Sparta's Benevolent Society

I have posted before about finding the Proceedings of the Fifty-eighth Delegated Assembly of the Benevolent Orders State of Tennessee, dating to 1926.  Part of this treasure trove of information is a section in the back with the lodge number and town of each Benevolent Society lodge in the state in that year. Other information also includes the number of members for each lodge as well as the value of their cash holdings and property at that time. I'm slowly working my way through this list to gain a better understanding of the scope of the Benevolent Society.

One thing that stuck out was that Sparta, Tennessee, the county seat of White County on the Cumberland Plateau, was the home of 3 lodges.  Being that this is not a section of the state known for a large African American population, I was intrigued by the number of lodges.  Additionally, these 3 lodges reported a total of 143 members in 1926.

Since no census record exists for 1926, I looked at the 1920 Census for Sparta to learn more about the African American population of the town at the period.  Of the 1,517 people enumerated in that 1920 census in Sparta, 245 were identified as black or mulatto. The remaining 1,272 residents were identified as white. This means that 16% of Sparta's population in 1920 was African American.  It was more than I had anticipated.  Furthermore, this means that possibly something close to 58% of the African American community was a member of the Benevolent Society.

Looking more deeply at the census records, I noticed a pattern to where African Americans lived. While there were some white households with individual African Americans living in the home (usually as servants or cooks), the majority of the African American population lived along South Jail Street, North Main Street, West Church Street, West Bridge Street, and Sand Bottoms Street. It was clearly a segregated town, not unusual in Tennessee or the South during this period.

A section of the 1920 Census for Sparta showing a predominantly African American population in this part of town.

I then turned to the Sanborn Insurance Maps, hoping to get a better sense of where these streets were located in the 1920s. While the 1921 Sanborn Map did not show most of these streets, I did find the African American section on the 1931 Sanborn Map of Sparta.

1931 Sanborn Insurance Map (Sheet 7) of Sparta, TN showing an African American section of town.

In a section bounded by North Bridge Street, Klondyke, Church Street, and an unnamed street, was the African American section of Sparta. Three African American churches are located in this area as well as the African American school. And sitting beside the 1st Baptist Church (Colored) (as labeled on the map) was a building labeled "Hall." Lodges, churches, and schools were often located together in African American communities across the state, so it is very likely that this Hall is a lodge hall. A second Hall can be found 2 buildings away from the 1st M.E. Church (Colored) (as labeled on the map).  And given that the Benevolent Society in Sparta had 143 members in 1926, it is very possible (and quite likely) that the Benevolent Society lodges met in one of these buildings.

A cursory glance at Google maps suggests that these buildings (as well as the churches) no longer exist.  Wali Rashash Kharif and William Lynwood Montell, in Reminisces and Reflections: African Americans in the Kentucky-Tennessee Upper Cumberland Since the Civil War (2005) states that the African American population of Sparta and White County declined significantly during the 20th century, and that there were only 518 African Americans left in the entire county by 1930.  It seems likely that the Benevolent Society did not survive long into the 1930s.

Mapping the Benevolent Society of Tennessee

As I mentioned in a July 2017 post, I recently found a copy of the proceedings from the 1926 meeting of the Benevolent Society in Tennessee. One of the interesting pieces of information in that is the list of every lodge that existed in the state of Tennessee at that time.

Although this list does not show the street address for each lodge, it does list the town the lodge was located.  To that end, I created a simple Google map to gain a better understanding of the distribution of lodge locations in 1926.

Benevolent Society lodges in 1926. Courtesy of Google Maps.

As expected, the majority of lodges were located in Middle Tennessee. There were some surprises (such as lodges located in Dayton and Kingston).  I plan on doing more work to narrow down locations, if possible, but I think this is a useful tool for understanding the spread and scope of the group in 1926.

To see the full map, you can visit my map here.