Posted on by jhonora

Supreme Chancellors, Knights of Pythias

Supreme Chancellors of the Knights of Pythias of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia

Supreme Chancellor Dr. Elias Alexander Williams, died 28 January 1932 in Brooklyn, New York, and buried in Evergreens Cemetery.

Thomas W. Stringer – Vicksburg, Mississippi (1883-1887)
Elias Alexander Williams – New Orleans, Louisiana (1887-1895)
James C. Ross – Savannah, Georgia (1895-1899)
Samuel W. Starks – Charleston, West Virginia (1899-1908)
Smith Wendell Green – New Orleans, Louisiana (1908-1935)
Samuel Asbury Thompson Watkins – Chicago, Illinois (1935-1940)
Oscar William Adams – Birmingham, Alabama (1940-1946)
Walter Daniel Crawley – Chicago, Illinois (1946-1947)
Richard Arthur Hester – Dallas, Texas (1947-1983)
Benjamin Lawson Hooks – Memphis, Tennessee (1983-2009)
Donald W. Austin – Davenport, Iowa (2009-2015)
Clarence Monette – Port St. Joe, Florida (2015-Present)

Posted on by jhonora

National Benefit Life Insurance Company

Though not a fraternal organization, many national fraternal leaders, as well as educators and businessmen, were added to the board of the National Benefit Life Insurance Company just before its collapse due to growing too rapidly. The company was founded as a mutual aid association by Georgia native Samuel Wilson Rutherford in 1898. It soon grew to rival North Carolina Mutual and Atlanta Life. For more on its growth and collapse, see here: The Rise and Fall of Samuel Rutherford’s National Benefit Life Insurance Company.

Included in the photograph are businessmen Constant C. Dejoie of New Orleans and Robert “Bob” Church of Memphis; fraternal leaders J. Finley Wilson and William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald; educator Robert R. Moton; attorneys William LePré Houston and his son Charles Hamilton Houston; and many others. (Photo: The Louisiana Weekly (New Orleans), 16 May 1931.)