In 1866, brothers Lee Won Moon and Lee Toy Moon established the flagship Lee Family Association in the back of their Chinese goods store in San Francisco. Like traditional Chinese family and village associations, it offered members security and support during a period when thousands of Chinese had just begun immigrating to California to labor on the Transcontinental Railroad. The Association offered members loans, secured burial plots, and helped settled disputes. Over the next few decades, unaffiliated Lee Family Associations sprang up in Chinatowns across the country. In 1927, 46 cities sent delegates to the association’s first national convention, where they all agreed to consolidate into one entity. While new generations of Chinese Americans don’t tend to seek out the support of such associations, the Lee Family Association still holds regular conventions and the Lee Federal Credit Union boasted $30 million in funds as of 2007.