Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library

Independent Order of Odd Fellows Members, Belfast Lodge No. 830, Belfast, New York
1900-1920
Todd
USA: New York, Belfast
Photograph on paper mounted on card
image: 10-3/4"h x 14"w; sheet: 14"h x 17"w
Museum Purchase
2015.052

Black and white group photograph of Independent Order of Odd Fellows members. Image shows fifteen men in two rows, the front row is seated. The men wear Odd Fellows collars and stand in front of curtain from which hands a banner that reads "BELFAST / LODGE / 830." On either side of the curtain a framed portrait of a man in a hat with an illegible description except for "93 years old." The framed item on the other side of the curtain is a framed charter for Belfast Lodge No. 830 issued by the New Yorkm Odd Fellows Grand Lodge. The photograph is signed at lower proper left corner "Todd." The photograph is mounted on dark gray cardboard.

This image captures members of Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge No. 830 of Belfast, New York, gathered in their meeting room. The men in the picture wear decorated collars over their street clothes. The sides of the collars are joined by a chain of three links. In Odd Fellowship, three links represent the group’s most important motto, “Friendship, Love, and Truth.” The links form what one manual described as “a chain which binds the members of our order together in dearest union.”