GERMAN-TEXAN-L Archives

Archiver > GERMAN-TEXAN > 2008-07 > 1215360567


From: "SarahReveley" <>
Subject: [GERMAN-TEXAN] July 6 1861
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 11:09:27 -0500


Order of the Sons of Hermann founded

On this day in 1861, the Order of the Sons of Hermann in the State of Texas
was founded in San Antonio. It was the largest fraternal insurance benefit
society headquartered in Texas, with a membership of 80,000 in 161 lodges in
1994. Until 1920, the Texas order was part of a national order of the Sons
of Hermann. In 1861 two representatives of the national grand lodge came to
San Antonio to organize the first Hermann Sons lodge in Texas, Harmonia
Lodge No. 1. It was natural for the organization to find fertile soil in San
Antonio, since many Germans had come to the area after 1845. The Texas grand
lodge, consisting of Harmonia Lodge of San Antonio and seven other newly
formed lodges in Austin, Taylor, Temple, Waco, La Grange, Brenham, and
Houston, was formed in 1890. These eight lodges had a total of 242 members.
Within a year ninety-two more lodges were formed. In 1896 the first sister
lodge, exclusively for women, was dedicated at Sherman. Since 1916 the order
has maintained a retirement home at Comfort, Texas. In 1920 the first mixed
lodge for both men and women was established in San Antonio. In that year
the Order of the Sons of Hermann in Texas, which by then was financially
stronger and had more members than all of the lodges in the rest of the
United States combined, broke away from the national order. Since 1954 it
has operated its own summer youth camps for junior members on its
campgrounds in Comfort. Local lodges offer scholarship opportunities to the
youth in their communities. Originally all of the members were of German
extraction, but by 1965 only about half were, and by 1994 membership was
open to all ethnic groups.
















Copyright © The Texas State Historical Association. All rights reserved.
You are receiving this message because is a
subscriber to the Texas Day by Day e-mail service.
To unsubscribe or to change preferences, visit
http://www.tshaonline.org/register/.
Send comments to

This thread: