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.

The Benevolent Society after World War I

My initial thoughts on the Benevolent Society (and other African American benevolent groups) were that these types of organizations slowly died out in the 1920s due to a variety of factors, such as World War I, the Great Migration, and (in the 1930s) the Great Depression. However, recent research has shown that this is not entirely true.

Cover page of the 1926 Proceedings of the annual convention of the Benevolent Society.

While at the Tennessee State Library and Archives last week, I found a copy of the Proceedings of the Fifty-eighth Delegated Assembly of the Benevolent Orders State of Tennessee. This assembly took place in Murfreesboro, Tennessee between August 9 and August 12, 1926. In addition to listing the speakers, what they spoke about, and the business of the annual meeting, a list of all of the presidents of every Benevolent Society lodge in the state can be found near the back of the book. This treasure trove lists the number of the lodge and the town it was located in. I am excited to spend some time in the near future combing through the proceedings to glean as much information about the structure and spread of the organization.

Another interesting insight from my initial look at the Proceedings is that this group was not solely confined to Middle Tennessee. Although the majority of lodges were located in towns across Middle Tennessee, there are also lodges in West Tennessee towns such as Humboldt and Jackson and East Tennessee towns such as Dayton and Chattanooga. I hope very soon to create a general map of all towns with lodges in 1926.

A partial list of lodges from the 1926 Proceedings

Beyond the 1926 Proceedings, I have found evidence of Benevolent Society lodges in Nashville well into the 1930s and beyond. The 1933 Nashville City Directory shows at least 4 Benevolent Society lodge halls still present at that period.

The 1933 Nashville City Directory shows the location of at least 4 Benevolent Society lodges.

In fact, one lodge listed as being located at 1338 Lewis Street can be found in the 1955 Nashville City Directory, making a strong argument for the persistence of the group well past World War I and the Great Depression.

1955 Nashville City Directory showing a Benevolent Society Hall remained at 1338 Lewis Street

While I am still working through various materials, I believe a strong argument can be made for the continuance of African American benevolent groups, and specifically the Benevolent Society, beyond the Great Depression and both World Wars.

Benevolent Society No. 84 Cemetery, Hamilton Church Pike, Antioch

One of my favorite Benevolent cemeteries, and one of the smallest, is Benevolent Society No. 84 on Hamilton Church Pike in southeast Nashville. One reason it is my favorite is pure bias - it is located not far from where I grew up. I also love it because it has an abandoned lodge building on site.

What is likely an abandoned lodge building located on the property of the cemetery.

The cemetery is small, not marked, well maintained, and backs up to a suburban neighborhood. I feel that some graves may actually be located in the back yards of the houses behind the cemetery. The cemetery was a bit overgrown at the rear when I visited it, and it seemed to possibly extend into the neighborhood behind it. There were not very many marked graves (not more than 20), although it is always possible there are unmarked graves at the rear of the cemetery. There is at least one veteran buried here.  Many of the stones dated from the last half of the 20th century.

Tombstone located in an overgrown area at the rear of the cemetery.

Tombstone at the cemetery

Graves at the cemetery.

There are several mentions of the lodge in the Nashville Globe.  It often met with Benevolent Society No. 107 of Una, another small community in southeast Davidson County. For example, that paper noted in August 1909 that the two groups met together at B.O. No. 84 on "Hamilton Hill" (what the community located around what is now Hamilton Church Pike was once called).

From the Nashville Globe, August 27, 1909

I have done a bit of research on the members buried at this cemetery, using the cemetery transcription from findagrave.com. (http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&GScid=2300072) I was hoping to see what I could learn about what types of people were members of this lodge.  I learned that Albert Miller (1854-1939) rented a home in the community and worked as a road laborer in 1930. His death certificate, however, lists his occupation as farmer. Mr. Miller was literate and was not a veteran. His wife, Victoria Trimble Miller (1874-1941) was born in Rutherford County.  After his death, Victoria lived at 54 Trimble Street in Nashville.

I also researched Bernettie Whitsey (1875-1968).  Mrs. Whitsey was a laundress in 1930, married to John Whitsey, a farmer. Living with them in their home were two stepdaughters and two grandchildren, ages 6 and 8.  Like the Millers, the Whitseys rented their home. John has been born in Williamson County, and he died in 1943 at the age of 74.

I hope to do more genealogical research of the people buried in the Benevolent cemeteries. It humanizes the group, and it gives me a much better idea of what the members were like.  It also gives me a better sense of the importance of the group to the members.  These members listed here likely did not enjoy great financial prosperity, so a group like the Benevolent Society, which offered sick and death benefits at a time when the government did not, was likely very important to the Whitseys and the Millers. In time, I also hope that I learn about the fate of the lodge, and whether there are any members alive who remember meeting in this building.

Side view of the building. It is a concrete block building with a gable front roof, brick chimney, and several windows.

Interior of the building as it appeared in late 2012.

Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World

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.

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).

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.

Symbol for the group

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.

Benevolent Society cemeteries of Middle Tennessee

Lately I have been thinking about the number of Benevolent Society cemeteries I have observed in Middle Tennessee, and whether there we can look at these cemeteries as evidence to tell us more about the group itself.  My thoughts are still being clarified, so this is something of an exercise in gathering thoughts in a semi-coherent manner.

To begin, I do not believe I have observed all the cemeteries in Middle Tennessee that were established by the Benevolent Society.  I think that, as the group died out in smaller communities, the cemeteries started by the Benevolent Society were given other names.  Also, I think that it is very possible that some cemeteries were surveyed by well-meaning transcriptionists in the past, and a name assigned to the cemetery that the community that established it would not have recognized.  For example, if a cemetery has fallen into apparent disuse, any sign that existed marking the name of the cemetery may have disappeared.  When a well-meaning genealogist then transcribed the names on the visible tombstones, a name, likely reflecting the last name of one of the families buried there, was assigned to the cemetery.  I also think some may have suffered from development, and after wooden grave markers deteriorated, they were overlooked and forgotten on the landscape.

Marker to the Benevolent Society No. 11 in the Benevolent Cemetery in Murfreesboro

Marker to the "B.O" (Benevolent Order, another name for the Benevolent Society), Port Royal

One thing I have found is that several of these cemeteries have a large, ornate marker to the local chapter of the Benevolent Society.  Examples include the Benevolent Cemetery in Murfreesboro, Mount Ararat in Shelbyville (a Benevolent Society cemetery), and the Benevolent Cemetery in Port Royal. Individual grave markers in these cemeteries are not often that ornate, and this leads me to think that while the Benevolent Society as a whole may have enjoyed some financial stability, the individual members did not enjoy the same level of financial resources.

Monument to the Benevolent Society in Mount Ararat Cemetery in Shelbyville. It reads "Sacred to the memory of the honored dead of the Benevolent Society. Their works do follow them. August 1897."

Commemorative marker for the Benevolent Society at Mt. Ararat Cemetery in Nashville. This cemetery was organized by the Benevolent Society and by the Sons of Relief, another fraternal group.

  Something else noticeable in the Benevolent Society cemeteries is that they are physical representations of the segregated landscape African Americans navigated in Tennessee. Some, such as the Mount Ararat Cemetery in Shelbyville and the Benevolent Society Cemetery in Goodlettsville, are located adjacent or across the road from an older, white cemetery. In the case of the cemetery in Goodlettsville, the two cemeteries, Benevolent Society (African American) and Cole Cemetery (white) are adjacent with no fence between. In that case, it is difficult now to know which cemetery is which, but my gut tells me the community was never in doubt of which cemetery was black and which was white.  I think that more should be done to document cemeteries as sites of segregation in Tennessee, and how Jim Crow pursued you even into death.

Mount Ararat (black) Cemetery in Shelbyville in shown in the foreground. The road and the cemetery in the background (surrounded by a fence) is the white Willow Mount Cemetery, established in the 1840s.

Sons of Zion (Memphis and Shelby County)

There were apparently a number of African American fraternal and benevolent groups in Tennessee with "Zion" in the name.  In Memphis alone, there are references in city directories and newspapers to the Daughters of Zion, Sons of Zion, Sisters of Zion, and United Sons of Zion (apparently different from the Sons of Zion). I have even found mention of a Sons of Zion as far east as Greeneville, Tennessee in 1871.  To be perfectly honest, I am still puzzling out the links, if any, between the groups.  Here goes my best guess, at this point, about the Sons of Zion, the group that formed Zion Christian Cemetery (http://tn-africanamericanlodges.blogspot.com/2014/09/zion-christian-cemterysons-of-zion.html).

A mention of the Sons of Zion in the Jonesborough Herald and Tribune, August 10, 1871.

According to G.P. Hamilton, in The Bright Side of Memphis, the Sons of Zion in Memphis organized in 1867, and at the time of his writing, consisted of one lodge, no endowment, and 200 members.  Hamilton describes the group as, "One of the earliest societies in Memphis, it has done much for the welfare of our people. Their leaders have been men of foresight and judgement . . ." The 1874 Boyle Chapman Memphis Directory lists the Sons of Zion as meeting on Rayburn Avenue with 200 members while the United Sons of Zion met at Beale Street church and had 270 members. 

Memphis Daily Appeal, March 23, 1874

The Sons of Zion were active in Memphis.  In 1874, they, along with other groups, took part in funeral ceremonies in Memphis to mark the death of Charles Sumner, former abolitionist and politician.  They participated in July 4th celebrations.  They took responsibility for burial of the dead, as when Joe Morgan, a black man, drowned in the Wolf  River. After his body was recovered, they took charge of his remains and buried him.

Memphis Daily Appeal, October 8, 1879.  Discusses the drowning and burial of Joe Morgan.

Brian D. Page has a great article in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly that discusses the different benevolent and fraternal groups in Memphis following the Civil War.  It is ""Stand by the Flag": Nationalism and African-American Celebrations of the Fourth of July in Memphis, 1866-1887," and it is located in Volume 58. number 4 (Winter 1999): pages 284-301.