‘Welcome to these Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston’

     

Available from the SRRS. Click here.

Speaking of Masonic writers named Harris (see Tuesday’s post), the Scottish Rite Research Society’s new bonus book for members is Ray Baker Harris’ Eleven Gentlemen of Charleston, his collection of biographical sketches of the brethren who founded the Mother Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. It has been out about a month, and now is available for sale to everyone. Even autographed copies, signed by Arturo de Hoyos and B. Chris Ruli, can be had.

I am no longer a Scottish Rite Mason (buy me a beer sometime and I’ll tell you, &c., &c.), so this material isn’t as fascinating to me as it would have been earlier in life, but I maintain an appreciation for these founders. I’ve never really known anything about them, except that four were Jewish, which I consider to be a remarkable circumstance given demographics and, frankly, odds.

Originally published in 1959, Eleven Gentlemen was written by Harris while serving as Supreme Council’s Librarian. It must be nice to have the library and archives of the modern Southern Jurisdiction as your workplace. As you know, the original Supreme Council for the United States of America was established May 31, 1801 (this volume is part of the Supreme Council’s dodransbicentennial—look it up—anniversary celebration), but what you might not have known is how its archives were destroyed during the Civil War.

The Supreme Council was seated at Charleston, which suffered repeated devastations. The war began there in April 1861 with the attack on Fort Sumter, located on a man-made island in Charleston Harbor. That December, a fire destroyed much of the city. Through the war, the U.S. Navy heavily shelled Charleston. Near the war’s end in 1865, as Gen. Sherman’s army plowed through South Carolina, Confederate forces fled the city after setting fires to destroy more of it.

This book’s introduction quotes Albert Pike at the May 1878 Supreme Council session:

I am often asked why we do not publish our old Transactions, to which I am compelled to reply that we have none to publish. We have no record of the transactions at Charleston from 1801 to 1860. What minutes we had were destroyed, with many papers, pamphlets, and books of the Secretary-General during the war. I never saw any of them, and do not know how full or how meagre they were.

So, don’t feel inferior if, like me, you know little about Scottish Rite’s founding brothers.

Because I want you to enjoy, and profit from, the book, I won’t overshare its contents, but let me just name the founders and supplement the list with life dates and birth & death places:

    Abraham Alexander: born circa 1743 in London; died February 21, 1816 at Charleston.

    Isaac Auld: born February 25, 1770 in Pennsylvania; died October 1826 in South Carolina.

    Thomas Bartholomew Bowen: born circa 1742 in Ireland; died July 12, 1805 near Charleston.

    Frederick Dalcho: born October 1770 in London; died November 24, 1836 at Charleston.

    Moses Clara Levy: born circa 1749 in Poland; died March 1839 at Charleston.

    John Mitchell: born circa 1741 in Ireland; died January 25, 1816 at Charleston.

    James Moultrie: born September 1766 in Charleston; died there November 20, 1836.

    Le Comte Alexandre Francois Auguste de Grasse: born February 14, 1765 in Versailles; died June 10, 1845 at Paris.

    Jean Baptiste Marie Delahogue: born circa 1744 in France; died April 13, 1822 at Paris.

    Israel De Lieben: born circa 1740 in Prague; died January 28, 1807 at Charleston.

    Emanuel De La Motta: born November 2, 1760 on St. Croix, West Indies; died May 17, 1821 at Charleston.

Interesting to note six were born in the 1740s and the others between 1760 and ’70, showing two age groups in unity. Alexander and Mitchell died within weeks of each other in 1816; Dalcho and Moultrie died within days in ’36. Only two were born in what would become the United States. Eight died in or near Charleston, and Auld about forty miles away. The four Jewish brethren (Alexander, De La Motta, De Lieben, and Levy) are interred in the Coming Street Cemetery, the oldest Jewish burial ground in the American South. Yes, Moultrie was from the prominent Moultrie family. He was a nephew of the Revolutionary War general who designed my favorite flag of the war.

In typography, a ligature is a single character formed by joining two or more characters.

I close this edition of The Magpie Mason with praise for a style element you are sure to notice while reading. In its typography, Eleven Gentlemen features the Adorn font family. You see the ligatures—connected pairs of letters, like ct and st. For example, “Past Master” appears as “Past Master.” Something special for the typophiles. Here on this rude blog, you see their use disrupts line height, but the book is smooth reading.