the 1930s. The South Bend nest's own number was not found in the record reached and is not guessed.

The founder's fall: The founder's end is part of the documented record and is printed at its size. In 1921 John W. Talbot was convicted in federal court on a morals charge arising from a nurse at the order's hospital and sentenced to five years in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. The order outlived him as an institution; its South Bend origin is the fact this city's record keeps.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. I (1907), p. 463 — the order "recently established at South Bend," the Supreme Nest's officers, the Home Nest's Tuesday meetings, Ladies' Nest No. 1.
2. Reference accounts of the Order of the Owls (Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Institutions; the order's standard histories) — the November 20, 1904, founding at the Talbot and Talbot offices and the eight founders; the peak of more than 600,000 members in 2,148 nests in the early 1920s; about 40,000 members in 1979 and more than 5,000 in 1994; the removal of the headquarters to Hartford by the 1930s; the founding membership restriction; Talbot's 1921 conviction and Leavenworth sentence.