John Jordan Upchurch was born on a farm in Franklin County, North Carolina, one of four children of Ambrose and Elizabeth (Hill) Upchurch. After 1824, when the father was shot dead by his wife's brother-in-law, the family was extremely poor.
In 1837 Upchurch left the farm to learn the trade of millwright. Later with his wife's uncle, John Zeigenfuss, he opened a hotel in Raleigh, said to have been the first temperance house south of the Mason and Dixon Line. When this venture failed, he worked briefly for the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad, attempted horse taming for a time, and in 1846 moved to Pennsylvania, where he entered the employ of the Mine Hill & Schuylkill Haven Railroad, in 1851 becoming master mechanic.
In June 1864, train hands, seeking a raise, went on strike, and for two weeks, according to his own account, Upchurch operated the road in the interest of the government with men provided by the War Department. The strike was broken, and Upchurch determined to unite employers and employees "in one grand organization" opposed to trade unions (Life, post, pp. 22, 24).
On January 1, 1865, he resigned from the railroad to engage in oil speculation, but with its collapse at the end of the Civil War, returned, off and on, to railroading. In 1868 he settled in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he joined the League of Friendship, Supreme Mechanical Order of the Sun, one of the many secret workers' orders then springing up.
The Meadville lodge soon split, and on Upchurch's initiative a section reorganized, October 27, 1868, as Jefferson Lodge No. 1 of the Ancient Order of United Workmen. One of the main objects of the new order was "To discountenance strikes" (Ibid. , p. 57), but since the organization had the character of a lodge rather than a trade union, it proved impotent to affect strike movements seriously one way or the other. When, a year after its inception, it levied a dollar per capita assessment to pay substantial death benefits, it began to transform itself into a fraternal benefit society, and became the model for a movement characteristic of the period in America. The demand of a rising but propertyless working class for a bulwark against sickness, old age, and funeral expenses underlay the rapid expansion of mutual-benefit societies. Impetus was given by the policies of the oldline commercial insurance houses, whose rates were very high. Indirectly, the societies were influenced by the English friendly societies of the sixteenth century and directly, although subordinately, by the secrecy, ritualism, and sociability of Freemasonry. Dozens of them went bankrupt until, late in the eighties, actuarial calculations were adopted and reserves built up.
Upchurch continued to work as master mechanic for various railroads until about 1881, after which time he had no regular employment. In 1885, at the solicitation of the Order he visited California and the next year Boston and Philadelphia.
He wrote an autobiography, The Life, Labors, and Travels of Father J. J. Upchurch (1887), which was edited and published posthumously by his fraternal brother, Sam Booth. He died in Steelville, Mo. , where he had settled, and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis.
Upchurch was known as the founder of The Ancient Order of United Workmen and he was also generally regarded as the founder of the mutual-benefit system, which in 1919 numbered two hundred fraternal societies in the United States and Canada, with more than 120, 000 subordinate lodges and some 9, 000, 000 members.
On June 1, 1841, Upchurch married Angelina Green, a Pennsylvanian, who became the mother of his fifteen children.
