History of the Loyal Order of Moose

The Loyal Order of Moose was founded in Louisville, Kentucky, in the spring of 1888 by Dr. John Henry Wilson. Originally intended purely as a men's social club, lodges were soon founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri and Crawfordsville and Frankfort, Indiana.

The early order was not prosperous. Dr. Wilson himself was dissatisfied and left the order of the Moose before the turn of the century.

When Albert C. Stevens was compiling his Cyclopedia of Fraternities in the late 1890s, he was unable to ascertain whether it was still in existence.

In the fall of 1906 the Order had only the two Indiana lodges remaining. On October 27 of that year James J. Davis became the 247th member of the Order.

Davis was a Welsh immigrant who had come to the US as a youth and worked as an iron puddler in the steel mills of Pennsylvania, and an active labor organizer (he later became Secretary of Labor in the Harding administration).

He saw the Order as a way to provide a social safety net for a working class membership, using a low annual membership fee of $10–$15 (equivalent to $280–$420 in 2018).

After giving a rousing address to the seven delegates of the 1906 Moose national convention, he was appointed "Supreme Organizer" of the Order.

Davis and a group of organizers set out to recruit members and establish lodges throughout the US and Canada. He was quite successful and the Order grew to nearly half a million members in 1,000 lodges by 1912

Join the Illuminati https://www.howtojoinilluminati.co.za/
Illuminati symbols https://www.howtojoinilluminati.co.za/symbols-signs-illuminati.html
History of the Illuminati https://www.howtojoinilluminati.co.za/history-of-illuminati.html