My Genealogy Hound

John Jordan Upchurch (deceased) was the founder of the fraternity known as the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and was born in Franklin County, N. C., March 26, 1820. His parents were John and Elizabeth (Hill) Upchurch, also of Franklin County, N. C., the former of whom died when John Jordan was but two years of age. The latter was employed as a clerk at the age of twelve years, and clerking, farming, and running a sawmill furnished him employment until 1841, when he married Angelina Green, and soon after began keeping hotel at Raleigh, N. C., where it is said he conducted the first temperance house south of Mason and Dixon’s line. This venture, however, proved unprofitable; but, possessing the happy faculty of always finding something to do, Mr. Upchurch was successful as an engraver, a railroad agent, horse-tamer, locomotive engineer and master mechanic. A strike in 1864 impressed him with the injustice done to both capital and labor by the existing unions, and he began to study principles that should underlie a union benefiting both. In 1868 was created the noble order of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, of which Mr. Upchurch was the honored father. In 1873 he located in Steelville, where his family still reside. During the latter years of his life he visited, by invitation, Grand Lodges from the Pacific slope to the Atlantic coast, and everywhere was most cordially met with expressions of highest esteem. Upon his visit to Cincinnati, Ohio, he was presented with a gold medal, bearing the emblems of the order, anchor and shield, the former set in diamonds, and, on the reverse side, engraved, “Presented to J. J. Upchurch, P. S. M. W., Father of the A. O. U. W., by the members of the Supreme Lodge, 1882.” Mr. Upchurch died in 1887, deeply mourned by his widow and five living children. Of his sons, Theodore F., a machinist, served nearly a year in the late war, in Company K, One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, and married Sarah Millspaugh, by whom he has one daughter; John C., a carpenter, married Emma Wheeling, and has one son; William A., an undertaker, wedded Olivia E. Adair, and has two sons; Horace C. is also a carpenter, and Curtis L. is a barber. Two of the boys, John C. and William A. are members of the A. O. U. W., and all are Democrats in politics.