Back in 2014, while doing fieldwork for
Tennessee's Reconstruction Past: A Driving Tour (a project I am very proud to have worked on and very dear to my heart. You can see it
here.), I came across another fraternal group in Shelby County. I was at the
Gray's Creek Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery (a congregation started, incidentally in 1843) when I noticed several tombstones with the "Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World" etched on them. They all also had either chambers or circles noted, much like the Mosaic Templars. The symbology was very interesting at well, a lion over an inverted triangle.
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| Top of a tombstone showing the Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World |
I have not had time to research the group extensively, but it appears to have started in Arkansas in 1909, in the town of Helena. According to the
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, by 1944, the group had spread and had more than 100,000 members nationwide. The founder was Dr. Richard Williams, an Arkansas native. Intriguingly, Dr. Williams was educated in Nashville (at Meharry) and practiced medicine in Knoxville before moving to Helena in 1905. Despite his connections to middle and west Tennessee, I have not yet found chapters of the organization in that part of the state.
The group's headquarters later moved to Chicago. They opened two hospitals for the benefit of its members - one in Memphis and one in Little Rock. The hospital is listed in the 1923 Polk directory of Memphis as being located on South Fifth Street. According to Calvin White, Jr. in
The Rise to Respectability: Race, Religion and the Church of God in Christ, the hospital failed in 1924 and the property purchased by the Church of God in Christ (COGIC).
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| Listing for the Royal Circle hospital in Memphis in the 1923 Polk City Directory. Courtesy the Shelby County Archives. |
Back to the cemetery at Gray's Creek, a number of circles and chambers are listed. Some of these include the Crescent Circle No. 304 and Eads Circle No. 1045. I would like to find out what other circles and chambers existed in Tennessee.
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| Symbol for the group |
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| Tombstone showing that the deceased was a member of Eads Circle 1045 |
To learn more about the group, see its entry in the
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.
There was a chapter in Tullahoma Coffee Co, TN. Check out the Citizens Cemetery, Malinda Rhoton. Also available on Internet.
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I live in kensett arkansas and I found similar grave markings as well at Crow cemetery.
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