Founding and Industry

The directors of Treasure Island, our neighbor Scout Camp, of the Philadelphia Council, B.S.A., sought for some means of recognizing the Scouts who stood out in the exemplification of the Scout Oath and Law, and in the old legend they found the answer to their needs. In 1915, in that same Delaware Valley, because they were "unselfish in service to others", a selected group of Scouts were banded together in a re-birth of the organization Chingachgook had founded so many years before. Thus, we who are members of the Order, are the present day link in a "great and mystic Order".

The Order has so fully carried out its purpose that Councils all over the country have Lodges. They have grown out of the advertising their own good work has produced; no one has gone around promoting the organization of the Lodges. The words of Uncas have spread from the mother Lodge, Unami, in Philadelphia, throughout the East - migrated to the Middle West - and then into the North, the Southwest and the West. Today they range from California to the Atlantic, and from Texas to Minnesota.

A more complete history of the Order of the Arrow can be found at U.S. Scouting Service Project's web site, http://usscouts.org/honorsociety/oahistory.html.

In 1928, because of the cheerful service exhibited by a group of Scouts during summer camp at Buccou Camps, Scout Executive William F. ("Uncle Bill") Livermore arranged to have the Degree Team from the George Washington Council, of Trenton, N.J., initiate into the "Ordeal Honor," these boys who had unselfishly served their fellow campers.

Each year approximately fifty new members were received into the Ordeal Honor. Incentive in Lodge activities was so great that the demand grew for advancement, thus bringing about the birth of our first Brotherhood Honor members. The first Vigil Honor brother was Scout Executive "Uncle Bill" Livermore.

During the 1937 summer camp season, Sakima "Bill" Carlin, visited Buccou each Sunday evening to give the "Legend of the Delawares" to the Scouts and Scouters assembled at "Inspiration Point". It was at this Ceremony that boys and men received their inspirations and developed incentive to become something worthwhile to Scouting.

At the final Ceremonial Campfire of the 1938 summer camp season, the Lodge presented to the retiring Scout Executive, "Uncle Bill" Livermore, as a token of their esteem and in appreciation of the things he did and what he meant to the members in the Lodge; a beautiful Scout statuette, appropriately engraved, which is a representation of Ajapeu Lodge.

In 1939, the last year of Camp Buccou, the OA published a comprehensive booklet containing a general overview of the organization.

In the mid-1940s, Ajapeu Lodge issued the first ever lodge flap, starting a movement which led to the approval of the lodge flap in 1954 as the official insignia of membership in an Order of the Arrow lodge.