The Birth of Fraternalism
J.J. UPCHURCH & THE A.O.U.W.
John Jordan Upchurch
John Jordan Upchurch
Born in 1820 on a thin-soiled farm on the North Carolina frontier, John Jordan Upchurch was just a young boy when he became intimately acquainted with hardship: When Upchurch was four years old, his father was murdered.[1]
Very soon after his father’s tragic death, the family farm was “brutally wrested” from Upchurch’s surviving mother and his siblings.[2] He was left to trudge through childhood, taking odd jobs to help his mother make ends meet, and struggled to obtain a “decidedly limited” education.[3]
Life on the Railroad
From the time he came of age, Upchurch shuffled from town to town along the east coast as employment dictated, finding a living in various companies and trades related to the rail system. By April of 1868, he found himself in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
In many ways, Meadville did not differ from the towns through which Upchurch and his young family had passed over the years. Here, just as anywhere else, Upchurch and his fellow railroad workmen were subject to the harsh reality of life on the railroad.
Here, too, Upchurch witnessed again the destitution and distress that an untimely death thrust upon the families of his fellow railroad workmen. Upchurch felt deeply for the men and their families, who were overlooked by the commercial life insurers of the time.
In 1868, life insurance was a luxury for the few. It was offered almost exclusively to businessmen and manufacturers. Almost no appeal was made to the working class.[4]
In fact, under the rare circumstances that workingmen were able to attain commercial insurance, Upchurch observed that their widows’ and children’s experiences with the insurers were “always to their disadvantage, and frequently to their hurt.”[5]
Knowing this strife all too well, Upchurch sought a remedy for this injustice.
The Ancient Order of United Workmen
Inspired by the structure of the Free Masons (of which he was a member), Upchurch envisioned a society that united into a single brotherhood all men who shared the experience of the railroad, and that afforded protection to these men and their families during their greatest times of need.[6]
On October 27, 1868, Upchurch transformed his revolutionary vision into a reality: In a meeting hall in Meadville, Pennsylvania, he and 13 fellow rail workers formed the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the world’s first fraternal benefit society.[7]
To say that the creation of the fraternal benefit society was remarkable would be an understatement. As one 1921 author wrote:
“[Upchurch] did not discover fraternalism… He did not discover life insurance… He combined into one institution the essential elements of the fraternal society, of the trade union and of a crude form of life insurance contract. It was an entirely new combination. No fraternal society, no trade union, no life insurance institution had ever made such a combination. He went beyond them all. Imagination, that wonderful artist of the human mind, had painted a new masterpiece and [Upchurch] transformed it into reality. This was his discovery. It was an entirely new species of human institution.”[8]
As he stood in the sparse meeting hall alongside a handful of peers, it seems unlikely that John Jordan Upchurch could have predicted how unbelievably popular his creation, the fraternal benefit society, would be.
Within twelve years of its inception, the AOUW would have over 94,000 members across the United States, and would become the largest fraternal benefit society in the country.[9] By the end of the century, untold numbers of immigrants, tradesmen, and religious groups throughout the United States would establish hundreds of new fraternal benefit societies.
Deeply Wounded
By 1873, five years after the AOUW was established, the society had grown so quickly that the need for national organization had become necessary. As such, representatives from the state level, or Grand Lodges, were set to meet in Cincinnati in February to establish a national governing body, the Supreme Lodge.
Just a month before this historic meeting, through a complicated series of events, John Jordan Upchurch, founder of the AOUW and creator of the fraternal benefit society, was “practically eliminated from any part in the further active management of the Order”[10] by his “old rival” William Washington Walker.[11]
At the Supreme Lodge meeting the following month, which Upchurch did not attend, Walker chaired the meeting and was also elected Supreme Master Workman, the AOUW’s first chief executive. Upchurch was unanimously voted, in absentia, “Past Supreme Master Workman,” a purely honorary title.[12]
Upchurch was, as one might imagine, “deeply wounded” at this turn of events.[13] Not only had he been excluded from the AOUW’s national affairs, the Supreme Lodge “had chosen his bitter opponent” as its chief executive officer.[14]
A month later, Upchurch moved his wife and 15 children to Missouri, where “several long years passed before he again became active in the ranks of the AOUW.”[15]
The Father of Fraternalism
For five years, Upchurch was completely out of touch with the AOUW and its affairs.[16] During this time, the society grew and changed rapidly.
In 1878, for motivations that escape the historical record, Upchurch felt compelled to embrace his beloved society once again.
He called upon a lodge in Missouri, but found himself unfamiliar with the new rituals that had been approved in his absence.[17] Upchurch “could not satisfy the members of the lodge as to his identity,” and was “refused admittance.”[18] He was, again, “struck to the heart.”[19]
A short time later he once more summoned the grace to knock for admittance at the AOUW’s 6th Supreme Lodge session, which took place in St. Louis, Missouri.
Finally, after a long and cruel hiatus from the Ancient Order of United Workmen, Upchurch was admitted, welcomed by the new Supreme Master Workman, Samuel B. Myers, and “was accorded a rousing welcome all around.”[20]
From that day on, John Jordan Upchurch was “lionized by the Supreme Lodge, by the Grand Lodges, and by the entire membership” of the AOUW.[21] He was regarded as “Father Upchurch,” and began a crusade of the United States, meeting workmen and their families and espousing the gospel of his creation, the fraternal benefit society. [22]
These, it has been said, were the “greatest, happiest days of his life.”[23]
Upchurch died in his Missouri home on January 18, 1887, after being stricken with pneumonia.[24]
“With all the honors that his society, his brethren, his friends and his neighbors could bestow upon him,” John Jordan Upchurch was laid to rest in St. Louis at the age of 66.[25]
Upchurch’s Legacy
The Ancient Order of United Workmen, the “pioneer fraternal benefit society,” was for many years the largest in the world.[26] At its height, the AOUW was comprised of over 5,600 lodges throughout the United States and Canada, and insured over 500,000 members.[27] In 1902, the AOUW boasted that it paid over $27,000 every day to the widows and children of deceased members.[28]
Noteworthy though the origins of the Ancient Order of United Workmen may have been, the society was not immune from the financial and structural difficulties that so many fraternal benefit societies faced at the turn of the century. By the late 1940s, the AOUW had all but dissolved, evolving first into Pioneer Mutual Life, and later being absorbed into OneAmerica.[29]
In reflecting on the legacy of John Jordan Upchurch, “It needs to be said,” writes one fraternal scholar, “that fraternal [benefit] societies have made great contributions to the American society.”[30]
To know these contributions, one need only to look upon the dozens of fraternal benefit societies that continue to this day; upon the millions of Americans whose financial securities are protected, and upon the care and concern that the fraternal system brings to American communities. In so doing, we all recognize that “The fraternal benefit society,” the creation of John Jordan Upchurch, “has filled, and is destined forevermore to fill with nectar the golden goblet of human life.”[31]
Footnotes:
[1] “Father John Upchurch,” in Builders of Fraternalism in America (Chicago: The Fraternal Book Concern, 1924), 13.
[2] Ibid, 13.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Walter Basye, History and Operation of Fraternal Insurance (Rochester, NY: Fraternal Monitor, 1919), 10.
[5] “Father John Upchurch,” in Builders of Fraternalism in America (Chicago: The Fraternal Book Concern, 1924), 15.
[6] Ibid, 14.
[7] Ibid, 15.
[8] Ibid, 19.
[9] The Ancient Order of United Workmen: The Pioneer Fraternal Benefit Society of America. 1902, 1.
[10] “Father John Upchurch,” in Builders of Fraternalism in America (Chicago: The Fraternal Book Concern, 1924), 18.
[11] Ibid, 17.
[12] Ibid, 18.
[13] Ibid, 18.
[14] Ibid, 19.
[15] Ibid, 18.
[16] Ibid, 20.
[17] Ibid, 20.
[18] Ibid, 20.
[19] Ibid, 20.
[20] Ibid, 20.
[21] Ibid, 20.
[22] Ibid, 20.
[23] Ibid, 22.
[24] Ibid, 22.
[25] Ibid, 22.
[26] The Ancient Order of United Workmen: The Pioneer Fraternal Benefit Society of America. 1902, 1.
[27] Ibid, 6-7.
[28] Ibid, 7.
[29] “History,” History, accessed November 07, 2016, https://www.oneamerica.com/wps/wcm/connect/oa/PML/Hist
[30] Alvin J. Schmidt and Nicholas Babchuk, Fraternal Organizations (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 19.
[31] “Father John Upchurch,” in Builders of Fraternalism in America (Chicago: The Fraternal Book Concern, 1924), 23.