I was doing some casual internet research into local and regional history and came across this passage (about 3/4 of the way down the page here:
He is a justice of the peace for East Helena, and fraternally he is a member of the Pendo Society. Mr. King is a broad-minded, progressive, wide- awake man, a loyal, patriotic citizen and a genial ho.'.t. Throughout the state he is well known and highly esteemed.
So I did a quick Google Search for "Pendo Society" and came up with exactly 4 results, one being this same page and the others being junk. I widened the search a bit and finally found this article from 1898, which details the relatively young fraternity, describing it as essentially an insurance collective, paying out benefits for accident or death to its members. I was fascinated, as I had never even thought about the beginnings of health and life insurance being tied to so-called Masonic societies.
Can anyone give me more information on such orders, or even more specifically on the Order of Pendo itself? How far back do they go, and when did they start to become replaced by insurance companies?
I apologize if this question is rather unspecific, but I would love any information you can offer on the subject.
Most fraternal orders fulfill that function. I'm a member of one (the Odd Fellows), and it still pays out a death benefit of a few hundred dollars. There are other benefits, such as old age homes, that do not strictly fit the insurance model, and ongoing social events and community-building.
During social upheavals such as the California Gold Rush, these orders provided benefits to European-Americans who were at that point new immigrants. I would say that they were gradually replaced by insurance companies during the beginnings of the twentieth century in the Western US.