12/21/2023 0 Comments Royal order of the moose![]() Addressing Need on the Other End of Life: Moosehaven The first 11 youngsters in residence were present, having been admitted earlier that month they and a handful of workers were housed in the original farmhouse and a few rough-hewn frame buildings that had been erected that spring. So it was on a hot summer Sunday, July 27, 2913, that several thousand Moose men and women (for the Women of the Moose received formal recognition that year as the organization’s official female component) gathered under a rented circus tent toward the south end of the new property and placed the cornerstone for Mooseheart. Ohio Congressman John Lentz, a member of the Supreme Council, conceived the name “Mooseheart” for the new community: “This,” he said, “will always be the place where the Moose fraternity will collectively pour out its heart, its devotion and sustenance, to the children of its members in need.” The Birth of MooseheartĪfter careful consideration of numerous sites, the Moose Supreme Council in late 1912 approved the purchase of what was known as the Brookline Farm – more than 1,000 acres along the then-dirt surfaced Lincoln Highway, between Batavia and North Aurora on the west side of the Fox River, about 40 miles west of Chicago. The Moose began a program of paying “sick benefits” to members too ill to work-and, more ambitiously, Davis and the organization’s other officers made plans for a “Moose Institute,” to be centrally located somewhere in the Midwest that would provide a home, schooling a vocational training to children of deceased Moose Members. Davis, appointed the organization’s first chief executive with the new title of Director General, realized it was time to make good on the promise. ![]() and southern Canada (In 1926, the Moose fraternity’s presence extended across the Atlantic, with the founding of the Grand Lodge of Great Britain.)ĭavis’ marketing instincts were on-target: By 1912, the order had grown from 247 members in two Lodges, to a colossus of nearly 500,000 in more than 1,000 lodges. Given a green light and the title of “Supreme Organizer” Davis and a few other colleagues set out to solicit members and organize Moose Lodges across the U.S. Davis proposed to “pitch” Moose membership as a way to provide such protection at a bargain price: annual dues of $5 to $10. At the time little or no government “safety net” existed to provide benefits to the wife and children of a breadwinner who died or became disabled. Davis – Founder: Mooseheart & Moosehavenĭavis, a native of Wales who had worked from boyhood as an “iron puddler” in the steel mills of Pennsylvania, had also been a labor organizer and immediately saw potential to build the tiny Moose fraternity into a force to provide protection and security for a largely working-class membership. Davis’ 33rd birthday, October 27, that he became just the 247th member of the Loyal Order of Moose. It was just the two remaining Indiana Lodges that kept the Moose from disappearing altogether, until the fall of 1906, when an outgoing young government clerk from Elwood, IN, was invited to enroll into the Crawfordsville Lodge. Wilson himself became dissatisfied and left the infant order well before the turn of the century. Louis, and the smaller Indiana towns of Crawfordsville and Frankfort by the early 1890’s, but Dr. Lodges were instituted in Cincinnati, st. John Henry Wilson, a Louisville, KY, physician, organized a handful of men into the Loyal Order of Moose in the parlor of his home in the spring of 1888, he and his compatriots did so apparently for no other reason than to form a string of men’s social clubs. ![]() Though the Moose fraternal organization was founded in the late 1800’s with the modest goal of offering men an opportunity to gather socially, it was reinvented during the first decade of the 20th century into an organizational dynamo of men and women who set out to build a city that would brighten the futures of thousands of children in need all across North America.
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