Building Our Fraternal Family
We have been protecting members and their families while doing good in local communities for more than 155 years. Organizations that are part of Trusted Fraternal Life have a rich history of serving middle market families and improving the quality of life in their local communities that continues today.
Looking Back
Catholic Knights of America was founded in April of 1877 in Nashville, Tennessee by James J. McLoughlin, who was inspired after a powerful sermon by The Ordinary of the Nashville Diocese, the Most Reverend Patrick A. Feehan, who later became the first Archbishop of Chicago. The country was trying to heal the wound of the Civil War and McLoughlin felt it was time for Catholics to unite.
Degree of Honor Protective Association traces its roots to the first fraternal benefit society in the United States: Ancient Order of United Workmen. United Workmen was founded by John J. Upchurch on October 27, 1868, to financially protect railroad workers and their families. Societies that merged with Degree of Honor are the Polish White Eagle Association and the Hibernian Life Insurance Fund. Degree of Honor merged with Catholic Financial Life in 2017.
Union Saint-Jean-Baptiste launched toward the end of the 19th Century when Americans of French-Canadian and Acadian descent organized small mutual aid societies in their ethnic parishes across the upper Midwest and the Northeast. Union Saint-Jean-Baptiste merged with Catholic Family Life Insurance in 1991.
Catholic Family Life Insurance organized in 1868 when the ravages of the American Civil War were still evident in Wisconsin. With widows and orphans left behind following the war, the Most Rev. John Martin Henni, first Archbishop of Milwaukee, saw a need to provide for those less fortunate and to develop a system of financial security for Catholics and their families. The Family Protective Association became Catholic Family Life Insurance in 1869. Other societies that merged with Catholic Family Life Insurance are Union Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Northern Fraternal Life.
Catholic Knights has its roots in the years following the American Civil War when Nashville, Tennessee, was being ravaged by cholera and yellow fever, and hard hit by bank closures and the depression of 1873. Bishop Patrick Feehan encouraged a group of men to create a fraternal organization that would be known as Catholic Knights of America. It was chartered in the nearby state of Kentucky in 1877. In 2005, Catholic Knights of America merged with Catholic Knights.
Catholic Financial Life was established following the merger of Catholic Knights and Catholic Family Life Insurance in 2010. The following year, St. Joseph Benevolent Society became part of Catholic Financial Life.
Woman’s Life Insurance Society was founded in 1892, by 24-year-old Bina West who set out to build a new fraternal benefit society specifically for women and their families—a task few other companies would even consider at that time. Woman's Life became part of the Trusted Fraternal Life family of brands September 1, 2024.
Looking Forward
Catholic Financial Life became Trusted Fraternal Life in March 2024 and is now one of its brands. Thirty days later, Woman's Life Insurance Society was the first fraternal to announce its intent to merge with Trusted Fraternal Life. In July 2024, Catholic United Financial announced its intention to join the Trusted Fraternal Life family, pending approval by their delegates and subject to regulatory approval.