Eagle Grange No. One, Pennsylvania's First

Pennsylvania's first Grange was organized right here, on March fourth, eighteen seventy-one, at a time when American farmers were organizing to take on the railroad companies and grain elevator monopolies squeezing them on every side.

The National Grange, formally the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, had been founded in Washington in eighteen sixty-seven. Eagle Grange Number One in Lycoming County beat the Pennsylvania State Grange into existence by more than two years. Local chapters like this one pushed for cooperative purchasing, regulated railroad freight rates, and rural free mail delivery, reforms that eventually reached federal law. Unusually for the era, the Grange gave women full and equal membership from the start. A hall was built on this site in eighteen eighty-seven and became the community's organizing hub for decades.