Fraternal Brotherhood

[1] Unlike most such societies in that era, it accepted men and women as members on an equal footing.

[1][2] In March 1914, Emma R. Neidig was elected as its Supreme President, the first woman to head such a mixed-gender fraternal organization.

Neidig had been Supreme Vice President of the organization since 1898, two years after its founding in 1896 in Los Angeles, California.

[1] The group was largely a mutual insurance society, described by the Los Angeles Herald in 1908 as "one of the most popular and trustworthy orders in the country" with "about 40,000 members" and with offices on Figueroa Street at the corner of Lincoln in Los Angeles.

Founded in 1906 by two officers who were forced to resign from the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, in 1923, it had transformed from a fraternal organization to just a mutual insurance group.