Old Odd Fellows Plot
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows
They were an order that inscribed upon their banners, “Visit the sick, relieve the distressed, and bury the dead.”
“To the benevolent – If there is any of that commodity called charity in this community, we earnestly call upon those possessing it to exercise it forthwith.”
So went out the plea to the Brotherhood in an editorial appeal that appeared in the Placer Times, August 18, 1849.
General Albert V. Winn was the first to move in this direction, summoning his brother members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows at large to assemble under most extraordinary circumstances and form an association for the relief of the sick, the distressed, and to bury the dead. The call was answered and they came, forming the first Odd Fellows Association in Sacramento on August 24, 1849. And that their children’s children might point with pride, this was the first organized effort for dispensing relief and humanity to the sick and dying in that darkest hour of Sacramento history.
The Odd Fellows Plot is the largest privately owned section in the City Cemetery, the Order having initially purchased 59 lots from the Board of Trustees of the City Cemetery in May of 1861, a section south of Old Masonic, north of Olive Avenue, with laurel and cedar forming the west and east boundaries. The I.O.O.F made further purchases in 1868 and 1878, increasing the Order’s lot holdings to well over 500, stretching almost the entire length of the cemetery.
Courtesy hmdb.org
