at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85]

[Footnote 83:  T.D.  Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times (New York, 1909), p. 6.]

[Footnote 84:  Ibid., pp. 68, 69.]

[Footnote 85:  Niles’ Register, XLIX, 72.]

The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New Orleans, founded in 1860.  Its motto was “Love, Union, Peace”; its officers were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month.  Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow members, “to go about once in a while and see one another in love,” and to wear the society’s regalia on occasion.  Any member in three months’ arrears of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit.  It was the duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the official mother to delegate members for the nursing.  The secretary was to see to the washing of the sick member’s clothes and pay for the work from the lodge’s funds, as well as the doctor’s fees.  The marshal was to have charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members as might be required.  He might fee the officiating minister to the extent of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule.  Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify that the lodge was more funereal than festive.  A negro burial was as sociable as an Irish wake.

[Footnote 86:  The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of Orleans, organised July 22, 1860:  Love, Union, Peace (Caption).]