Visiting Some Odd Fellows Traditional Cache
Visiting Some Odd Fellows
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Another in my series of cemetery caches. Cache is a bison tube.
The name Oddfellows refers to a number of friendly societies operating in the United Kingdom and the United States. It also refers to a number of Lodges with histories dating back to the 1700s.These various organisations were set up to protect and care for their members at a time when there was no welfare state, trade unions or National Health Service. The aim was (and still is) to provide help to members when they need it.
Legend has it that the origins of fraternal societies date back to the exile of the Israelites from Babylon in 587BC when many of those exiled banded together into a brotherhood for mutual support and defence.
Legend goes on to say "an Order of Odd Fellows was established in 1452 by knights who were said to have met at the Boulogne-sur-Mere in London and formed a fraternity".
In smaller towns and villages, there were too few Fellows from the same trade to set up a local Guild, so Fellows from a number of trades banded together to form a local Guild of Fellows from an odd assortment of trades. Hence, Guilds of Odd Fellows.
Over the next 300 years or so, the idea of "ordinary" people joining together to improve their situation met with varying degrees of opposition (and persecution) from "the establishment", depending on whether they were seen as a source of revenue (taxes) or a threat to their power.
The Oddfellows had spread to America, and several unofficial lodges existed in New York City, but American Odd Fellowship is regarded as being founded in Baltimore in 1819, by Thomas Wildey, and the following year affiliated with the Manchester Unity.
In 1834 Britain, the Tolpuddle Martyrs were unexpectedly convicted and "transported" for "membership of an illegal friendly society". The Oddfellow "Board of Directors" hastily modified the "constitution" to evade a similar fate. Members of the Oddfellows in the United States were not pleased to see the ancient rituals changed without their agreement, particularly to satisfy a British Government against which they had fought a war of independence.
As a result, the Oddfellows in America declared their independence from the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows and became a self governing Order—the Independent Order of Odd Fellows—which established lodges across the world (and continues to this day)
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