Hidden in Plain Sight
The Order of the Eastern Star in the Historiography of American Women’s Associations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v4i1.160Keywords:
Eastern Star, freemasonry, women, historiographyAbstract
Although the phenomenon of women in freemasonry has enjoyed considerable attention in European scholarship, the involvement of American women in fraternal organizations goes virtually unnoticed by the academic community. This is especially true for several American women’s organizations based on fraternal associations—the Order of the Eastern Star, the Degree of Rebekah, and the Pythian Sisters. This paper focuses attention on the largest of these groups, the Order of the Eastern Star, identifying and exploring the particular lacuna in the growing historiography of women’s voluntary associations in America that leaves the OES untreated.
References
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Proceedings of the General Grand Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, Thirteenth Triennial Assembly. Chicago, IL: The Galbraith Press, 1911.
Rich, P. ‘Recovering a Rite: The Amaranth, Queen of the South, and Eastern Star,’ in Heredom: The Transition of The Scottish Rite Research Society, vol. 6, ed. S. Brent Morris. The Scottish Rite Research Society, Washington DC, 1997, accessed 2010: http://www.paulrich.net/publications/heredom_02.html
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Scott, A. Firor.Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Skocpol, T., A. Liazos and M. Ganz. What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Stillson, H. L. The Official History and Literature of Odd Fellowship. Boston, MA: The Fraternity Publishing Company, 1898.
Summers, M. ‘Diasporic Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transnational Production of Black Middle-Class Masculinity’. Gender and History 15(3) (November 2003): 550–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0953-5233.2003.00320.x
Vaughan, W. The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States, 1826–1848. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.
Vickery, A. ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’. Historical Journal 36(2) (1993): 383–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X9300001X
Voorhis, H. Van Buren. The Eastern Star, Evolution from a Rite to an Order. Richmond, VA: Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, 1938.
Ward, H. M. The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society. London: UCL Press, 1999.
Welter, B. Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976.
Bell, F.A. Order of the Eastern Star, Chicago, IL: E.A. Cook Publications, 1923.
Blair, K. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980.
Boylan, A.M. The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1797–1840. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Brown, S.M. Wilson. History of the Order of the Eastern Star among Colored People. Des Moines, IA: The Bystander Press, 1925.
Carnes, M.C. Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
Carnes, M.C. Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, eds. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Clawson, M.A. ‘Nineteenth-Century Women’s Auxiliaries and Fraternal Orders,’ Signs 12(1) (Autumn, 1986): 40–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/494296
Clawson, M.A. ‘Spectatorship and Masculinity in the Scottish Rite’, Theater of the Fraternity: Staging the Ritual Space of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, 1896–1929, ed C. Lance Brockman, 52–71. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
Clawson, M.A. ‘Masculinity, Consumption and the Transformation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the Turn-of-the-Century United States,’ Gender and History 19(1) (April, 2007): 101—21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2007.00466.x
Crocker, H.M. A Series of Letters on Free Masonry. Boston, MA: John Eliot, 1815.
Crocker, H.M. Observations on the Real Rights of Women, with Their Appropriate Duties, Agreeable to Scripture, Reason and Common Sense. Boston, MA: Printed for the author, 1818.
Davin, A. ‘Historical Masculinities: Regulation, Fantasy and Empire,’ Gender & History 9(1) (April, 1997): 135–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.00048
Ditz, T.L. ‘The New Men’s History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early American Gender History’. Gender and History 16(1) (April, 2004): 1–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0953-5233.2004.324_1.x
Douglas, A. The Feminization of American Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
Dumenil, L. Freemasonry and American Culture 1880–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Engle, Willis D. General History of the Order of the Eastern Star. Indianapolis, IN: Willis D. Engle, Publisher, 1901.
Foyster, E. ‘Recovering Lives from behind the Gloss of Ideology: Recent Histories of Elite and Middle-Class Women in England and America,’ Gender and History 12(1) (April 2000): 237–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.00180
Ginsberg, L.D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality and Politics in the Northeastern United States, 1820—1885. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985.
Gould, R. Freke. History of Freemasonry Throughout the World. 6 vols, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936.
Griffen, C. Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, eds. Mark C. Carnes and Clyde Griffen. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Kaufman, J. For the Common Good? American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kauffman, C.J. Faith and Fraternalism: The History of the Knights of Columbus 1882–1982. Philadelphia, PA: Harper and Row, 1982.
Kerber, L.K. ‘Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: the Rhetoric of Women’s History’. The Journal of American History 75(1) (June, 1988): 9–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1889653
Kite, G.W. Why is a Grand Patron. Boston, MA: Meador Publishing Co., 1934.
Lerner, G. ‘The Challenge of Women’s History’ in The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History, ed. Gerda Lerner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981, 168–80.
Mackey, A. An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences. Philadelphia, PA: Moss & Company, 1874 and Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1886.
Mathes, V. Sherer. ‘Nineteenth Century Women and Reform: The Women’s National Indian Association’. American Indian Quarterly 14(1) (Winter, 1990): 1–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1185003
Moore, W.D. Masonic Temples: Freemasonry, Ritual Architecture, and Masculine Archetypes. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
Morris, R. Freemasonry in the Holy Land, or Handmarks of Hiram’s Builders. New York: Masonic Publishing Company, 1872.
Nauman, G. ed. Centennial Book, 1867–1967, Grand Chapter of Michigan. Charlotte, MI: McGrath-DeFoe Co., 1967.
Parr, J. ‘Gender History and Historical Practice’. Canadian Historical Review 76(3) (1995): 354–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/CHR-076-03-03
Porter, J. To be Indian: the Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
Proceedings of the General Grand Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, Thirteenth Triennial Assembly. Chicago, IL: The Galbraith Press, 1911.
Rich, P. ‘Recovering a Rite: The Amaranth, Queen of the South, and Eastern Star,’ in Heredom: The Transition of The Scottish Rite Research Society, vol. 6, ed. S. Brent Morris. The Scottish Rite Research Society, Washington DC, 1997, accessed 2010: http://www.paulrich.net/publications/heredom_02.html
Scott, A. Firor. ‘On Seeing and Not Seeing: A Case of Historical Invisibility’. The Journal of American History 71(1) (June 1984): 7–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1899831
Scott, A. Firor.Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Skocpol, T., A. Liazos and M. Ganz. What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Stillson, H. L. The Official History and Literature of Odd Fellowship. Boston, MA: The Fraternity Publishing Company, 1898.
Summers, M. ‘Diasporic Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transnational Production of Black Middle-Class Masculinity’. Gender and History 15(3) (November 2003): 550–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0953-5233.2003.00320.x
Vaughan, W. The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States, 1826–1848. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.
Vickery, A. ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’. Historical Journal 36(2) (1993): 383–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X9300001X
Voorhis, H. Van Buren. The Eastern Star, Evolution from a Rite to an Order. Richmond, VA: Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, 1938.
Ward, H. M. The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society. London: UCL Press, 1999.
Welter, B. Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976.
Published
2014-12-30
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Sommers, S. (2014). Hidden in Plain Sight: The Order of the Eastern Star in the Historiography of American Women’s Associations. Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 4(1-2), 160–179. https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v4i1.160
