F
Friendship
We show up for each other. Not just at meetings, but at hospital beds, graveside services, and the quiet hours in between.
Established in Swampscott · Massachusetts
A quiet brotherhood, building good on the North Shore.
Kearsarge Lodge No. 217 is a chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. We meet, we help where we can, and we keep our commitments small enough to keep.
Friendship · Love · Truth
Our three principles
Three links. One chain.
Every Odd Fellow wears the same three-letter creed. They are not mottos to admire from a distance. They are commitments we try to live, imperfectly, together.
L
Love
We extend care beyond our own — to neighbors, to strangers, to organizations doing the real work of repair in our communities.
T
Truth
We tell each other the truth, even when it is hard. We vet what we support. We do what we say we will do.
Since 1819
A fraternity older than most American towns.
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows was founded by Thomas Wildey in Baltimore on April 26, 1819 — an immigrant carpenter who believed that working men should look after one another when nobody else would.
Two centuries later, the Order keeps the same charge: visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan. Practical work. Quiet work. The kind that gets done when the right people make themselves available.
Kearsarge Lodge No. 217 carries that tradition on the North Shore of Massachusetts — at 115 Elmwood Road in Swampscott, on the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month.
To visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead, and educate the orphan. — The charge of every Odd Fellow
Recent work · North Shore
Saving the Glover Farmhouse.
In January 2026 our lodge voted unanimously to pledge $10,000 to Save the Glover! — the effort to preserve the General John Glover Farmhouse in Vinnin Square before its scheduled demolition. General Glover led the Marblehead Regiment that rowed Washington across the Delaware. The house is older than the country.
In May we joined the mezuzah donor list at a local synagogue's new high-security entrance, and were present at the ribbon cutting. These are small acts. They add up.