Brotherhood of American Yeomen
The Brotherhood of American Yeomen, founded in 1897, was one of a vast number of
fraternal benefit assessment societies established toward the end of the 19th
century. The lodges were called Homesteads, and there was a strong Christian
element to the rituals and ceremonies, which also praised the Magna Carta and
the English language. The Homesteaders was a result of a schism within the
Yeomen.
In 1917, the Yeomen changed its financial footing to assure greater stability,
and in 1931it transformed itself into the Mutual Life Insurance Company. The
order is now extinct.
The order has one degree, the initiation. The ritual
is placed in the time of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. At the King's court a candidate
is initiated in the spirit of knighthood and the themes of the order: Wisdom,
Charity and Protection.
A split-off of this group was the Homesteaders.