{"id":13918,"date":"2024-06-04T15:49:17","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T19:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=13918"},"modified":"2024-06-07T17:15:43","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T21:15:43","slug":"the-alta-friendly-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2024\/06\/the-alta-friendly-society\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alta Friendly Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Who knows the future,” asked Marcus F. Pitts, superintendent of the Alta Friendly Society in the 1910 edition of The Philadelphia Colored Directory: A Handbook of the Religious, Social, Political, Professional, Business and other Activities of the Negroes of Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/em> “Protection is needed,” he warned, inviting potential members to stop by “the largest and strongest beneficial organization in Pennsylvania” in its new headquarters at 1622 Arch Street.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Alta Friendly Society, 1622 Arch Street August 1, 1912 (PhillyHistory.org). This building, designed by Charles L. Hoffman, architect,  replaced earlier quarters at 914 Walnut Street. In 1912, the Society paid out more than $124,000 for sick and accident claims and more than $27,000 for death claims.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What\u2019s a Friendly Society? For that, \u201cwe shall have to go back some three hundred years in our search for the foundation from which Forestry, Oddfellowship, Shepherdry, Druidism, &c.” to get a handle on those institutions “whose vacant niches the modern Friendly Societies fill,\u201d explained the author of a history of the movement. The year that history rolled off the presses – 1886 – was about the same time sibling societies were thriving throughout Britain and getting a small foothold in the United States. In Philadelphia, the Fidelity Mutual Aid Association went so far as to change its name to the historically venerable, if opaque and appealingly quirky Alta Friendly Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

British Prime Minister William Gladstone explained Friendly Societies plainly: \u201cYou go into these societies to seek your own good through the good of others.\u201d They originated in Great Britain and hundreds more \u201cscattered throughout the world\u201d assuring that subscribers would receive aid when they encountered illness, death, birth, fires, or unemployment. Philadelphia had seen the likes of Friendly Societies as early as the 1790s when, a full century earlier, the African Friendly Society of St. Thomas\u2019s issued certificates<\/a> for members. But they were few and far between.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Advertisement from Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Official Pictorial and Descriptive Souvenir Book of the Historical Pageant, October Seventh to Twelfth<\/em>, 1912<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Advertisement in The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, October 3, 1911<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

(Sources: John Frome Wilkinson, The Friendly Society Movement: its origin, rise, and growth; its social, moral, and educational influences; the affiliated orders<\/em> (London: Longmans, Green, 1886)<\/a>; The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, January 25, 1887, “The Friendly Society Movement; “Alta Friendly Society,” January 20, 1906; The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, Saturday, January 20, 1906; The Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide<\/em>, vol. 21, 1906; The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, October 4, 1934, “Girard’s Talk of the Day.”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Who knows the future,” asked Marcus F. Pitts, superintendent of the Alta Friendly Society in the 1910 edition of The Philadelphia Colored Directory: A Handbook of the Religious, Social, Political, Professional, Business and other Activities of the Negroes of Philadelphia. “Protection is needed,” he warned, inviting potential members to stop by “the largest and strongest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}