By Colleen Nelson
If you’re driving on State Rt 21 W, heading for Graysville, it’s hard to miss Harveys-Aleppo Grange, there on your right. There’s a hand painted quilt square on the wall by the front door and a flashy electronic sign by the road telling you what’s going on inside. Pretty 21st century for an agrarian fraternity that once had secret passwords, gatekeepers who actually guarded the door and neighbors who might wonder what the heck was going on! Meetings these days are open to the public and grange projects aren’t all about farming. Still, it’s a lesson in American history to remember that buried in that secretive past is the true story of farmers who helped build our nation by building a better life for themselves.
The Grange was founded by dire necessity – the Civil War had taken its toll. When President Andrew Johnson sent federal postal clerk Oliver Hudson Kelley to collect agricultural data in the war-ravaged South of 1867, letters from distressed farmers were flooding Washington. What Kelley found was isolated, poverty-stricken farms and communities being preyed on by carpetbaggers, swindlers and railroad monopolies. It was a sobering view of America going in the wrong direction, compounded by outdated farming methods, depleted soil and poor harvests.
Kelley, a Freemason with a farm of his own in Minnesota, returned to Washington and reported his dismal findings to William Saunders, a biologist with the fledgling Department of Agriculture. Together they came up with a great notion – to create an organization that would empower farmers with scientific know how and the political savvy to bring needed change from the grass roots to the halls of Congress.
Others joined the cause – including Kelley’s niece, Caroline Arabelle Hall. She played a key role in assuring women would be on equal footing with men and that the grange would help ease the social isolation of rural families. By December, Kelley and his associates opened the first grange hall in Washington D.C. Many more would follow.
Ritual and symbols to build a sense of belonging were borrowed from Freemasonry. Grange is the old English word for farm and officers were given titles to match – Master, Overseer, Gatekeeper, Steward of the Land. Women held offices as Lady Assistant Steward and embodiments of the harvest from Greek mythology – Ceres, Flora, Pomona. The Lecturer brought “education and edification” to meetings and the Chaplain brought farm families of many denominations together to serve the will of God. “Almighty Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, Giver of All Good we beseech Thee…”
Grange became the tool to help farmers plow through the corruption of post-Civil War America and harvest the benefits of collective bargaining and legislative reform. Collectively they fought for Rural Free Delivery, electricity and phone services to rural America. Today the lobbying continues, for Internet and broadband access, environmental protections for farmlands, water and air, and laws to insure citizens’ rights to fair governance.
Greene County got it first granges in 1874, in Waynesburg, Ruff Creek, Morgan Township and Jefferson. By the following year there were granges in Aleppo, Oak Forest, Spraggs and Rogersville. Farmers were working together even as backlash against their rising political power, especially in the Midwest, grew. But the jinni was out of the bottle – Kelley’s National Grange had fulfilled its mission – farmers were now educated and knew how to work together for the common good.
For whatever reason, those early granges in Greene County had disappeared by 1875, only to reappear in 1906 when a new hall opened in Jefferson with G.B. Waychoff as Master. Carmichaels got its charter in 1908 and by 1914 there were granges in Khuntown, Woodruff, Rogersville, Graysville, Pine Bank, Bristoria, Sycamore, Hoovers Run, Dunkard and East Franklin. Farmers were back in collective action.
Granges were aligned with the Agricultural Extension Program initiated by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. The act provided federal funding to the land grant colleges we have in every state today. There were agricultural agents in every county and kids had 4-H through county extension offices, to learn modern farming, from machinery repair and best soil practices to sewing, canning and raising livestock.
Today, as farming falls out of economic fashion in Greene County and rural families have more social choices available, there are only three granges left – East Franklin, Carmichaels and Harveys-Aleppo.
I joined the grange when I became a VISTA -Volunteers in Service to America – worker in 1990. I was impressed with grange history and with my neighbors who were members in good standing. From them, I would learn some of the ropes of rural living – like using a seed spreader on my horse pasture (Ray and Wanda Whipkey managed to point out – without laughing too hard – that I was cranking it backwards), learning old time recipes as my garden overflowed, getting involved in the lives of neighbors and experiencing the satisfaction of working with others and helping out where needed.
At Harveys-Aleppo Grange, our hall is put to good community use. We partner with Community Action – now Blueprints – to host the West Greene Community Center every Thursday. The public is invited in for meetings, Meet the Candidates nights, veterans appreciation programs, hunter safety trainings, craft classes, game nights, whatever we can dream up that we know our neighbors will enjoy. Every mid-July, we’re at the Jacktown Fair running the Bingo Hall, with all proceeds going to our West Greene Scholarship Program.
Master Mary Jane Dinsmore Kent and Secretary Treasurer Marty Dinsmore are back from the annual October State Convention with our seventh Distinguished Grange Award for our good works. Granges have a tradition of showing their stuff at local and county fairs so you can find our display next year in the exhibit hall at Jacktown and Greene County fairs. I’m sure that award will be part of our exhibit!
I’m not sure what the fair theme will be but I do know it will be part of the backdrop I’ve been in charge of painting ever since I joined Aleppo Grange in 1990.
Hope you get a chance to stop by, we’d love to have you. Our Holiday Meeting/Party is in December and our homemade cookies are the best. Just ask Taishea Welling Ross!