Dear Vance: What can you tell me about the section of Elmwood Cemetery set aside for “Odd Fellows Rest”? — M.G., Memphis.
Dear M.G.: Precisely one year ago, in our March 2019 issue, I told readers about Elks Rest, an exclusive section of Forest Hill Cemetery that serves as the final resting place for members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, a fraternal organization.
Elmwood Cemetery also has space reserved for these “benevolent societies,” such as the Masons and the Knights of Pythias. One of the most impressive areas, distinctive for the order and simplicity of the grave markers, is the area you have noticed, which is set aside for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. As you can see, the large granite marker carries the group’s symbol — three chain links with the letters F, L, and T, which stand for Friendship, Love, and Truth.
This fact may surprise you: The history of the IOOF stretches back almost 300 years, since records show the first lodges, as the chapters were called, were established in Great Britain as early as 1730. An official history describes the group’s organization and purpose in this way: “While Odd Fellowship is not a religious institution, many of its principles, tenets, practices, and objectives are based upon the teachings of the Holy Bible. Many of the rites and ceremonies, rituals and lectures, the secret passwords, signs, and counter-signs, have a Biblical origin or significance.
“One of its primary aims,” that history continues, “is to provide its members with aid when suffering because of illness, unemployment, or other misfortunes. The relief or sustenance of members, of their families and close relatives, of their widows and orphans in case of death, appears to have been the chief purpose of the organization of Odd Fellowship in its beginning. These aims and purposes have been consistently and faithfully maintained throughout the history of the Order.”
As the group flourished, it was only natural that members established chapters in America when they immigrated here in the 1800s. Shakespeare Lodge #1 was chartered in New York City in 1806, thus establishing the Odd Fellows in our country.
Odd Fellows Rest, with its rows of simple grave markers, is the final resting place of members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
Okay, let me say here and now that the group’s rather unusual name had nothing to do with the way the members looked or behaved. Instead, their history explains it: “That common laboring men should associate themselves together and form a fraternity for social unity and fellowship and for mutual help was such a marked violation of the trends of the times (England in the 1700s) that they became known as ‘peculiar’ or ‘odd’ and hence they were derided as ‘Odd Fellows.’ Because of the appropriateness of the name, those engaged in forming these unions accepted it.”
Other histories make it simpler, by noting that members often held odd and unusual jobs. After all, that first lodge in New York City was established by a boat builder, an actor, and a singer.
What’s especially interesting is that the IOOF became the first fraternal organization in the U.S. to accept women. The Degree of Rebekah was established in 1851, decades before women were allowed to hold any public office in this country.
The IOOF first established a lodge in Memphis in 1843, meeting in rented space in Calvary Episcopal Church. According to the book In the Shadows of the Elms, devoted to the history of Elmwood Cemetery, “In 1848, they built a handsome building at Main and Court, which was the scene of some of the biggest public events of the nineteenth century.”
All those public events came to a halt when the yellow fever epidemics swept over our city in deadly waves in the 1870s. The Odd Fellows — along with other groups, such as the Howard Association, the Masons, and the brave nuns and priests of St. Mary’s Cathedral — played key roles in helping the sick and suffering.
This magazine has written extensively about the almost fatal impact the disease had on our city, and since we’re talking about the Odd Fellows, I should offer a few details about their history during this period. A useful website called Heart In Hand: The Modern Odd Fellow’s Guide, includes excerpts from official IOOF documents from the 1878 epidemic.
Among the entries from September of that year: “The six Lodges in the city of Memphis say to the members of our beloved Order in America, that we are in the middle of a fearful epidemic, the end of which no one can foresee. We need your sympathy and God alone knows how soon your aid.”
In response, other IOOF lodges throughout the U.S. donated more than $18,000 to the relief efforts here, and the money was put to good use: “Your committee has employed 475 nurses at an average cost of $15 each. The number of brothers who have died is 95, and of their families 134, making the number of deaths 229.” And later: “The different Lodges of this city will now have to care for 109 widows and 196 orphans. This indeed tells the sad story of our calamities.”
Some time after the first of these epidemics, in 1873, Elmwood Cemetery set aside a spacious plot for Odd Fellows Rest, with several hundred members, to date, buried there, many of them victims of yellow fever.
That entire section was renovated years ago, all the older markers replaced with simpler ones, each of them practically identical — just a square stone with a metal nameplate mounted to the top. What’s rather unusual about these markers is they carry no dates for the birth and death of the deceased; perhaps that is a tradition of all Odd Fellows Rests. But some of these graves are much older than you might think.
I came across a simple marker for Maggie Blew (shown here) and because the stone looked so new, assumed it was a fairly recent burial. Death records show, however, that this is the grave of an 11-year-old girl, who died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878.
In fact, those records reveal that six members of the Blew family died on the same day — Maggie’s father Robert (age 40, and editor of the Western Methodist newspaper here), her mother (identified only as “Mrs. R.W. Blew,” age 38), and her siblings Robert Jr. (7), Willie (14), and Zella (17). All of them were found dead in their home at Wellington and Vance on September 16, 1878.
Little Maggie lingered for a week but passed away on the 29th. If anything conveys the true horror of the epidemic, it is that cluster of entries in the official “Register of Deaths for the City of Memphis,” with a scribbled “y.f.” beside each name, listing the cause of death. In a way, this family was lucky. Because they were members of the IOOF, they were buried in Odd Fellows Rest. Yellow fever caused so many deaths — by some counts, more than 5,000 — many of the victims were buried in unmarked mass graves.
The fever passed when cold weather drove away the mosquitos spreading the disease, and in the following decades Memphis slowly began to recover. Despite the loss of so many members, the Odd Fellows continued to do good deeds here. According to the Elmwood book, the group established the city’s first public library, with some 3,000 volumes, and donated nearly $30,000 in building sums — an enormous amount at that time — for an addition to the Leath Orphan Asylum (now Porter-Leath).
For many years, fancy gold lettering on a second-floor window of the Lincoln-American Tower overlooking Court Square indicated this building served as headquarters for the Odd Fellows. When that structure was renovated several years ago, the group moved out. They remain active here, along with some 20 other lodges in Tennessee. In the Memphis area, twice a month the members of Chickasaw Lodge #8 — the same lodge stricken during the yellow fever epidemics — and Ruth Rebekah Lodge #1 hold meetings in the Masonic Lodge Hall in Bartlett, still doling out friendship, love, and truth wherever it is needed.
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Email: askvance@memphismagazine.com
Mail: Vance Lauderdale, Memphis magazine, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38103
