The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1886-09-20
the ODD FELLOWS IN BOSTON.

This week is to be an eYentful one with
the Odd Fellows. The Sovereign Grand
Lodge, the fountain head of Odd Fellow
authority and lore for America and several
foreign countries, is in session in Boston,
and thousands of the order are present or
are coming from east, west, north and
south. The parade on Wednesday is to be
the grandest ever made by the order, and
one of Boston's greatest occasions. The
grand officers expect to marshal column of
10000 men, very substantial testimonial of
the prosperity of the brotherhood, and the
popularity won by the order since Thomas
Wildey and his four associates founded
Washington Lodge, No. 1, in Baltimore.
That was on April &c, 1919. The order had
previously existed only in England. There,
in the latter part of the eighteenth century,
several societies of London mechanics and
other laborers were organized for conyivial
:, purposes under the name of Ancient and
Honorable Loyal Odd Fellows" From these
associations sprang the Union Order of
Odd Fellows" which spread from London to
other English cities. The Odd Fellows of
those days were a convivial throng, who
seem to have thought more of carousals than
charity. But in 1918, when the order had
spread beyond the limits of London, and
social ideas and customs had begun to
change somewhat, a schism arose from at
tempts to abolish the convivial features of
Odd Fellowship From this schism resulted
the Manchester Unity" as it is called,
formed by several Of the seeding lodges,
with Manchester as their centre of govern
ment. The Manchester Unity still consti-
tutes the main body of British Odd Fellows,
and numbers over half million members.
But the first lodge of American Odd Fellows
was instituted according to the usages OF the
London faction, or the Union Order of
Odd Fellows" But since 1913 the order in
America has had no connection with the
order in Great Britain. But there are Or
CARNATIONS of Odd Fellows in Germany,
Switzerland, Australia, South America and
the Hawaiian Islands which work under
charters received from America. The credit
of establishing as well as founding the order
in America belongs to Thomas Wildey, the
founder Of the Baltimore lodge. He was the
first grand master, and served the order until
1888 in that capacity. At that time in the
height of the anti-Masonic agitation, there
were eight subordinate grand lodges and 100
subordinate lodges, with 6,349 members.
According to the last annual report there
were "a, $50 encampment members, and $780,
467 lodge members. So the throng in Bos-
ton this week, while probably larger than
the whole order in the United States fifty
years ago, will be but an insignificant por-
ton of the brotherhood that fiourishes to-
day.
Last Friday Hartford did what Portland
now hopes to do before long. With process.
sion of several thousand citizen soldiery and
veterans, and an Grafton by an eminent citi-
zen and soldier, General Hawley, her peo-
pie dedicated memorial SIN honor of the
men of Hartford who served" and in 'mem-
nv of those who fell on land and sea in the
war for the Union" The memorial differs
somewhat from the monuments generally
erected in memory of those who fell in the
civil war. 1t is an immense arch of rough
brown stone, erected over the entrance of
Bushnell Park. Two towers, each more than
a hundred feet high. support this arch and
on terra Gotta frieze are represented symbol
ical scenes of the war. 1t is memorial
something after the plan of those triumphal
arches which the Roman emperorS and SOL
diers used to throw over the streets of Rome
to commemorate their achievements in bat
ties and their conquests in campaigns, and
some of which still stand, like the arch erect
ed by Titus to commemorate his conquest of
Jerusalem. The citizens of Hartford have
expended sixty thousand dollars to keep be-
fore the eyes of their descendants this me-
mortal of the sacrifices of the war for the
Union. They have chosen to dedicate it, not
only to those who died, but also to those who
served in the war; thus departing from the
custom generally followed in other cities,
where the people have followed the spirit of
the remark which Senator Hawley attributes
to Horace Bushnell: 1.-THE heroes of the
war are the dead men,