John Jordan Upchurch, Founder of the AOUW
"Father"[1] John Jordan Upchurch was the founder of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the earliest fraternal insurance group in the United States of America.
Upchurch was born in North Carolina. His father was murdered when Upchurch was only five, and at the age of nine he was sent to his grandfather's to be raised and attend school. At 18, he married Miss Angelina Green.
From age fourteen on, he took a surprising number of careers: store roustabout, farmer, millwright, carpenter, hotel manager, freight agent, horse-trader, mill superintendent, oil company superintendent, undertaker, lumber dealer, invented a harrow, and railroad worker. At the time of his death, January 9, 1887, he was a dealer in farm implements.<ref>History of Life Insurance [In Its Formative Years], O'Donnell, Terence. American Conservation Company, Chicago IL. 1936.
While working for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad in Meadville, PA, following the dissolution of a different union-focused fraternal brotherhood, Upchurch designed the Ancient Order of United Workmen as a means for protecting one's family against catastrophic harm caused by the death of the breadwinner.
References and Notes
- ↑ "Father" was often used as a familiar term to describe a reverence for the individual, such as in the quasi-religious fraternal groups that also took the terms "brother" and "sister" as descriptors of fellows
