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The Cradle Of Liberty Council 's Order Of The Arrow Lodge, Unami Lodge One, is the oldest OA lodge in the country, and in 2005 celebrated its 90th anniversary. The current membership consists of members from the pre-1997 merger of the Philadelphia and Valley Forge Councils, along with new members who joined after 1997. Delmont Lodge 43, the Valley Forge lodge, simply folded as to preserve the histories and traditions of Unami One, but its Vigil Honor members, Founders' Award recipients, and other honored members are preserved from the records of both lodges. The turtle is the lodge totem.


HISTORY


The Order of the Arrow was founded in 1915 at a Scout Summer Camp on Treasure Island , on the Delaware River near Philadelphia . The two men principally responsible for its creation were camp director E. Urner Goodman and his assistant Carroll A. Edson .http://www.usscouts.org/honorsociety/oahistory.html

Goodman and Edson were looking for ways to improve the camp and to keep the older boys coming back. They looked at several sources in creating their new 'camp fraternity',12 including:

  • Edward Cave's ''Boy's Camp Book'' for the concept of a camp society that would perpetuate camp traditions.

  • College Fraternities for the concepts of Brotherhood and rituals, and the idea of new members pledging themselves to the new organization.

  • Ernest Thompson Seton 's Woodcraft Indians In fact, the true name of the Order means ''Brotherhood of Cheerful Service'' in the Lenape Language .

  • Brotherhood of Andrew and Phillip, a Presbyterian church youth group with which Goodman had been involved as a young man.

  • Freemasonry and its traditions and rituals probably contributed more to the basic structure of the rituals than any other organization. In an interview with Carroll Edson during his later years, he recalled that the task of writing the first rituals of the Order of the Arrow was assigned to an early member who was "a 32nd degree Mason." Familiar terms such as "lodge" and "obligation," were borrowed from Masonic practice, as were some ceremonial practices. Even the early national meeting was called a "Grand Lodge," thought to be a Masonic reference. Goodman became a Mason only after the OA was established.http://www.atlascom.us/urner.htm