At 03:07 AM 3/17/98 EST, you wrote: >I just found out my Grt Grandmother was a member in "The Eastern Star"! Does >anyone have any idea as to what kind of group or organization it was and if it >was located soley out of Rockland Co. Is there any text I can read up on the >organization? > It's national. I searched on AltaVista and Yahoo and came up with: "The Order of the Eastern Star is an adoptive rite of Freemasonry with teachings based on the Bible and objectives that are charitable and benevolent. The founder of OES was Dr. Robert Morris, a lawyer and educator from Boston, Massachusetts, who was a Master Mason and Past Grand Master of Kentucky. Dr. Morris intended his creation to become a female branch of Freemasonry, but he failed to overcome the great opposition this idea engendered. After his first published ritual in 1849-50, he became associated with Robert Macoy who wrote and published a ritual based on Morris' in 1867. The first Grand Chapter was organized in Michigan in the same year. (There is evidence for an organization of the same name founded variously in 1788 or 1793, but this group was defunct by 1867.) Subordinate (local) chapters operate under charter from state level grand chapters which are responsible to the General Grand Chapter at the International Eastern Star temple in Washington, D.C." See http://www.msstate.edu/listarchives/afrigeneas/199702/msg00328.html for more history, and a good FAQ at http://www.oescal.org/whatisit.htm --Bruce (Bruce Hamilton, Redondo Beach, CA) bhami@netcom.com (preferred) bhami@hesp.es.xerox.com --day 310-333-3538 --day http://home.earthlink.net/~bhami/