WAYNE COUNTY, PA — One of the things I like about living in rural Northeastern PA is the myriad of back roads just waiting for a leisurely drive to explore the landscapes. Seeing the many farms still in existence and imagining how those farmers worked the land and raised their families with little money and many time demands on their lives is amazing.

Tucked into the landscape are old buildings proclaiming their existence as grange halls. It had always been in the back of my mind to explore the history of the buildings and the organization that supported them. This summer I decided to investigate. 

An arduous process

My first stop was the Wayne County Historical  Society in Honesdale, where I met with Carol Dunn, the executive director. She helped by pulling what little information was available in their cataloged collection before my arrival. She said that it is likely that there is more information in other works in their collection but it had not been included in an indexed manner, requiring many hours of research to find references to the county’s Granges.

I also visited Bernadine Lennon at the Greene-Dreher Historical Society in the southern end of Wayne County at South Sterling. She shared an article that she had written for their newsletter The Greene Hills of Home titled “The Grange Served the Community Well.”

My last visit was to the Equinunk Historical Society in the northern tier, where I met with Carol Ann MacMaster. There I photographed a few pages from “Calkins Consolidated Before and  After 1923-1963” by Betty Sheard, which referenced Labor Grange in Calkins.

Reaching out to others

These visits were followed by phone calls to the Forest City Historical Society and the Waymart Historical Society as well as other individuals, and many emails. I had fallen into a rabbit hole with no end in sight. I went online to the PA State Grange website and was directed by an email from the state Grange historian on how to navigate through their pages to find the list of active and non-active granges in the state. Now I was getting somewhere!

From the list of issued charters from the PA State Grange I learned that there were 35 subordinate granges chartered by the PA State Grange in Wayne County. Today, there are three that are still active: Enterprise Grange in Torrey,  Beech Grove Grange in Honesdale and Unity Grange in Galilee. With the information I had assembled, I turned my focus to locating and photographing the remaining grange halls within Wayne County.

Just what is a Grange?

From the PA Grange website: “The Grange (Patrons of Husbandry) is a fraternal family organization dedicated to the betterment of the American way of life through community service, education, legislation and fellowship. The Grange includes members of all ages and specifically has programs for juniors (ages 5-14), youth (ages 14-23) and young adults (ages 23-35). The Grange represents approximately 5,440 Pennsylvanians across the Commonwealth. It is the oldest agricultural and rural advocacy organization of its kind in the United States. The National Grange, representing about 140,000  members, began in 1867 and the PA State Grange was chartered in 1873.”

Its motto is “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” Its mission is to support the local Granges to help members grow as individuals, unify their communities and create opportunity through legislation and community service.

Grange membership is open to all, regardless of race, religious beliefs, political affiliations or gender. The organization’s secret and ritualistic decorum at its meetings was based on Masonic Lodge rituals. 

Today’s meetings have evolved a bit and the secret password to enter meetings has vanished. You could say that it is a progressive organization, given that it offered women roles in holding offices and voting well before this was the norm in everyday U.S. politics. In fact some of the ritualistic roles specifically were created to be filled by women.

So you now know that the Grange is steeped in history and that it is also surviving, despite the decline in the number of family farms across the country. It is still serving its mission for today and into the future. 

The number of people who are now living who remember things about the Granges of the past are a treasure, and any stories that they can share with the River Reporter would be most welcome.

 Any Grange artifacts or historical documents in residents’ possession would be welcomed with open arms at any of the local historical societies mentioned above for safekeeping.

Amazingly, I was able to find and photograph 14 buildings that served as Grange Halls in the past, including the three Granges that are still active in Wayne County. You will find the GPS coordinates in the accompanying list. I’m not 100 percent sure that there are not a couple more up in the northern sections of the county around Preston Township and elsewhere. If I do find them, I will update the information at a later date. 

Also of note—three of the Granges without photos were chartered in locations no longer included on current maps of the county: Inglehart (near Welcome Lake), Jonestown and Waynesville.

Some of the photographed buildings are vacant, while some are works in progress of preservation, and others have been transformed into private residences or business ventures. On my visit to the Hickory Grange, I was lucky to be there when the building was open and I was allowed to take some photos of the interior with my phone. The woodwork is extraordinary. I learned that there have been some efforts to get the building put onto the National Register of Historic Buildings in the hope that it would create an avenue to secure funding to help further stabilize the leaky roof before too much damage is done by the weather.

The Indian Orchard Grange Hall has been purchased by Brenda Krehul and her daughter Andrea Janssen Jana, the former owners of the Ascalona Campground in Barryville, NY. Work has begun to completely restore the building, which houses an antique shop, and the outside grounds will be available for flea market tables, food trucks and craft vendors. They also supplied some photos of the inside restoration.

In conclusion, I must say that while driving around looking for these locations, I realized that Wayne County is bigger than I thought! And remember those back roads I began this article with? I actually added some to the list of roads least traveled, realizing that I have yet to be on them all.