Job’s Daughters

The founder: “Mother” Mick

Ethel T. Wead Mick was born on 9 March 1881 in Atlantic, Iowa. She trained in medicine, and in May 1904 she married a fellow medical student, Dr William H. Mick. Members still call her “Mother Mick”. As a child she had listened to her mother, Elizabeth D. Wead, read aloud from the Bible, and she was especially moved by the Book of Job, both as literature and as drama. She wanted girls with a Masonic connection to share the kind of moral and spiritual grounding she had received at home, and she founded the Order in her mother’s memory.

The Order was born in 1920, the same year women in the United States won the right to vote. Mrs Mick saw a parallel between the story of Job, who held to his faith through every loss, and the persistence young women would need as their place in society changed. Her favourite verse, Job 42:15, became the Order’s foundation: “And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren” (King James Version). The first half is taken to describe the members, and the second half their Masonic heritage. The broader lesson the Order draws from Job is one of hope: a life may see its home built up, ruined and restored again, so a member is taught never to give way to despair.

Mother Mick died on 21 February 1957.

Origins and early growth

With her husband and a circle of Masons and Eastern Star members, Mrs Mick spent several years working out the plan of the Order. According to the Order’s history, in 1920 the group met every week in the upstairs parlour of the Micks’ home, with the Grand Matron and Grand Patron of the Nebraska Eastern Star among those attending. The official founding date is 20 October 1920, when the planning group resolved to go ahead. Approval was given jointly by J. B. Fradenburg, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Nebraska, and by Mrs Anna J. Davis and James E. Bednar, Worthy Grand Matron and Worthy Grand Patron of the Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star in Nebraska.

The milestones followed quickly:

• 19 January 1921: the Executive Council was formed and its officers chosen.
• 6 May 1921: the first initiation was held at the Omaha Masonic Temple.
• 27 May 1921: the Order was formally organised at a meeting in Dr Mick’s office.
• 14 October 1921: the Supreme Guardian Council held its first annual meeting.
• 31 December 1921: the first charter was issued, to Bethel No. 1 of Omaha.

Masons and Eastern Star members from other states helped from the start, and the Order spread rapidly. By June 1923 the Eastern Star Grand Chapters of Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota and the District of Columbia had endorsed it, and that October the Supreme Guardian Council met in Chicago with delegates from twenty-three states, the Territory of Alaska and Manitoba. When a Bethel was instituted in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1931, the name became the International Order of Job’s Daughters, and when it became a US non-profit (501(c)(3)) organisation in 2001 it took its present name, Job’s Daughters International. The revised edition of Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry records 932 chartered Bethels in 1951. California led with 210 Bethels and some 22,000 active members, and had initiated more than 70,000 girls.

Membership

For decades Job’s Daughters was the only Masonic youth organisation that insisted on a Masonic relationship for every member. The relationship can be quite distant. A girl qualifies as the daughter, step-daughter, adopted daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, sister, half-sister, step-sister, sister-in-law, niece or first or second cousin of a Master Mason in good standing (or of one who was in good standing when he died), or as such a relative of his wife or widow. Today a girl without such a link may also join if she is sponsored by a Master Mason and a Majority Member of the Order. The daughter of a Majority Member is eligible too.

Members must believe in a Supreme Being but need not follow any particular religion, and the Order welcomes girls of many faiths and cultures. The age range today is about 10 to 20; older handbooks give 11 or 12 as the starting age. On reaching 20, or on marrying, a member in good standing becomes a Majority Member, and many stay on as trained adult volunteers. Jobies may also belong to Rainbow, serve as a DeMolay chapter Sweetheart and, from 18, join adult bodies such as the Order of the Eastern Star. Membership fees are set by each Bethel and kept modest.

How the Order is organised

The structure works much like local, state and national government. The local unit is a Bethel, numbered in the order it was instituted and usually meeting in a Masonic hall. Its members elect their own officers, led by the Honored Queen (spelled “Honoured Queen” in Australia) with a Senior Princess and a Junior Princess. They also choose their own activities and plan their own events. Adults guide them through a Bethel Guardian Council of five: the Bethel Guardian, the Associate Bethel Guardian (who must be a Master Mason), a Guardian Secretary, a Guardian Treasurer and a Guardian Director of Music. Its members must be Master Masons, female relatives of Master Masons aged over twenty, or Majority Members. Adults who attend Bethel meetings must themselves have a qualifying Masonic connection, or be the parent or guardian of a member.

States, provinces and countries with enough Bethels form a Grand Guardian Council and hold an annual Grand session, and the whole Order is governed by the Supreme Guardian Council, which brings together the Grand Guardians and Associate Grand Guardians, past and present, of every jurisdiction.

Ritual and teachings

The ritual was drawn up by Le Roy T. Wilcox, a student of Masonic law, and adopted in 1921. It has been revised several times since, most recently in 2025. Under the Order’s founding landmarks its lessons are taught in three “epochs” rather than degrees, and all members, guardians and visitors give a pledge based on honour. The Order’s purpose, as its constitution puts it, is character building through moral and spiritual development. In practice that means a deeper reverence for God and the Holy Scriptures, loyalty to one’s flag and country, and respect for parents, guardians and elders. The Order’s own summary of the ritual is that life will bring trials and setbacks, but that where faith endures, what is good and worthwhile will in the end be restored. Members are encouraged to use the Lord’s Prayer daily and to show love and respect to all worthy people.

Regalia and emblems

Jobies are easily recognised in Bethel by their white Grecian-style robes, a reminder of the age of Job. Because every member dresses alike, the robes also stand for equality, and their white colour for purity and joy. The three principal officers add purple capes, the colour of royalty in both birth and character, and crowns. The Honored Queen’s cape reaches the floor; the princesses’ capes are shorter.

The Order’s three emblems, fixed in its landmarks, are the Dove, the Incense Burner (or urn of incense) and the Horn of Plenty. Each recalls one of Job’s three daughters named in the Bible: Jemima, whose name means “dove”; Keziah, linked to incense and prayer; and Keren-happuch, whose name is associated with plenty. The modern crowns carry the same emblems: doves on the Junior Princess’s crown, urns on the Senior Princess’s, and horns of plenty on the Honored Queen’s.

Job’s Daughters today

Bethels are chartered in the United States (in 28 states), Canada, Australia, Brazil and the Philippines. Bethel life is far from purely social. Alongside swimming parties, dances, family picnics, sleepovers, parades, drill teams and trips, members take turns holding office, learn to run meetings and carry out service projects for their communities. Over the years Bethels have supported Shriners hospitals, Masonic and Eastern Star homes, the Knights Templar Eye Foundation and guide-dog charities.

The Order’s own international charity is the HIKE Fund (Hearing Impaired Kids Endowment), founded by Emma Tedrick and Charles Terrel. It buys hearing devices for children from birth to twenty whose families cannot afford them, about a hundred children a year, and is run by unpaid volunteers. The Supreme Guardian Council and many Grand jurisdictions also award college scholarships to members, with the aim of helping young women become the business, civic and government leaders of the future.

Former Jobies include the actresses Debbie Reynolds, Kim Cattrall and Aimee Teegarden and the comedian and singer Vicki Lawrence.

Learn more or join

For more information, or if you would like to join, please visit:
– https://jobsdaughtersinternational.org/ (Job’s Daughters International, with a Bethel locator)
– https://www.facebook.com/JDIqld/ (Queensland)
– https://www.iljd.org/
– https://sdjd.org/what-is-jobs-daughters/
– https://www.ohiojdi.com/