Grange membership continues to decline
Members of Buffalo Grange sing hymns during a recent meeting at the grange hall. Buffalo Grange has more members than any other Washington County grange. From left are Frank Baker, Eleanor Hunter, Will Teagarden, Marilyn Hickman and Bob Moore.
Buffalo Grange member Bob Moore collects sashes following the grange meeting in September.
Buffalo Grange members sing hymns at a recent meeting at the grange hall. In the foreground are Frank Baker and Marilyn Hickman. In back is Will Teagarden.
Buffalo Grange members take part in the “silver and green” ceremony, in which they pay their dues. From left are Bob Moore, Debbie Durila and Dorothy Weaver.
Carmichaels Grange officers sit in their designated seats during a grange meeting. In front, from left, Lena Davis and Evelyn Boord; center, Elaine Warholak; in back, Paula Stoneking and John Cirota.
Bob Moore remembers when families gathered at the Buffalo Grange for meetings, dinners, square dances and baking contests. The grange was the center of social life for many rural communities.
That’s not the case anymore. Granges, once a fundamental part of rural life, are on the decline, pushed to the wayside in an increasingly urban world.
“The grange is declining because the farming community is declining. I’ve been a member for going on 60 years now and I’ve seen the best of it and I see what it is now,” said Moore. “It used to be that every weekend in the fall, a different grange would have a grange fair and we’d go to all of them.”
Declining membership is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the grange.
Membership peaked in the 1950s with more than 90,000 members, but today, across Pennsylvania, the grange has 8,934 members in 245 local chapters. And more than 70 percent of them are 70 years old or older.
In Washington County, just six of the 26 granges have survived, and three grange halls remain.
At the Buffalo Grange, the largest in Washington County, 11 of the grange’s 73 active members are over 90 years old, and the oldest is 101 years old.
“I think right now we’re having difficulty with membership because the younger generation, people in their 30s, 40s and even 50s, are busy with the activities their kids are involved in,” said Amy Hickman, 43, master of the Buffalo Grange and a third-generation grange member. “The grange was originally a farm organization and women, especially, didn’t have other outlets. Going to the grange was community social time, a time to get together, cook, sew and do projects.”
As a result of the decline in membership, many of the grange halls throughout the state are going up for sale.
Locally, the Chestnut Ridge Grange has sold its share of the Chestnut Ridge Social Hall to the Lone Pine Volunteer Fire Department, which had built the hall with the grange and shared operating expenses.
The National Grange, founded in 1867 to allow farm families to have a voice in local and national politics, is the oldest agricultural organization in the country. Once a political force, the grange helped expand mail delivery to rural areas and made railroad freight rates affordable to farmers. But the grange has lost some clout in recent decades and has shifted toward supporting community service activities.
Among other charitable work, the Buffalo Grange supports a youth baseball team, sponsors a pulmonary hypertension walk, and donates to the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Pittsburgh and the American Cancer Society.
The grange has evolved to include nonfarm families and communities and has done away with some rituals.
But the rituals – including the presentation of the flag, the opening of the Bible, and regalia – remain important to grange members like Dorothy Weaver, 93.
“I like the floor work. I get really upset when I see sloppiness in the manner in which they conduct it,” said Weaver.
At the Carmichaels Grange in Greene County, membership has held steady at 35 members over the past couple of years. The grange rents out the hall for weddings, baby and wedding showers, Zumba classes and parties, and the fees help cover expenses to operate the hall.
“It’s a shame that we’ve lost so many members because it’s a good, clean, family-oriented organization,” said William Humbert, 87, master of the Carmichaels Grange. “My wife and I have been members for more than 40 years and we’ve had great times there.”
But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the grange’s death are exaggerated, and Hickman believes the 146-year-old organization hasn’t outlived its usefulness and is still
relevant.
“I’d say that today our focus is community service and helping people in need in our area,” said Hickman, “while still being a place of fellowship for our members.”