‘Civil War Lodge to take Hampton’

    

Speaking of the Civil War (see Tuesday’s post below), Civil War Lodge of Research 1865, one of Virginia’s six lodges of Masonic research, has its next meeting planned for Hampton. We will meet at Monitor Lodge 197 at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 10. We’ll have dinner together the night before at County Grill & Smokehouse; and Saturday dinner will be figured out after the lodge meeting.

If you’re wondering if Monitor Lodge is named for the U.S. Navy’s famous iron-clad warship of the Civil War, you are right. The ship battled the iron-clad CSS Virginia (which earlier had been the USS Merrimack) in 1862. The Monitor sank nine months after that off the coast of North Carolina. Monitor Lodge was founded by U.S. Navy officers stationed at Fort Monroe, and was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Maryland which assigned it the number 113.

Union military, in Virginia, founding a Maryland lodge in Virginia, during the Civil War? I’m sure we’ll discuss during our meeting how that came to pass.

I’m not seeing in our trestleboard a planned excursion to Fort Monroe after the meeting. I think that means we’ll be on our own to investigate America’s largest stone fortification and its exhibits. Looking forward to all the above.