AMARANTH, ORDER OF THE

An organization instituted by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1653 and numbering thirty-one members, there being fifteen knights and fifteen ladies, and the Queen officiating as Grand Mistress. The insignia consisted two letters A interlaced, one being inverted, within a laurel crown, and bearing the motto Dolce nella memoria, these Words being the Italian for Sweet to the memory. The annual festival of this equestrian and chivalric Order was held at the Epiphany. A society of a similar name was arranged by J. B. Taylor at Newark, New Jersey, and was developed by Robert Macoy of New York City in 1883. A Supreme Council was organized June 14, 1883 with Brother Robert Macoy as Supreme Patron and Dr. Rob Morris as Supreme Recorder. In 1887 he published the Rite of Adoption containing the standard ritual of Degrees of the Eastern Star, the Queen of the South, and the Amaranth. Brother Willis D. Engle, in his History of the Order of the Eastern Star (page 135), says that the Amaranth was intended by Brother Macoy as the Third and Highest Degree in his revised system of Adoptive Masonry.

The ritualistic ceremonies planned by Brother Macoy were changed in 1915. The work is military in character. The object of the instruction is charity.

The organization has been incorporated, owns its own ritual and emblem, and has Courts in the several States of the Union, and in Canada, British Columbia, and the Philippines. The membership comprises Master Masons and their Wives, Mothers, Sisters, Widows, and Daughters.