‘Kendall is new Master of QC2076’

    

It’s not every day a fellow KOTN alum is installed in the Solomonic Chair of the world’s first lodge of Masonic research, but that day has come. As this edition of The Magpie Mason goes to press, Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076 is opening at Freemasons’ Hall in London to tackle an agenda that includes installing Adam G. Kendall as Worshipful Master and hearing his inaugural paper.

Adam G. Kendall

Among “education Masons,” Adam needs no introduction. Just off the top of my head: editor of Heredom and, before that, The Plumbline; a Blue Friar; president of the Philalethes Society; Fellow and Board Member of the Masonic Society; president of the MLMA; past master of Northern California Research Lodge; collections manager of the Henry Wilson Coil Library and Museum of Freemasonry; past master of Phoenix Lodge 144 in California; director of the Oakland Scottish Rite Historical Foundation; manager of the Scottish Rite Valley of Oakland’s library and archives; and, as mentioned, “a very brave and influential” Knight of the North.

And you thought you were busy.

I “met” Adam about twenty-five years ago in the Masonic Light Yahoo! Group (remember those?), as I had met Bro. Gerald, the lodge treasurer. Adam was elected to membership in QC Lodge in 2017, and elected to the Chair in September. Quatuor Coronati, unlike some research lodges I could mention, sees its newly installed Master present a paper for the program of that meeting. According to the lodge:

Thursday, November 12, 2026

Adam Kendall

The Knights Commanders of the Sun

and Nineteenth-Century

Anti-Catholic Fraternalism

Founded around 1875 by the prolific California Mason, Edwin Allen Sherman, the Knights Commanders of the Sun blended elements from the uniformed fraternities such as the Knights Templar and Knights of Pythias that were gaining in popularity throughout the post-Civil War United States. Using rare primary sources, Adam’s paper uncovers the little-known Order’s fraternal and Masonic influences, militant religious and political worldview, and its ritual that dramatized President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Congratulations, Adam! To my mind, there’s nowhere else to go beyond this summit of the peak of the apogee of the top of the tip of the apex of Freemasonry, but I look forward to reporting your continued exploits.

Also on the agenda today will be balloting on a proposed member of the lodge. That’s exciting! I wonder who it is.