‘Researchers to visit North Carolina’

    

Civil War Lodge of Research 1865 will meet this month, taking it on the road to North Carolina. The lodge, now in its twenty-eighth year, is chartered by the Grand Lodge of Virginia AF&AM, but it has dispensation to travel outside the Commonwealth in its pursuit of historical facts concerning the U.S. Civil War, especially where Freemasonry’s history intersects.

Bingham 272

On Saturday, April 13, the lodge will meet at Bingham Lodge 272 in Mebane, North Carolina. Worshipful Master John Butler chose the location for its proximity to Bennett Place, a short drive east to Durham. It was there where the Confederate commander, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, and U.S. Gen. William T. Sherman met in a little farmhouse and negotiated surrender terms in April 1865, coming to an agreement on April 26. (The U.S. Civil War did not conclude with one single surrender of Lee to Grant. Commanders in four different theaters about the country negotiated surrenders eventually disbanding the Confederate States Army.)

It’s a little too far for me, so I’ll miss this one, but the lodge has a solid weekend plan including Friday night dinner in Burlington; the lodge meeting, followed by lunch on Saturday; the visit to Bennett Place afterward; and a Saturday night dinner yet to be worked out. This edition of The Magpie Mason is intended to encourage Masons in the area to attend the meeting and other stops. Bingham Lodge 272 meets at 309 East Center Street in Mebane. If I’m not mistaken, North Carolina Lodge of Research is no longer at labor, but there is the North Carolina Masonic Research Society, and hopefully they’ll get the word and come to our meeting.

Coincidentally, that weekend will be the anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter.

I’ll be with the lodge again on July 13 when we’ll meet in Delaware.