‘MythBusters: Newport 1658’

     

It had been so many years since I last encountered anyone repeating the “Jewish Masons in 1658 Rhode Island myth” that I was surprised to find it endorsed by a brother in a small Facebook group of Jewish Masons last Sunday morning, but there it was, cheerfully trumpeted as fact and with an encouraging “Google it!” to help the uninformed and skeptical see the light.

 

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, a rumor was hatched more than a century and a half ago claiming Jewish men from the Netherlands, who settled in Newport, Rhode Island, brought with them Masonic degrees, and set about conferring degrees on others in their community.

 

It’s nonsense. The circumstantial evidence that exists abundantly, and at your fingertips, convincingly dismisses it. Just because the motto of Rhode Island is “Hope” doesn’t mean we indulge wishful thinking in unpacking history.

 

Hope? Anchor? Sound familiar?

What exactly is this myth?

 

In 1853, the Rev. Edward Peterson published a book titled History of Rhode Island. I cannot find a copy of this book, but the relevant paragraph has been reproduced in diverse publications of Masonic groups, historical societies, scholars, etc., and those I’ve seen render this paragraph the same way. What I’ll offer here comes from The Jews and Masonry in the United States before 1810 by Samuel Oppenheim, printed in 1910 by the American Jewish Historical Society. Oppenheim (1857-1928) was not a Freemason, but was a renowned lawyer and noted researcher into the history of Jewish people in America from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Excerpted:

 

 

In the Spring of 1658, Mordecai Campannall, Moses Peckekoe [Pacheco], Levi, and others, in all fifteen families, arrived at Newport from Holland. They brought with them the three first degrees of Masonry, and worked them in the house of Campannall; and continued to do so, they and their successors, to the year 1742.

 

 

This nonsense has been cited as proof that this group introduced what we call Freemasonry to the New World. Alas, there are several red flags frantically waving at us.

 

Who: Jewish emigres from Holland. I don’t know how it is possible that Jewish Dutchmen possessed the secrets of the Craft. Why not? Well, who exactly were the Freemasons in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century who could have imparted Masonic knowledge to the globe-trotting Campannall? I’ve never heard of Masonic lodges or individual Masons being present in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. As far as I know, Freemasonry first appeared in the Netherlands at about the same time as it first appeared in America: the early 1730s. And it came to the Netherlands from the same source: the Grand Lodge of England.

Daniel Coxe by Travis Simpkins

(It was on this very date—June 5—in 1730 that the Grand Lodge of England issued a deputation to Bro. Daniel Coxe, authorizing him to bring Freemasonry to, and organize Freemasonry in, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, making Coxe the first Provincial Grand Master in the Americas.)

 

What: “The three first degrees of Masonry.” Here, the good reverend is making trouble for himself by creating this anachronism. I’ll return to this later.

 

When: 1658. We know the seventeenth century was the era of the Accepted Mason. Scottish records show that had begun by the 1590s. (Click here.) The building of castles, cathedrals, fortifications, and other stone structures had ceased, and lodges of stone masons began to admit to their ranks men of social (and political, financial, etc.) standing who had no connection to the building arts. Elias Ashmole (1617-92) was neither the first nor the only such Freemason, but he is the best known today, having been initiated by a group of gentlemen Masons on October 16, 1646 that met in the home of one of their number in Warrington, England. That is a historical fact to which we attribute our knowledge of men during the pre-grand lodge era being admitted to lodges despite having no experience in stonework or in architecture. In short, this opportunity to become a Mason was available to men who had clout. Ashmole was a prominent ally of King Charles II, a founding Fellow of the Royal Society, a lawyer, a government official, and the founder of Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum. It seems to me little is known about the Jewish men from Holland who allegedly brought Freemasonry to the New World, but I don’t see them having power comparable to that of Ashmole’s in basically the same time period.

 

Elias Ashmole

Where: Newport, Rhode Island. Newport? Yes, Newport. What lends a veneer of plausibility to the myth is the documented historical fact that Jews from the Netherlands, or with other connections to that nation, did arrive in Newport in the 1650s. These people were refugees seeking a place to live in safety. They didn’t go to New Netherland (today’s Manhattan) where the Director General, Peter Stuyvesant, made it known that Jews were unwelcome. They had to go elsewhere to find a place where they could live in peace. Long story short: Their ancestors fled Spain and Portugal for their lives; arrived in the Netherlands, which already had a reputation for religious tolerance; and then they traveled to South America and the Caribbean, resulting in our Jewish emigres eventually arriving in Rhode Island, another haven for religious minorities, in the 1650s. It is a documented historical fact that the aforementioned Mordecai Campannall and Moses Pacheco figured centrally in this Jewish settlement in early America. I leave it to you to research that.

 

Why: The “Why?” always is the most telling factor in an investigation, and I’m sorry to say we’ll never know exactly why Rev. Peterson factored this fictional Masonic angle into his history book. We do know that he cited an early source of his misinformation. Before we content ourselves with the knowledge that Peterson seemingly did not invent the Masonic story, and that he had cited an allegedly existing record proving his Masonic claim outright, let’s look at this primary source.

 

Peterson said his source was Bro. N.H. Gould, who was Worshipful Master of St. John’s Lodge in Newport, was a member of the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island, and was a Thirty-Third Degree Mason in the Scottish Rite. And here is where the story simultaneously gets interesting and silly. To be fair—and that’s important—we must understand that history, as a field of study, differs greatly today from how it was approached before the twentieth century. Today we expect research that separates the provable from the improbable, but our ancestors beyond recent generations accepted histories bequeathed from the past without a lot of questions. The Bible, the Classics, and other sources—even the Shakespeare folio—comprised the bases of historical knowledge because they had passed the test of time. They were what people knew. Read the history section of James Anderson’s The Constitutions of the Freemasons of 1723 and you’ll see what I mean. It’s ridiculous, but it is exemplary of how people understood history centuries ago.

 

The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts’ 1870 Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, includes a section on histories of Freemasonry in its and in other states, written by MW William S. Gardner, Grand Master. Under the heading “Masonry in Rhode Island,” he writes:

 

Br. J.L. Gould, of Connecticut, published, in 1868, at New York, a manual entitled Guide to Chapter, in which this statement is contained:

 

 

The earliest account of the introduction of Masonry into the United States is the history of a Lodge organized in Rhode Island A.D. 1658, or fifty-nine years before the revival in England, and seventy-five years before the establishment of the first Lodge in Massachusetts. The author states that ‘The Reverend Edward Peterson, in his History of Rhode Island and Newport in the Past, gives the following account of this early Lodge:

 

‘In the spring of 1658, Mordecai Campannall, Moses Peckeckon, Levi, and others, in all fifteen families, arrived at Newport from Holland. They brought with them the three first degrees of Masonry, and worked them in the house of Campannall; and continued to do so, they and their successors, to the year 1742.’

 

This assertion of Br. J.L. Gould, supported by the extract above made from the Rev. Edward Peterson’s History, has attracted attention in England, and has already been examined by the critical pen of W. Br. William James Hughan. Feeling deeply interested in every thing relating to Masonic history in New England, as soon as any attention was called to this claim of antiquity I procured a copy of the Rev. Edward Peterson’s History. On page 101, edition of 1858, appears the above extract in totidem verbis, and, immediately following it, in italics, ‘Taken from documents now in possession of N.H. Gould, Esq.’

 

 

(I have no idea if N.H. Gould of Rhode Island, purported source of Rev. Peterson’s misinformation, was related to J.L. Gould of Connecticut, who authored that Guide to Chapter book which planted the myth into the Masonic consciousness.)

 

Grand Master Gardner’s report continues at length and in detail. Honestly, I’m not willing to transcribe it fully here. Instead, please click here and see Page 357 (an easy-to-remember page number!) to read it entirely. To untwist a complicated story, I’ll summarize in points:

 

MW Gardiner wrote to Bro. N.H. Gould and others in Rhode Island in search of the conclusive origin of the story of Jewish immigrants bringing Freemasonry to Newport in 1658. It took nearly a year for Gould to write back, but he described how he and Rev. Peterson “studied out” an originative document behind this claim.

 

This document, said Bro. Gould, had been among the possessions of the late Hannah Hall, “a distant relative” of Gould and the great, great, granddaughter of John Wanton, who had been governor of the Rhode Island colony from 1734 to 1740. The paper was among a trove of letters and such found inside a dilapidated trunk. Due to the age and the poor storage of the paper in question, it was damaged and illegible in places, but its text allegedly read:

 

 

Ths ye [day and month obliterated] 1656 or 8 [not certain which, as the place was stained and broken; the three first figures were plain] Wee mett att y House off Mordecai Campanall and affter Synagog Wee gave Abm Moses the degrees of Maconrie.

 

 

And here, again, is Rev. Peterson’s take:

 

 

In the Spring of 1658, Mordecai Campannall, Moses Peckekoe [Pacheco], Levi, and others, in all fifteen families, arrived at Newport from Holland. They brought with them the three first degrees of Masonry, and worked them in the house of Campannall; and continued to do so, they and their successors, to the year 1742.

 

 

So now you are wondering where Peterson found the “three first degrees” detail, as well as the mention of 1742. I think that he, armed with some knowledge of the Freemasonry of his own time, simply added those details, assuming they could be backdated. We know there weren’t three or more degrees in Masonry in the seventeenth century. The specific talk of 1742 is vexing. I cannot find anything that might fit that reference. The aforementioned St. John’s Lodge, the first in the colony, dates to St. John Evangelist Day 1749.

 

Gould goes on to explain:

 

 

By the foregoing you will see that the document spoken of by the Rev. Edward Peterson was in a very tender state: broken and as brittle as those very old papers, exposed as it had been exposed, to alternate wet and heat. After a time it became so broken that I could not have it even daguerreotyped, as, at that time, photography was not practiced in our city, but what there is of it was nicely enveloped and packed away, with some of my papers in my house, securely, but not where I can, at present, put my hand upon it, but hope, with God’s blessing, to be able to again get my library together in their cases, and many papers assorted, when it will be, or what may be left of it, visible.

 

 

I say what we have here is, simply, a canard. This alleged source document that puts Masonic activity in Newport, Rhode Island in 1658 not only cannot be scrutinized by us—even in some facsimile—but it doesn’t appear to have been seen by anyone contemporaneous who possibly could avouch it. In our twenty-first century expectations of historical analysis, this fails any reasonable standard. That is mostly why I call the myth nonsense, but there’s more, which I’ll come to.

 

Writing in his History of Freemasonry in Rhode Island, published 1895 for the 1891 centenary of the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island, Grand Historian Henry W. Rugg opines: “Evidently no great reliance could be given to such a scrap of paper even were its genuineness assured. It lacks the support of corroborative evidence.” (I think Rugg puts it so politely because he was a Doctor of Divinity.)

 

Massachusetts Grand Master Gardner also had written to Rhode Island Grand Master Thomas Doyle, who replied:

 

 

As to the statement, in Peterson’s History of Rhode Island, that Masonry was worked in this State from 1658 to 1742, I can only say that, from the best information I can obtain in regard to that history, the statement is not to be taken as a fact, unless supported by other reliable testimony. What he has said about Masonry is, I understand, asserted upon the authority of documents in the possession of W. Br. N.H. Gould. I have made many enquiries about these documents of brethren in Newport, members of the Grand Lodge and others, and do not find that any one has even seen them, neither do the brethren believe that any proof exists of the truth of Peterson’s statement.

 

 

So why didn’t I just make that point from the start and spare you all this reading? Because I get paid by the word. Seriously though, if you’ve read this far then maybe you’ll agree that it is important to respect history by not co-mingling untruth and distortion with facts.

 

Those further complications I mentioned:

 

If you have made a study of what we know of seventeenth century and other pre-grand lodge era manuscripts, then you know how oaths of that time concluded with avowals to Jesus Christ. Masonry, as it existed then, was a Christian society. Anyone believing in this myth would have reconcile that, at the very least. The record of the first Jewish man to be made a Freemason places it in London during the 1720s. I regret not having the specifics of that to add here, but think Anderson’s First Charge.

 

In addition, there is the philology of it. I do not believe that a Sephardic Jew from the Netherlands would jot a note to self (or to someone else in his community) employing some kind of pre-Elizabethan English. “Wee mett att y House off Mordecai Campanall and affter Synagog Wee gave Abm Moses the degrees of Maconrie.” Maybe it could have worked out that way, but I don’t see it being likely. Being from the Netherlands, one might write in Dutch. Being Sephardic, one might write in Ladino. Being in 1658, one might be illiterate. In fairness, our Mr. Samuel Oppenheim, of the American Jewish Historical Society, disagrees. He says:

 

 

The period of composition of the document may be practically determined, independently of the date given in it, from the style of its orthography. In the doubling and raising of letters, in the unusual forms ‘Maconrie’ and ‘off’ for ‘of,’ and even in the apparently inconsistent variation in the manner of spelling ‘off’ and ‘ye’ in a single writing, the orthography is peculiarly of the seventeenth century and not of a later period and is thus confirmatory of genuineness. Its language and style of composition indicate a Jewish hand as the author.

 

 

Oppenheim strikes me as an impressive and serious man, but what he says here is very highly speculative, and I do not know what knowledge and experience he possessed in linguistics. And how does one assess an unknown writer’s religious views from a brief note?

 

And, returning to “the three first degrees of Masonry,” it is basic Introduction to Masonic History 101 that the Third Degree emerged during the 1720s. No one knows exactly when, or written by whom, but it emerged in London when the Grand Lodge began to take the shape we know today. Earlier records show a two-degree system of primitive rituals. Saying there were three degrees in 1658, and that they were the first three—implying there were others—is nonsense. For a look at what Masonic degrees looked like circa 1730, see the ritual exposure Masonry Dissected. The Masonic Book Club will reprint it this summer.

 

If you enjoy Masonic history, and think you’d want to examine and write about some aspect, it is important to research and not be content with one unattached statement found on a webpage. It’s never been easier than today to undertake a little inquiry, thanks to the multitude of online resources. For the more motivated researcher, visits to libraries, museums, historical sites, historical societies, the occasional cemetery, and other destinations are necessary, but without leaving my chair I was able to present this humble edition of The Magpie Mason. My thanks to Bro. Jerry for the inspiration.

 

Jewish Freemasons have much for which to be thankful and in which to feel pride, even in the specific context of Newport: There is the obscure, but real, history of King David’s Lodge which settled there after removing from New York in the eighteenth century. And also, of course, the visit of President George Washington to the town, during which he engaged both the local synagogue and the Masonic lodge in correspondence. (Read about that here.) There is no need to diminish real history by mixing in unsubstantiated and illogical tales.

      

‘Masonic Con Manchester (Part I)’

    

Absolutely perfect weather greeted us at Masonic Con 2022 in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Masonic Con 2022 New Hampshire is in the books. An amazing conference uniting Freemasons from many states and other countries that all of us will remember for many years.

There will not be full Magpie coverage of this one because I deliberately didn’t bring a notebook because I simply wanted to live it and enjoy it all because today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of my initiation into the Order. I wanted only to be a spectator and a fan. I couldn’t think of a more pleasurable and profitable way to celebrate this anniversary if I tried. (And there ain’t gonna be a fiftieth.)

Actually I do have to write up something about today because I’m slated to present a recap of the event at New Jersey’s research lodge next Saturday, so I guess I will post something here in a couple of days. No action photos, though, because I didn’t shoot any.

I suppose twenty-five years ago this minute I was receiving the EA Lecture. Tempus Fugit.

     

‘House of the Temple vandalized’

    

Two years to the day after the House of the Temple was spray painted with graffiti during days of violence around Washington, DC, the two sphinxes outside the landmark were just damaged in another attack, according to Arturo de Hoyos, who shared the news via social media this afternoon.

“Vandals severely damaged the two symbolic sphinxes which grace the sides of our front outer steps,” he said. “They not only broke pieces from their faces, but smeared them with filth.”

Master sculptor Adolph Weinman created the pieces on site. He also is known for his work with the U.S. Mint, having designed both the Mercury dime and the Walking Liberty half dollar, Art also said.

     

‘Keystone State dates’

    

The Pennsylvania brethren have announced upcoming events you may want to attend.

The research lodge will meet Saturday the 18th in Jim Thorpe. That’ll be one o’clock at Carbon Lodge 242.

Two presenters: Bro. Jerome Phillips on “The Five Orders of Architecture from Antiquity and Their Masonic Relevance,” and Bro. Aaron White’s “The Tyranny of Memory.”

I don’t know where Aaron is headed with that, but I’m certain it’ll be interesting. For your calendar, the lodge will meet next on December 10 at a site to be determined.

The Pennsylvania Academy of Masonic Knowledge will convene its Fall Symposium on Saturday, October 22. The scheduled speakers are Bro. Tom Worrel and Bro. Dave Hosler, and you can read about them here.

In the meantime, the Masonic Library and Museum’s lecture series continues. On Saturday, July 16, Bro. Michael Ernst will present “Raising the Nile: Ethnicity and Politics in the UGLE Masonic Lodges of British Egypt, 1860-1956.” That will be both in person and online. Click here to read more about that.

     

‘Grand Master on the balcony’

    

The Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England took his rightful place on the palace balcony alongside Queen Elizabeth II this morning following the Trooping the Colour portion of the Platinum Jubilee celebration. Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, is a cousin of the Queen.

Elected Grand Master in 1967, the 250th year of the Grand Lodge, he is the longest serving Grand Master in English history. He was initiated into the fraternity in Royal Alpha Lodge 16 in 1963. He was Passed in 1964. Sunday the fifth will be the fifty-eighth anniversary of his Master Mason Degree. He served as Worshipful Master of Royal Alpha in 1965.

He and Prince Michael, Grand Master of Mark Master Masons, are the two princes who hold Masonic membership. Freemasonry in England has cultivated relations with the royal family for three centuries by electing kings, princes, dukes, and others to membership and to high office.

He will turn eighty years old July fourth. Perhaps he will be the last royal to preside over Grand Lodge.

This year’s Prestonian Lecture is titled “The Royal Family and Freemasonry,” which Bro. John Hawkins is presenting to Masonic audiences around the country.

    

     

‘Oscar at The ALR’

   

RW Bro. Oscar Alleyne will be our presenter at The American Lodge of Research’s meeting this month. Sometimes you need star power.

Oscar will discuss “John Batt: Mercenary, Opportunist & Hero.” That’ll be Tuesday, the 28th at seven o’clock inside the Colonial Room on the tenth floor of Masonic Hall, located at 71 West 23rd Street in Manhattan.

We’ll also conduct our elections and installation of officers, plus other necessary business to conclude our highly productive and memorable year back at labor following a hiatus we have reason to forget.

Your advance registration is necessary. Click here.

Photo ID is required to enter the building. Attire, like any other lodge, is suit and tie with apron.

See you there.

     

‘Vastola to visit research lodge’

    

New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education 1786 will meet next week for its quarterly Regular Communication and will host a very special guest.

Bro. Alex Vastola, Director of The Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library of the Grand Lodge of New York, will be among the speakers next Saturday, bringing us up to date on the institution’s programs and other essential work.

That’s June 11 at Hightstown-Apollo Lodge 41 in Hightstown. Lodge tyles (New Jersey spelling) at 9:30 a.m.

In addition, the Brother Junior Warden will present his long awaited “Salt, Wine, and Oil” (you read correctly) paper. And, somewhere along the way, there will be a recap of Masonic Con, which finally will be hosted this Saturday in New Hampshire. A group of us are making the trip.

A continental breakfast (but don’t ask me which continent) will be available beforehand, and lunch will be served after the meeting. (I think a cookout is planned.)

     

‘Our established mode of government’

    

“A Vindication

of Masonry”

By Bro. Charles Leslie

Vernon Kilwinning Lodge

Edinburgh

May 15, 1741

Printed in Illustrations of Masonry,

Second Edition,

by William Preston, 1775 

Excerpted: 

Masonry is a progressive science, and is divided into different classes or degrees, under particular restrictions and injunctions of fidelity, for the more regular advancement of its professors in the knowledge of its mysteries. According to the progress we make, we are led to limit or extend our inquiries; and in proportion to our genius and capacity, we attain to a greater or less degree of perfection. This mode of government may sufficiently explain the importance of Masonry, and give us a true idea of its nature and design.

Three classes are generally received under different appellations. The privileges of each are distinct, and particular means are adopted to preserve these privileges to the just and meritorious. Honor and probity are recommendations to the first class, in which the practice of virtue is enforced, and the duties of morality inculcated; while the mind is prepared for social converse, and a regular progress into the principles of knowledge and philosophy. Diligence, assiduity, and application are qualifications for the second class, in which an accurate elucidation of science, both in theory and practice, is given; human reason is cultivated by a due exertion of our rational and intellectual powers and faculties; nice and difficult theories are explained; fresh discoveries are produced, and those already known are beautifully embellished.

The third class is confined to a select few, whom truth and fidelity have distinguished, whom years and experience have improved, and whom merit and abilities have entitled to preferment. With them the ancient landmarks of the Order are preserved; and from them we learn and practice those necessary and instructive lessons which dignify the Art, and qualify its professors to convince the uninstructed of its excellence and utility.

This is our established mode of government when we act in conformity to our rules: hence true friendship is cultivated between different ranks and degrees of men, hospitality is promoted, industry rewarded, ingenuity encouraged, and all unnecessary distinctions are lost in the general good.

     

‘Explore gastronomical Gettysburg’

    

I’ll go ahead and guarantee you’ll be more enthusiastic about the meal than this.

For the 159th anniversary of the decisive day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the local Masonic lodge invites you to a historical re-enactment dinner.

Good Samaritan Lodge 336 is preparing an authentic 1863 meal for Sunday supper on July 3, its Civil War Soldier Dinner. A Civil War re-enactor will complement the period fare with tales of the Masonic experience of the war years.

That’s $50 per person at 90 Lincoln Square in Gettysburg. Seating at five o’clock. Click here to book your seats.

     

‘Bricks for Fredericksburg’

    

Speaking of brick (see post below), Fredericksburg Lodge 4 could use your help. The legendary lodge in Virginia that made Masons out of George Washington and other notables seeks to raise money for the maintenance of its building. It is 206 years old and has been in Masonic use the whole time.

I don’t know about you, but two centuries in Freemasonry would leave me the worse for wear.

So, the brethren are giving the ashlar-crafting metaphor a break in order to employ bricks as a means to preserve their landmark lodge building while extending to you the opportunity to attain philanthropic immortality in the form of bespoke tiles.

I’m sure you know how it works: Bricks of varying dimensions are for sale, with proceeds to benefit the lodge, that you may personalize with your name, symbol, or slogan engraved thereon—esoteric passwords excluded. The bricks are installed on site into the ground or in walls.

There are other options too, but you can read all about them here. If it’s unaffordable for you particularly, try to rally your lodge or other Masonic groups to assist what truly is one of the most historic Masonic lodges in the United States.

     

‘A chunk of Masonic history’

    

Joseph Fagan photo

Ionic capital rescued from the ruins of the former Masonic Hall in Orange, New Jersey last month by Mr. Joseph Fagan, a local historian.

A friend in New Jersey alerted me yesterday to a local news item concerning the destruction of an old Masonic temple in the City of Orange Township.

What he had seen was a Facebook post from Mr. Joseph Fagan, a historian and author who specializes in the Oranges of Jersey, and who told of a fire that destroyed the 135-year-old building on April 19. From there I was able to find Fagan’s news story published the day after the fire on Tap into West Orange, a website for local community journalism. Do read the story for its historical details on the building’s construction.

Located at 235 Main Street in Orange, the nineteenth century brick and terra cotta beauty ceased to be a Masonic temple long ago, and was a mixed use property in its final incarnation, with various retail tenants in business there. The blaze devoured the building’s interior before firefighters from several towns extinguished it. The facade remained standing, but had to be demolished later.

Joseph Fagan photo

The cornerstone was laid June 24, 1886, and the temple was dedicated November 16, 1887, according to One Hundred Years of Masonry in the Oranges, 1809-1909 by Bro. G. Howlett Davis. (Imagine a time when Freemasons authored books about their lodges and the local Masonic scene!) The temple was home to both Union Lodge 11 and Corinthian Lodge 57.

Joseph Fagan photo

Commemorative medal
from the dedication ceremony.

I won’t delve deeply into the details, but eventually—possibly the 1970s—these lodges, joined by Germania Lodge 128 in Newark, would amalgamate and form Germania-Corinthian-Union Lodge 11, and would acquire a former National Grange hall a few towns away in Livingston. About twenty years ago, this lodge merged with Livingston-West Orange Lodge 287, which was located a few miles to the west, and they carry on today as Livingston Lodge 11.

Anyway, Mr. Fagan was able to salvage one architectural embellishment from the rubbish of the temple on Main Street—one that is very recognizable to the initiated eye: a capital of an Ionic column. He guesses it weighs about a hundred pounds.

Union Lodge originally was numbered 21 on the roll of the Grand Lodge of New Jersey, having been chartered November 10, 1809. It was a daughter lodge of St. John’s 2 in Newark, just as, I suppose, the City of Orange itself was a breakaway municipality of Newark. When the Grand Lodge reorganized during the 1840s, after the Anti-Masonry craze fizzled, its few surviving lodges were renumbered; Union was assigned 11 (and St. John’s became No. 1).

Historical photo courtesy Joseph Fagan

Corinthian 57 was set to labor Under Dispensation in 1861 at a time the Masonic Order in New Jersey was flourishing. Germania Lodge 128 was given its charter in 1872, a German-language lodge that had spun off Diogenes 22 in Newark.

Maybe Mr. Fagan would donate the piece for display at Livingston 11 or the Museum of Masonic Culture in Trenton.

Here are photos from Bro. Davis’ book:

When the Masonic Hall opened, the post office occupied the ground floor.

The lodge room in the new building.

At the cornerstone ceremony in 1886.

Bro. G. Howlett Davis was raised
in Union Lodge 11 on May 28, 1903.

     

‘The Square, not the Plumb!’

    

alibaba.com

I told you a little about the Third Degree my lodge conferred Saturday (see post below), and I continue the story now because I learned something new that day which really surprised me. I think it’s worth sharing—without revealing the esoterica of the ceremony.

There comes that moment when GMHA is invested with a jewel that later serves as a form of identification. I always thought the fraternity was unanimous in which jewel is used, but apparently this is not so. Before becoming a New York Mason in 2015, I had been at labor in another grand jurisdiction. There, the jewel placed about our Operative Grand Master’s neck is the Plumb.

KS rules and governs from the East (Square); KH stands in the West (Level); and HA superintends from the South, where the office is symbolized by the Plumb. To my thinking, it’s all very symmetrical and sensical. What I learned the other day however is that a different jewel is worn by GMHA in New York: the Square.

masonicexchange.com

During some downtime, several officers were looking for the Square jewel to use in the degree. “Don’t you need a Plumb?” I asked, causing some conversation and confusion. A ritual book was taken up, the relevant page was found, and—sure enough—we needed the Square.

I don’t know if I can process this new information!

My thinking on the Plumb was formed more than twenty years ago, when my reading introduced me to the idea that Refreshment (remember the duty of the Junior Warden in the South) is about more than rest and nourishment. It is a time for spiritual reinvigoration.

I’m just copying and pasting something here I wrote long ago. There was a discussion in the old Masonic Light Yahoo! Group (God, I miss it!) concerning working tools and jewels, and I offered the following paragraphs. One of the brethren from Wasatch Lodge 1 in Salt Lake City (maybe Jason?) asked if he may post it on the lodge’s website. I said sure. This was 2003-04, several years before The Magpie Mason, when a number of things I had written were picked up by print and digital Masonic media all over the country. It’s still tucked away on Wasatch’s website after all these years!

The snippets of ritual prose quoted below are from my previous grand lodge; the text may differ from your grand lodge’s. And mine.

masonicexchange.com

The Junior Warden in the South, who personifies the “beauty and glory” of the “sun at meridian,” wears the Plumb as a jewel. While he is the officer who calls the Craft from labor to refreshment and superintends them during the hours thereof, and in many jurisdictions the two Stewards are stationed under his watchful eye, his duty is more than to govern the brethren during their times of rest.

It all comes back to the symbol hanging from his neck: the Plumb. Masons meet on the Level and part upon the Square, but at all times we act by the Plumb.

“The Plumb admonishes us to walk uprightly in our several stations, to hold the scale of justice in equal poise, to observe the just medium between intemperance and pleasure, and to make our passions and prejudices coincide with the line of duty,” says the Installing Master to the new Junior Warden. “To you is committed the superintendence of the Craft during the hours of refreshment. It is, therefore, indispensably necessary that you should not only be temperate and discreet in the indulgence of your own inclinations, but that you should carefully observe that none of the Craft be suffered to convert the purpose of refreshment into those of intemperance and excess. …”

The Oxford English Dictionary lists several definitions of “refreshment,” and the first one even before the common usage for rest and nourishment is “The act of refreshing, or fact of being refreshed, in a mental or spiritual respect.”

Only then comes “The act of refreshing, or fact of being refreshed, physically, by means of food, drink, rest, coolness, etc….” And then the definition mentions the “Sunday of Refreshment” with a nod toward John 6.

I turned to John 6, and Verse 27 reads: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life. …”

Consider the custom of our Operative Grand Master, who, every day at noon when the Craft was on refreshment, visited the unfinished Holy of Holies to offer up his devotions to God. For him, refreshment was not physical relief in the form of food, drink or rest; instead refreshment meant satisfying his hunger for spiritual peace and eternal life.

The jewel about his neck? The Plumb, by which “so great and so good a man” would be identified after his soul departed his lifeless, earthly body. Writing in his Antiquities, Josephus describes John the Baptist as “a good man” who exhorted people “to lead righteous lives, practice justice toward one another and piety toward God.” To John, Josephus continues, baptism was not a “pardon for the sins they have committed, but… a consecration of the body, implying that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by right behavior.”

In his Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Albert G. Mackey quotes from Ahimon Rezon: “The stern integrity of St. John the Baptist, which induced him to forego every minor consideration in discharging the obligations he owed to God; the unshaken firmness with which he met martyrdom rather than betray his duty to his Master… make him a fit patron of the Masonic institution.”

We’re reminded of the theme of the Sublime Degree: “My life you may take, but my integrity never!” The lessons to learn from both are intended, in part, to reassure us of a better, eternal life awaiting the brethren beyond this earthly existence.

The tri-part rough and rugged road facing Hiram after his prayers can be likened to the three-year journey of the pilgrim-knight toward the Holy Sepulchre in the Order of the Temple. Pausing at the tent of the first hermit, the knight is duly provided food, drink and shelter, but more importantly, indeed to assure his success, the hermit enlightens the knight with a verse from Scripture: “Labor not for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

Food for thought as we weigh the tools and jewels of Craft Masonry this month.

     

‘Imitate the glorious example’

    

The Colonial Room on the tenth floor of Masonic Hall is not our usual meeting space, but we were able to make do despite the frumpy looks of the place.

On this date in 1772, Freemasons in London gathered in the Strand at a tavern named the Crown and Anchor for “A Grand Gala in Honour of Free Masonry.” It was a famous place; all kinds of groups met there. In attendance were Lord Petre, the new Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England; and William Preston, Worshipful Master of the lodge that met there.

We know this because of the book that was inspired by the affair: Illustrations of Masonry, published later that year. I believe there are half a dozen books that have given shape (rituals, language, customs, jurisprudence, etc.) to the Freemasonry that we have inherited, and all six date to the 1700s. What has come to be known as “Preston’s Illustrations” might be the most consequential of them.

Online Etymology Dictionary

Something else occurred on this date. I mean today. 2022. My lodge raised four Fellow Craft Masons to the Sublime Degree.

The ritualists were great despite being nervous and self-conscious. I think the Master mentioned there could have been more rehearsal time, but I followed along in my ritual cipher (as Tiler, I’m outside the lodge room), and I’d say any error or omission was unnoticeable. Nothing obfuscated the candidates’ comprehension—and that’s what matters to me.

I’ll close this edition of The Magpie Mason with an excerpt from Illustrations concerning the Master Mason Degree. You’ll recognize these phrases and ideas in different constructions of contemporary rituals:

Your zeal for virtue, your honor as a gentleman, your reputation as a mason, are all equally concerned in supporting, with becoming dignity, the character in which you now appear; let no motive therefore make you swerve from your duty, violate your vows, or betray your trust; but be true and faithful, and imitate the glorious example of that celebrated artist, whom you have this evening represented. Thus you will prove yourself worthy of the confidence which we have reposed in you, and deserving of every honor which we can confer.

     

‘The Hero of Two Worlds’

    

I can’t remember where in Masonic Hall this hangs. Corinthian?

“Insurrection is the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

— Lafayette

On this date in 1834, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier Marquis de La Fayette died in Paris at age 76. His remains are interred in the city at Cimetiere de Picpus—beneath soil shipped from Bunker Hill, such was the import of his role in the American War of Independence and vice versa.

That he championed the American cause, not only to smite the enemy British Empire, but to make manifest the Americans’ philosophy of individual liberty and national freedom was extremely counterintuitive for a French nobleman, if you think about his station in life. And his fighting for the Continental Army didn’t even put him in good standing when revolution, originally in the name of republicanism, was unleashed in his homeland, although it at least saved his life. In fact he lived to see various leaders and different forms of French government rise and fall, until the July Monarchy. Government troops slaughtered a crowd of civilians in April 1834. Lafayette was dead a month later. He is remembered as “The Hero of Two Worlds.”

Outside, appropriately, Colonial on 10.

Masonic historians are frustrated by the absence of a record of his initiation into the fraternity, but when he arrived in America in 1777, his Masonic membership was a given. I would say he is France’s most celebrated Freemason, at least in the eyes of American Masons. He was a Royal Arch Companion in Jerusalem Chapter 8 in New York City, as well as a Cerneau Scottish Rite 33rd Degree Mason.

(I’m assuming it’s pure coincidence, but the New York City Parks Department chose today to power wash Union Square Park’s Lafayette statue, titled “Lafayette Arriving in America,” made by Bro. Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, of Statue of Liberty fame, and dedicated in 1873.)

His famous return to the United States in 1824 consisted of a tour of all the states in the country, with Masonic celebrations along the route. The Grand Lodge of Delaware received him in 1824 and made him an Honorary Member the following year. Also in ’24, Lafayette visited the brethren in Maine and New Jersey and Maryland (another Honorary Membership there). In 1825, he was feted in South Carolina, Louisiana, Illinois, and, with another Honorary Membership, in Tennessee. Many lodges around the United States have been named in his honor.

Lafayette Lodge 27 photo

Last month Grand Master Richard Kessler led a party to a neighboring jurisdiction where its Lafayette Lodge held a ceremony to unveil a marker on The Lafayette Trail, which denotes the path of his historic tour. The New Yorkers brought with them an apron affiliated with the French hero for display that day.

Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Library photo

Click here for more on his Masonic history.

     

‘New novel: Doneraile Court’

    

‘A young woman faces death when she’s caught spying on a dark and bloody secret initiation ritual. Based on a true story.’ Click here.

The following is not a book review, because I haven’t read the book, but I want to share the news of a fictionalized take on one of Masonic history’s oddest oddities. Speaking of Ireland (see post below), a newly published novel romanticizes the famous story of a lady who found herself initiated into Freemasonry one night several years prior to the birth of the grand lodge era.

Doneraile Court: The Story of the Lady Freemason by Kathleen Aldworth Foster is based on the singular occurrence of an Irish lodge making a Freemason of the teenaged Elizabeth St. Leger.

Doneraile Court was the home of the young lady and her family. For those who don’t know, during the embryonic period before lodges bought their own buildings, chose proper names, and were assigned sequential numbers by their grand lodges, they often met inside Masons’ homes. (It was the early years of the Accepted Mason.) This was the case of Bro. Arthur St. Leger (d. 1727) of Doneraile House, who was made 1st Baron Kilmayden and Viscount Doneraile in 1703 by Queen Anne. Not an average Joe.

dochara.com

Masonic meetings, attended by the baron’s sons and select close friends, convened inside a ground floor lodge room with an adjoining library. As some remodeling work was underway, certain walls were temporarily incomplete, and so Elizabeth, age either 17 or 19, was able first to hear, and then to see Masonic ritual work. She was discovered by the lodge tyler (his lordship’s butler), and the rest is the stuff of weird Free and Accepted anecdote.

As I said, I don’t have any idea what is contained in the pages authored by Ms. Aldworth Foster. For an impressively researched disquisition of the event and its aftermath, replete with family tree and house floor plan, I can refer you only to Bro. Edward Conder’s “The Hon. Miss St. Leger and Freemasonry,” published in AQC Vol. VIII (1895).

Ms. Aldworth Foster is an experienced journalist and publicist in New Jersey. Maybe someone should contact her to arrange a nice dinner and reading/signing event. (I just learned of her appearance four days ago at Soldato Books in Jersey.)

You are wondering about the Aldworth part. Yes, Elizabeth St. Leger married Richard Aldworth, becoming The Hon. Mrs. Aldworth. The author, in her publicity, says there is no family tie.