Loudoun’s Odd Fellows: Finding Fellowship and Purpose

If you have ever attended an event at the Loudoun Museum, chances are you sat upstairs in the gracious, high-ceilinged Odd Fellows Hall. You might even have noticed the sign in the corner that reads, “Loudoun Lodge No. 26, I.O.O.F. Meets Every Friday, 8 pm.” The museum holds about a dozen artifacts relating to this Lodge, which was active from 1845 to about 2010.[1] The Lodge met in this room until 1981, when it sold the building to the Town of Leesburg for the nominal price of $10.[2] The museum’s objects shed light on the period in the United States known as the Golden Age of Fraternalism (ca. 1870 to 1930), when groups such as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F., the largest), the Freemasons, the Elks, and the Shriners played an important role caring for the sick and indigent through philanthropy and what we recognize today as insurance programs.

Wooden sign, early 1900s. An Encampment is a higher body of the I.O.O.F., allowing members to pursue advanced teachings and ranks (degrees). (Loudoun Museum)

Founding Principles

The Odd Fellows trace their roots to early 18th-century England. By some accounts, the society got its name because its promotion of social unity, fellowship, and mutual aid was unusual, or “odd,” for the time. By other accounts, the name derives from the fact that its members largely worked in trades that were not represented at the time by guilds. These holders of “odd” jobs embraced their diversity and banded together in geographically based lodges. The American I.O.O.F. was established in Baltimore in 1819 and became fully independent of the British organization in 1842.[3]

Like the Freemasons and other fraternal organizations, the Odd Fellows adopted secret rituals, symbols, and ranks that instilled the society’s core principles of Friendship, Love, and Truth. They also served to break down social and economic distinctions among members and to deepen their commitment to the society’s faith-based values. In1851 the I.O.O.F. became the first fraternal organization to establish a women’s auxiliary, called the Rebekahs, who met separately from the men but embraced the same principles.[4]

Benefits and Obligations

Lodge No. 26 was one of at least six I.O.O.F. lodges in Loudoun County, and the longest running.[5] Its records attest to the Odd Fellows’ mission to “visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphans,” important causes at a time when disease and early death were frequent.[6] According to the Lodge’s 1906 bylaws, “brothers” in good standing were entitled to receive $3 (roughly $105 today) for every week of illness or disability, if approved by the “sick committee.” When a member died, the Lodge paid $30 to defray burial expenses, and it assessed an extra 50 cents per member for his widow and any child under age 12. Members were expected to visit fellow brothers who fell ill, with strict rules governing when and how often to visit and fines imposed on members who missed their turn.[7] Members also attended Lodge brothers’ funerals, typically wearing the Order’s uniform and regalia and often serving as pallbearers.

To cover expenses, the Lodge charged initiation fees and membership dues. Like health and life insurance premiums today, initiation fees increased with age. Applicants younger than 35 paid $4, while applicants older than 35 paid $8, and applicants older than 45 were charged a whopping $10. At a time when the average life expectancy for men in the United States was about 50,[8] no one older than 50 was admitted to the Lodge unless voted on unanimously. Dues amounted to $4 per year, paid quarterly. Members could be booted out if they fell behind in their dues. [9]

The Lodge’s logbook, covering July 1906 to February 1907, shows that weekly meetings began with an opening ceremony and roll call, featured reports by various committees, and ended with a closing service. Some matters were mundane. An entry from December 14, 1906 noted that the “stove pipe committee” continued its work, followed on January 4, 1907 by the notation that the “stove pipe committee reported and was discharged.” What, exactly, the stove pipe issue was and how it was resolved remain a mystery.[10] 

Other matters were weightier. On February 1, 1907, Lodge members discussed a letter from a higher body of the I.O.O.F. seeking contributions for an orphanage elsewhere in Virginia. The decision was not recorded, but other records indicate the Lodge donated some $1,000 (about $18,500 today) to various charitable causes between 1922 and 1927.[11]

Postcard of Odd Fellows’ Orphans Home in Lynchburg, VA, ca. 1900. Between 1872 and 1927, the I.O.O.F. opened more than 60 orphanages around the country. Many also provided housing for the elderly poor.[12]

African American Counterpart

For all the Odd Fellows’ focus on fellowship and unity, one social barrier was insurmountable: race. African Americans were not admitted as members until 1971, when the I.O.O.F. changed its constitution. Instead, an African American man in 1843 petitioned the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows (G.U.O.O.F) in Britain to form an all-Black lodge in the United States. Once chartered, that lodge then sponsored additional lodges for Black men in the United States. From 1868 to 1886, a time of increased racial pride and self-advocacy among African Americans, membership in the G.U.O.O.F. increased tenfold, to 36,853. A decade later, the society had 155,537 members,[13] becoming the second-largest Black fraternal organization in the country, after the Prince Hall Freemasons.

In Loudoun County, the G.U.O.O.F. was the largest of several African American fraternal and mutual aid societies formed after Emancipation, with seven lodges established between 1873 and 1900.[14] As with the white I.O.O.F., membership offered fellowship and life, disability, and burial insurance. It also gave members prestige and standing in the Black community and offered leadership opportunities at a time of harsh racial discrimination.[15] A member of the all-Black Oak Grove Lodge in eastern Loudoun, for example, served on one of the G.U.O.O.F.’s national committees in 1908.[16] The G.U.O.O.F. had a women’s auxiliary known as the Household of Ruth, which extended benefits to women but was headed by a male.[17]

Quarterly circulars for the African American G.U.O.O.F. listed new lodges, regulations, and accounts received. They also contained the quarterly passwords for all lodges and a separate one for travelers. These travelers’ passwords were particularly important for African American men seeking shelter in the segregated South.[18] (gift, Gloria Lipscomb, Loudoun Museum)

In Leesburg, the African American Odd Fellows Hall was located just a few blocks from the white Odd Fellows Hall, at 5 Royal Street SE. Members of Odd Fellows Lodge 1664 built the structure in 1899 and met on the second floor. They opened the space to Black chapters of the Freemasons, the Good Samaritans, and the American Legion, among others. The first floor served as a community meeting place and venue for dances, parties, and plays; in 1939, a Black-owned restaurant opened here.[19]  The Odd Fellows sold the building in 1981.[20]

The African American Odd Fellows Hall and the Black-owned Ideal Restaurant shared this building at 5 Royal Street SE, Leesburg, seen here ca. 1950. Odd Fellows Halls were usually located on an upper floor to make it difficult for nonmembers to observe the proceedings.[21] (courtesy, Thomas Balch Library)

Peak and Decline

The Golden Age of Fraternalism reached its peak in the United States in the 1920s. During this heyday, Loudoun Lodge No. 26 hosted the annual convention of the Northern Virginia Associations of Odd Fellows and Rebekahs in 1923, an event anticipated to bring 4,000 to 5,000 participants to Leesburg. The Town rolled out the red carpet and the bunting, and the local Rebekah lodge and Parent Teacher Association served lunch on the courthouse lawn.[22] Local dignitaries, including Mayor Charles Harrison and the president of the Leesburg Chamber of Commerce, gave speeches and commended Lodge No. 26 for bringing this prestigious (and lucrative) event to the Town.[23] By 1927, membership in Lodge No. 26 had grown from the initial five to 120, an impressive figure considering that Leesburg’s white, adult male population numbered only about 300 in 1920.[24]

The Great Depression accelerated the decline of America’s fraternal and mutual aid societies. Between 1920 and 1930, the I.O.O.F. in the United States lost almost one-quarter of its members.[25] The ensuing years of high unemployment made it hard for members to afford dues, uniforms, and regalia, and the rise of government programs such as Social Security largely supplanted the mission of these organizations. That Loudoun Lodge No. 26 remained active into the 21st century attests to the sense of fellowship and purpose its members found there.

For African Americans in Loudoun, decades of high outmigration made it hard to sustain the county’s network of Black fraternal and mutual aid societies. The 1900s and 1920s saw the steepest declines in the county’s Black population, by 11 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively. [26] The stone marker in front of the former Odd Fellows Hall on Royal Street is one of the few reminders of these remarkable social organizations.

Stone marker in front of 5 Royal Street SE, Leesburg. The building dates to 1899, but the Lodge was founded in 1875.[27] (Photo by the author)

If you or someone you know were a member of one of Loudoun’s Odd Fellows lodges, we hope you’ll contact the Loudoun Museum and share your story.

[1] July 2, 2025 email to author from Nick Curry, Chairman, Publicity and Social Media Committee, Grand Lodge of Virginia, I.O.O.F., citing History of Odd Fellowship in Virginia (1927), http://www.oddfellowsvirginia.org.

[2]Loudoun County Deed Book, 792:169.

[3] Independent Order of Odd Fellows: The Sovereign Grand Lodge, https://odd-fellows.org/about/our-mission/, accessed August 31, 2025.

[4] Ibid.

[5] July 2, 2025 email to author from Nick Curry, Chairman, Publicity and Social Media Committee, Grand Lodge of Virginia, I.O.O.F., http://www.oddfellowsvirginia.org.

[6] Independent Order of Odd Fellows: The Sovereign Grand Lodge, https://odd-fellows.org/history/wildeys-odd-fellowship/, accessed August 31, 2025.

[7] Collection record 2001.096, “Booklet of By-laws for Loudoun Lodge No. 26 of the Odd Fellows.” Loudoun Museum, Leesburg, VA.

[8] “United States Life Tables, 2018,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: National Vital Statistical Reports, Vol. 69, Number 12, November 17, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/nvsr69-12-508.pdf, accessed July 20, 2025.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/nvsr69-12-508.pdf.

[9] Collection record 2001.096, “Booklet of By-laws for Loudoun Lodge No. 26 of the Odd Fellows.” Loudoun Museum, Leesburg, VA.

[10] Collection record 2001.090, “Minute Book for Lodge No. 26 of the Odd Fellows.” Loudoun Museum, Leesburg, VA.

[11] July 2, 2025 email to author from Nick Curry, Chairman, Publicity and Social Media Committee, Grand Lodge of Virginia, I.O.O.F., http://www.oddfellowsvirginia.org.

[12] Independent Order of Odd Fellows: Grand Lodge of Texas, https://www.iooftx.org/history-ioof-texas, accessed October 31, 2025.

[13] Michael Barga, “Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America,” undated. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/grand-united-order-of-odd-fellows-in-america/, accessed August 31, 2025.

[14] Betty L. Morefield, “Mutual Aid Societies.” Leesburg, VA: Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20121104185127/http://www.balchfriends.org/Glimpse/MutualAid.htm

[15] Deborah A. Lee, “An Introduction to Loudoun County’s African American Communities,” 2004. https://www.loudounhistory.org/african-american-communities/.

[16] Barbara Glakas, “Remembering Herndon’s History: The Odd Fellows Lodge,” February 3, 2023. https://patch.com/virginia/herndon/remembering-herndons-history-odd-fellows-lodge-oak-grove.

[17] Courage, My Soul: Historic African American Churches and Mutual Aid Societies and Exhibition at the Loudoun Museum, February 13-April 30, 2000. Leesburg, VA: Loudoun Museum, 2000, p. 35.

[18] Ibid., p. 37.

[19] Deborah Fitts, “5 Royal: Center of Black Life,” Loudoun Times-Mirror, October 16, 2002, and Deborah A. Lee, African American Heritage Trail, Leesburg, Virginia. Leesburg, VA: The Loudoun Museum and the Black History Committee of the Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2002.

[20] Loudoun County Deed Book, 790:34. Coincidentally, the African American Odd Fellows Hall was sold one month before the white I.O.O.F. Hall. Unlike the whites-only hall, the all-Black hall fetched a market price of $40,750, even though it was located in a less central part of town.

[21] Loudoun Museum, Courage, My Soul, p. 37.

[22] “Odd Fellows Will Convene Here Tomorrow,” Loudoun Times, October 4, 1923, p. 1.

[23] “Odd Fellows’ Meeting Draws Large Crowd,” Loudoun Times, October 11, 1923, p. 1.

[24] Author’s calculation based on Leesburg’s total population in 1920 of 1,545, and white males aged 21 and older accounting for 18.9 percent of Virginia’s total population. US Bureau of the Census, 14th Census of the United States, State Compendium, Virginia: Statistics of Population, Occupation, Agriculture, Manufactures, and Mines and Quarries for the State, Counties, and Cities, 1925; 1927 membership figure from July 2, 2025 email to author from Nick Curry, Chairman, Publicity and Social Media Committee, Grand Lodge of Virginia, I.O.O.F, http://www.oddfellowsvirginia.org.

[25] Independent Order of Odd Fellows: The Sovereign Grand Lodge, https://odd-fellows.org/history/wildeys-odd-fellowship/, accessed August 31, 2025.

[26] For more on Black outmigration from Loudoun County, see Caroline O’Connell, “From Loudoun to Montclair: One Woman’s Experience of the Great Migration,” July 19, 2024. https://www.loudounmuseum.org/post/from-loudoun-to-montclair-one-woman-s-experience-of-the-great-migration.

[27] Loudoun Museum, Courage, My Soul, p. 35.