‘James Mitchell Varnum at Collegivm Luminosvm’

    

Click to enlarge.

Collegium Luminosum, the research lodge in the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island, has an evening planned for next month when a local historian will discuss the life of a Revolutionary War general and Rhode Island Mason. The graphic above has the particulars.

The historic brother in question is James Mitchell Varnum, who rose to the rank of general during the American Revolution. He was with St. John’s Lodge 1 in Providence, but his military career naturally took him outside the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He fought here in New York, both at Long Island and White Plains, for example.

The formidable James Royal Case, of ALR fame, in his Fifty Early American Military Freemasons, in 1955, writes:

James Mitchell Varnum

The first convocation of Masons in Ohio (of which there is any record) took place at the funeral of this distinguished brother at Marietta in January 1789. Cut off before his fortieth birthday, resident in the Northwest Territory less than a year, his life career had been a short but notable one. In military, Masonic and civic attainments he had, through sheer merit and unsought preferment, gone beyond his aspirations. The mourners in his funeral procession included a visiting delegation of Indian warriors, officers of the garrison at Fort Harmar, colleagues in the civil government, compatriots of the Society of the Cincinnati, and brethren of the Masonic fraternity. Ahead of the coffin marched four masters of ceremony bearing on mourning cushions appropriate emblems of his connection with the military, the judiciary, the Cincinnati, and the Masons. The latter acted as an occasional lodge for this ceremony, but the following year American Union Lodge was reopened at Marietta, marking the introduction of regular Freemasonry into Ohio.

Varnum was born at Dracut, Massachusetts in 1748 and was sent to Harvard to complete his formal schooling. Among those expelled following some disorder among the students, he transferred to Rhode Island College at Warren, of which Brown University is the present day successor. As a member of the first class to graduate, he took as a topic for his commencement oration the thesis that America should not be independent! He taught school for a year or two while he studied law with the attorney general of the state, following which he began his own law practise in East Greenwich. He was extraordinarily alert mentally, possessed great powers of concentration, and was a fluent and copious speaker. The Revolutionary War called him away from his legal pursuits for a while.

Possessed of a powerful physique, athletically inclined, an advocate of physical fitness and drill discipline, he became in 1774 colonel of the “Kentish Guards,” from whose ranks came many officers of the revolutionary army. Nathaniel Greene was an associate of those days. In 1775, Varnum commanded a regiment of state troops and was given command of the 9th regiment of Continentals in 1776. He served at the Siege of Boston and in the Battles of Long Island and White Plains.

Promoted brigadier general in 1777, he was entrusted with command of forts Mercer and Mifflin on the Delaware, defensive works for Philadelphia. Although he was eventually driven out by the British, he was commended by Washington for holding out as long as he did. His brigade was one of those which spent a miserable winter at Valley Forge, where the commander in chief said he was “the light of the camp,” perhaps with a special signification.

The following year found him fighting in his native state at Newport and for a few months in command of the department. However, his health had given way and, unable to endure the rigors of field duty, he resigned his commission. But there was no rest for the weary. He was sent to the Continental Congress in 1780 and served at intervals until 1787. He was appointed Major General of Rhode Island militia, and elected the head of the state Society of the Cincinnati. His law cases were many and notable in the history of the Rhode Island bar.

He became interested in the Ohio Land Company, was one of the original directors, and appointed to the bench as one of three judges for the territorial government to be established. Hoping to regain his health, improve his fortune, and advance in his profession, he went to Marietta on horseback in June 1789, leaving behind him a childless wife who was to survive him by forty-eight years. He began his new duties hopefully and happily enough but within the year he was dead. About all he had found time to get done was a code of laws.

Although his lungs were weakening, his voice was still strong and his mind was keen. His reputation as a public speaker was considerable and must have preceded him, as he was only in Marietta a week before he was chosen by the citizens and the Cincinnati to deliver the principal address at the first Fourth of July exercises ever held in Ohio. At home he had been much in demand as orator at Masonic gatherings, one notable occasion being the observance of St. John the Evangelist Day at Providence in December 1778. Major General John Sullivan was the guest of honor and dozens of military officers were present as visitors. Varnum was a member of old St. John’s Lodge in Providence, which is numbered among those few in America rounding out their second century of existence.

Read more about Varnum here at the website of the Varnum Armory Museum in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. And the Varnum House Museum is here.