The monument to Thomas Wildey, founder of the Odd Fellows in America, is dedicated in Baltimore, Maryland

Thomas Wildey was born in London in 1782 and came to the United States in 1817 and two years later founded the country's first Odd Fellows lodge. He died in Baltimore in October 1861.  The cornerstone for a fifty-two foot monument was laid down on April 26,1865 and the completed Doric column, on North Broadway in Baltimore, was dedicated with great ceremony to the "Founder and Father of  American Odd-Fellowship."  (By John Osborne)