The women's half of the lodge world

1871 — 1921

Half the system met on the other nights: The lodge world was built in pairs, and the directories let the women's half be counted rather than assumed. The Eastern Star came to South Bend in 1871, when the order itself was barely twenty years old. The Rebekahs — the Odd Fellows' women's degree, written by the city's own Schuyler Colfax — kept Schuyler Rebekah Lodge and Helena Rebekah Lodge No. 72, and by 1921 a third, Lincoln Rebekah Lodge No. 795. The Pythian Sisters kept Moonlight Temple No. 255 in the K. of P. Hall. The insurance orders ran their women's bodies at full strength: the Ladies of the Maccabees' three hives, the Woman's Benefit Association's Review No. 4 — the Maccabees' women's order under its own national name — the Royal Neighbors' Goldenrod Camp No. 1236, the Woodmen Circle's five groves, the Lady Eagles at the Eagles' Home, the Ladies' Legion of the Moose, the Lady Falcons' two branches with their own athletic directors, and the Ladies' Nest No. 1 of the Owls, meeting under the Supreme Nest's own roof.

These were not auxiliaries in the decorative sense: the benefit orders' women's bodies carried their own insurance books, their own officer lines and their own halls' nights, and in a city of factory households the widow's benefit that the whole system existed to pay was very often held, administered and collected inside the women's half of it. The Black orders kept the same doubled shape — Odessa Chapter of the Eastern Star and Northern Star Court of the Pythian auxiliary met in the Emerick Street and North Main halls beside their lodges. The record of who held the gavels survives in the directories' officer lists, printed there in full; this account carries the bodies and leaves the names to those lists, as it does for the men's orders of the same years.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880) — Eastern Star Lodge No. 2 (1871).
2. Howard (1907), societies chapter — the Rebekahs; Rathbone Sisters; the Ladies of the Maccabees; Ladies' Nest No. 1 of the Owls.
3. Polk (1921), passim — Schuyler, Helena and Lincoln Rebekahs; Moonlight Temple; Woman's Benefit Association Review No. 4; Royal Neighbors; the Woodmen Circle groves; Lady Eagles; Ladies' Legion; Lady Falcons 185 and 200; Odessa Chapter; Northern Star Court.