The Order of the Golden Chain is a fraternal social organization for Freemasons and their immediate female relatives. It was founded in 1929 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Local units are called "Links", and exist in northeastern US coastal states. Each has six officers known as "jewels". The "Grand Link" is located in New Jersey. During the Great Depression the constituent links contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of necessities to hospitals, nursing homes, and orphanages. During World War II the Golden Chain contributed humanitarian supplies to the war effort. After the war the Order created Camp Golden Chain, with 145 acres (0.59 km2) of land and a 10-acre (40,000 m2) lake in Warren County, New Jersey, for underprivileged children of all races, and engaged in a number of other efforts for the benefit of sick or disabled young people. It sponsors the Girls of the Golden Court for teen-age girls.
A previous Order of the Golden Chain was founded in 1881 and pronounced bankrupt in 1899. "Order of the Golden Chain" is also the name of an honor conferred in Lions Clubs. In former ages, it was the name of an honor conferred by the kings of Munster in Ireland, and an honor conferred by the rulers of Saxony in Germany.
Famous quotes containing the words order of, order, golden and/or chain:
“The order of the world is always right—such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The world men inhabit ... is rather bleak. It is a world full of doubt and confusion, where vulnerability must be hidden, not shared; where competition, not co-operation, is the order of the day; where men sacrifice the possibility of knowing their own children and sharing in their upbringing, for the sake of a job they may have chosen by chance, which may not suit them and which in many cases dominates their lives to the exclusion of much else.”
—Anna Ford (b. 1943)
“Is it that mens frayle eyes, which gaze too bold,
She may entangle in that golden snare:”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)
“From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)