HINT IS A SPOILER!
Note (Take a trinket Leave a trinket)
A little history about the Grange: Description: The Fort Bragg Grange No. 672 – the one at Inglenook – is a little over 5 miles north of Fort Bragg – was formed in 1938 when thirty interested people met at Pudding Creek Hall. It was so cold the organization had to move to Runeberg Hall. The building they now meet in was once the Ocean View School. The Fort Bragg Grange has been serving Sunday breakfast on the coast since 1957. It takes about thirty-two volunteers for each breakfast. The record-breaking breakfast was on July 4, 1994 when they served 711 people! Normally there are some 250 to 400 mostly geriatric Fort Braggers eating a volunteer prepared breakfast. The funds raised at the Sunday breakfast go to a lot of different organizations in the area, toward their scholarship funds for area students, and to pay for building materials for the Grange.
The Whitesboro Grange No. 766 has been in existence for over fifty years. The building itself, once the old Whitesboro School, will soon be celebrating its hundredth year. Whitesboro usually serves around sixty-five hungry folks on any given fourth Sunday of the month. Whitesboro is about a mile south of Albion on Navarro Ridge Road.
From personal experience, I can assure you the breakfasts are first class.
Whilst I now had a bit o’ history on the two local Granges I still didn’t know too much about the Grange Movement except it was the farmers way of battling the railroads. I kept sniffing around and unearthed this piece:
” The Granger Movement – a coalition of U.S. farmers, particularly in the Middle West, that fought monopolistic grain transport practices during the decade following the American Civil War.
The Granger movement began with a single individual, Oliver Hudson Kelley. Kelley was an employee of the Department of Agriculture in 1866 when he made a tour of the South. Shocked by the ignorance thereof sound agricultural practices, Kelley in 1867 began an organization—the Patrons of Husbandry—he hoped would bring farmers together for educational discussions and social purposes.
The organization involved secret rituals and was divided into local units called “Granges.” At first only Kelley’s home state of Minnesota seemed responsive to the Granger movement, but by 1870 nine states had Granges. By the mid-1870s nearly every state had at least one Grange, and national membership reached close to 800,000. What drew most farmers to the Granger movement was the need for unified action against the monopolistic railroads and grain elevators (often owned by the railroads) that charged exorbitant rates for handling and transporting farmers’ crops and other agricultural products. The movement picked up adherents as it became increasingly political after 1870.
In 1871 Illinois farmers were able to get their state legislature to pass a bill fixing maximum rates that railroads and grain-storage facilities could charge. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa later passed similar regulatory legislation. These laws were challenged in court, and what became known as the “Granger cases” reached the Supreme Court in 1877. The most significant of the Granger cases was Munn vs Illinois in which a Chicago grain-storage facility challenged the constitutionality of the 1871 Illinois law setting maximum rates. The court, with Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite writing for the majority, upheld the state legislation on the grounds that a private enterprise that affects the public interest is subject to governmental regulation.
Meanwhile, independent farmers’ political parties began appearing all over the country, outgrowths of the Granger movement. Ignatius Donnelly was one of the principal organizers, and his weekly newspaper Anti-Monopolist was highly influential. At their Grange meetings farmers were urged to vote only for candidates who would promote agricultural interests. If the two major parties would not check the monopolistic practices of railroads and grain elevators, the Grangers turned to their own parties for action.
With the rise of the Greenback Party and later organizations for the expression of agricultural protest, however, the Granger movement began to subside late in the 1870s. Ill-advised farmer-owned cooperatives for the manufacture of agricultural equipment sapped much of the group’s strength and financial resources. By 1880 membership had dropped to slightly more than 100,000. The Granger movement rebounded in the 20th century, however, especially in the eastern part of the country. The National Grange, as it is called, remains a fraternal organization of farmers and takes an active stance on national legislation affecting the agricultural sector.”