Victorian Mourning Hair Watch Fob - Catholic Order of Foresters

Victorian Mourning Hair Watch Fob - Catholic Order of Foresters Featured here is an antique woven human hair watch fob. Hair of a deceased loved one would be used to create mourning jewelry in the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian Period.

This watch fob features an emblem related to the Catholic Order of Foresters. This symbol is often misinterpreted as a Knights Templar or Freemason symbol.

Catholic Order of Foresters (COF) is a Catholic life insurance organization that has been protecting families and serving communities for more than 140 years. Catholic Order of Foresters was founded in 1883 in Chicago to meet an urgent need in the Catholic community. At that time, impoverished immigrants were arriving in the United States in search of a better life. When a family lost its breadwinner, neighbors often passed the hat to provide financial help for survivors, and over time, these collections gave rise to associations, usually organized around shared faith ties, which quickly became anchors of community life. Seeing this need for lasting security, 42 men came together with a simple but powerful idea: each placed one dollar on a wooden desk to create a fund that would protect any family in crisis. That very desk, still preserved today in the Memorabilia Room at our Home Office in Naperville, Illinois, is a symbol of their vision. From those humble beginnings, Catholic Order of Foresters grew into a nationwide fraternal benefit society dedicated to protecting families and strengthening communities for more than a century.