ion to do as their
grandfathers had done, their antiquated methods of agriculture, and,
most of all, their apathy. Pondering on this attitude, Kelley decided
that it was fostered if not caused by the lack of social opportunities
which made the existence of the farmer such a drear monotony that he
became practically incapable of changing his outlook on life or his
attitude toward his work.

Being essentially a man of action, Kelley did not stop with the mere
observation of these evils but cast about to find a remedy. In doing
so, he came to the conclusion that a national secret order of farmers
resembling the Masonic order, of which he was a member, might serve
to bind the farmers together for purposes of social and intellectual
advancement. After he returned from the South, Kelley discussed the plan
in Boston with his niece, Miss Carrie Hall, who argued quite sensibly
that women should be admitted to full membership in the order, if it was
to accomplish the desired ends. Kelley accepted her suggestion and went
West to spend the summer in farming and dreaming of his project. The
next year found him again in Washington, but this time as a clerk in the
Post Office Department.

During the summer and fall of 1867 Kelley interested some of his
associates in his scheme. As a result seven men--"one fruit grower
and six government clerks, equally distributed among the Post Office,
Treasury, and Agricultural Departments"--are usually recognized as the
founders of the Patrons of Husbandry, or, as the order is more commonly
called, the Grange. These men, all of whom but one had been born
on farms, were O. H. Kelley and W. M. Ireland of the Post Office
Department, William Saunders and the Reverend A. B. Grosh of the
Agricultural Bureau, the Reverend John Trimble and J. R. Thompson of
the Treasury Department, and F. M. McDowell, a pomologist of Wayne,
New York. Kelley and Ireland planned a ritual for the society; Saunders
interested a few farmers at a meeting of the United States Pomological
Society in St. Louis in August, and secured the cooperation of McDowell;
the other men helped these four in corresponding with interested farmers
and in perfecting the ritual. On December 4, 1867, having framed
a constitution and adopted the motto Esto perpetua, they met and
constituted themselves the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry.
Saunders was to be Master; Thompson, Lecturer; Ireland, Treasurer; and
Kelley, Secretary.

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