| Item Description: | The Brotherhood of American Yeomen was founded in 1897 in Iowa as a fraternal organization and was headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa with local "Homesteads" established across the United States. The Brotherhood admitted both men and women and provided death and disability insurance to members as well as social opportunities and a fraternal structure with rituals based on Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. The Brotherhood was reorganized in 1917 to resolve issues of insolvency in their insurance products and reorganized as the Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1932. |
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