The General Grand Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, was organized by a convention of delegates of independent Grand Chapters (the jurisdictional bodies over chapters in states or provinces) on the fifteenth and sixteenth days of November 1876. The official title of the organization is: General Grand Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star. The office of the General Grand Chapter is located in our International Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
As shown in the chart at the left, the large red circle represents the General Grand Chapter (GGC) which serves as the hub for chapters subordinate to the GGC and the Grand Jurisdictions. There are 46 states, 8 Canadian Provinces, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Italy that are Grand Jurisdictions joined to the GGC. These are represented by the blue circles.
New York and New Jersey are not a part of the GGC. They each have a slightly different Ritual and their own set of Laws. GGC and these two independent state jurisdictions have a harmonious relationship and exchange Grand Representatives with each other.
In each Grand Jurisdiction joined with GGC are several local Chapters represented by the green circles extending from the blue circles. The geographical size of the state/province jurisdiction governs the number of Chapters in each state or Province.
The yellow circles represent individual Chapters in the overseas countries that are directly governed by GGC. This includes Alaska and Hawaii as they do not have a Grand Chapter formed in their state.