Hickory Junior Order Working to Place Orphanage in Hickory, Dec. 19, 1922

Juniors Will Work for Orphan Asylum. . . Hickory Council Names Committee to Push Matter and Hearty Cooperation Is Assured—Would be Branch of National Home—Meeting Arranged to Take Up Question in February

Piedmont council No. 43, Junior Order United American Mechanics, will make a bid for the proposed branch of the national Junior orphan home for Hickory and with that end in view the council last nigh appointed a committee to gather information, confer with the Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations and cooperate with state and local agencies. The national orphanage is located at Tifton, O., where more than 1,000 children are provided for, and the North Carolina council proposes to establish a branch home in North Carolina. There are 58 North Carolina children in this institution.

The state council, it is agreed, will appropriate $250,000 to the new institution and sites will be asked of cities and towns in the state. Climate, water and interest will count much with the Juniors, who expect to see the orphanage through. It would mean a great thing for any town to have a Junior orphanage in or near it.

The national council has agreed to discuss the proposition at a meeting in Washington in February and it is hoped that plans can be made for the creation of a branch orphanage in this state. Hickory Juniors are determined to do all in their power to have the orphanage established here and they will have the support of every man and woman in this entire community.

At the meeting last night Councillor Commander Geo. L. Huffman named a committee to push the proposition. It consists of J. Thomas Setzer, chairman; M.G. Crouch, secretary; F.A. Henderson and W.H. Barkley.

P.S. Carleton of Salisbury, state councillor, who attended the Junior banquet at Newton Friday night, was approached on the question by Mr. Crouch and notice was given that Hickory expects to be in the running. There is reason to believe that the North Carolina Juniors, who for many years have desired to establish an orphanage in this state, will be permitted to go ahead. In that case the order will redouble its efforts in behalf of this great cause.

From the front page of the Hickory Daily Record, Dec. 19, 1922. The Junior Order began as a fraternal organization that was anti-Catholic and nativist. It became mostly a social organization in the 1920s, but membership was restricted to protestants. The organization did erect an orphanage in North Carolina, but it was in Lexington, not Hickory.