The Freemasons In America:. H. Paul Jeffers
point out that the monument was built of 36,000 separate blocks of granite and that the number 36 is derived by multiplying 3 by 12. The capstone weighs exactly 3,300 pounds. As to the 188 specially donated memorial stones, those with suspicions of Freemasonry record that Masonic lodges throughout the world gave thirty-five that were mingled with the others, but that the last several were placed at the 330-foot level. These critics of Freemasonry claim that the cost of the monument, reported to be 1.3 million, is yet another instance of the Masonic number 13. The monument has eight windows that total thirty-nine square feet in size, a figure reached by multiplying 3 by 13. The figure 39 divided by 2 is 19.5, which is supposedly another significant Masonic number. The number 8 is purported to convey in occult numerology “new beginnings” and 13 means “extreme rebellion.” This is seen as a “new beginning,” that among Masons it is a euphemism for a “New World Order” through an “extreme rebellion,” such as the Mason-inspired American Revolution. There are said to be other, more complicated Masonic numbers concealed within the construction of the monument that was constructed to honor the first Masonic president and designed so that both the White House and the Capitol face it. The obelisk was located at that place so that residents and visitors to the Capitol could face the obelisk daily. The monument is also described as part of a sinister Masonic design for the capital city itself that will be examined in a later chapter of this book.
During the period when the Washington Monument was slowly rising in fits and starts, the American style of Freemasonry was spreading as steadily as the continental country and the nation.
Chapter 6
Little Lodge on the Prairie
BY THE TIME OF WASHINGTON’S DEATH, LODGES IN THE THIRTEEN states had become adherents of the Scottish Rite. Its earliest recording in America, at Washington’s lodge in Fredericksburg, is dated December 22, 1753. Two years after his funeral, the Mother Supreme Council of the World was formed in Charleston, South Carolina (May 31, 1801). It established a thirty-third degree in the Scottish Rite, described by the Masonic historian C. W. Leadbeater in Freemasonry and Its Ancient Mysteries as “the most important and splendid of All Masonic Obediences.”
After the Revolutionary War, a wave of Americans in search of land and bright opportunities began to move west. Masons took a prominent part in the exploration and settling of the new lands. On September 24, 1805, the Western Star Lodge No. 107 became the first lodge in the Indiana Territory. It held its first meeting in a two-story brick building that would later be rented to the state of Illinois to serve as the first state capitol.
By 1816, several Masonic lodges were operating in the Indiana Territory. They had been granted charters by the Grand Lodges of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Indiana. A Masonic Convention on December 9, 1822, was held in the state capitol building at Vandalia. Several lodges in the territory that had been granted charters by the grand lodges of other states decided that since the territory had become a state in 1818, they should form their own grand lodge. Two days later, they proceeded to organize and nominate officers. They were presented to the lodges, approved, and duly elected. A year later, the Grand Lodge of Illinois met in “communication.” From 1805 to 1827, eighteen lodges were formed in Illinois. One of the members recalled:
Brothers that came two to four hours early started the fire to warm up the Lodge Room. This took cutting, splitting, hauling and stacking a lot of wood. Some of our Lodges hold on to the tradition of meeting as close to the full moon as possible. The quaint practice had the practical purpose of giving the Brothers coming home over those rutted and sometimes washed out roads a chance for their horse to see the hazards while they got some much needed sleep, having been up since before dawn to start the chores.
The gold rush fever of the Pikes Peak region of Colorado in 1858 attracted men of all descriptions—fortune-hunters, prospectors, and rovers—who were eager for quick wealth and excitement. A Masonic historian described a flood of
hurriedly-formed wagon trains departing from Missouri river outposts thrown together for 700-mile, month-long journeys, men of every ilk, many of them fleeing from the rigidity of law and order and civilization. But its lure was irresistible to Masons, too. Many members of the craft responded to the sudden challenge of the frontier. And having been forced to associate with adventurers of dubious backgrounds during the tedious overland journey, upon arrival in the new country they quickly sought the company of their brethren.
Within ten days after the founding of the first permanent settlement at the junction of Cherry Creek and the Platte, the first informal assemblage of seven Masons was held in what was to be the territory and then the state of Colorado. Andrew Sagendorf, a member of that pioneering group, told the grand lodge in 1912 that the first meeting of Masonry in Denver was held in W. G. Russell’s cabin on Perry street, near the site of the first bridge, early in November 1858. James Winchester presided, but because he was absent much of the time, Henry Allen generally occupied the Worshipful Master’s station. No stated time or place of meeting was observed, so it was generally once a week and at the most secure and convenient cabin.
J. D. Ramage recalled:
After being accosted by the salutation “Ho, that tent over there,” from a man [Henry Allen], I accompanied Brother Allen to his abode, and there found brothers W. M. Slaughter, Dr. Russell, Andrew Sagendorf, and Oscar Lehow. These brethren together with Brother Allen and myself, made the first seven Masons, according to my knowledge and belief, who ever met in Colorado, having in contemplation the application for a charter, and a seven who stuck together, as Masons should do, through thick and thin.
They agreed to meet every Saturday night and “as our object in locating in Colorado was to get gold (we were supposed to be out prospecting during the week) we decided that any ideas concerning the country we were in which might come to us, news of mines we might discover, or any information which might be beneficial to the brethren, Masonically or financially, would at the next meeting, be given to the Masons there assembled.”
In the deep South, a band of English colonists under the leadership of General James Edward Oglethorpe had arrived on the west bank of the Savannah River on February 12, 1733. This was the birth of the English province of Georgia, the last of the thirteen colonies, and the southwestern frontier of British America. On December 13, 1733, the Grand Lodge of England at its Quarterly Communication in London adopted a resolution to “collect the Charity of this Society towards enabling the Trustees [of Georgia] to send distressed Brethren to Georgia where they may be comfortably provided for.” On February 21, 1734, a lodge was opened in Savannah, but without warrant. Noble Jones, a friend of Oglethorpe’s, was initiated as the first Freemason in Georgia. On December 2, 1735, the lodge was warranted by the Grand Lodge of England and entered on the engraved list as the “Lodge at Savannah in Ye Province of Georgia.”
By 1892, there were fifty grand lodges in the United States, including one in the Indian Territory, which later became the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma It has been said that in every pioneer settlement of the West first came the church, then a school, then a Masonic lodge.
The Masonic scholar Duncan C. Howard, Past Grand Master in Texas, writes, “Masonry is the stuff from which good dreams come.” Asserting that it dreams of a fatherhood of God, brotherhood of men, law and order and good citizenship in state, community, and nation, he continues, “No one seriously believes that Masonry has a monopoly on good citizenship. But the Masonic dream became the American dream as the early Masons in this nation faced the problems of a wild frontier.” With motivation for law and order and motivation for better living in their community, pioneering Masons “became the motivators to establish free schools, free churches and Freemasonry wherever they lived.”
This expansion of Freemasonry across the continent was stimulated by the Louisiana Purchase, negotiated on President Jefferson’s behalf by Masons James Monroe, as secretary of state, and Robert R. Livingston, the New York Grand Master, who’d been on the committee with Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Roger Sherman that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He’d also administered Washington’s oath of office.
Eager to learn everything he could about the region, Jefferson enlisted Meriwether Louis, a boyhood friend and personal secretary, and William Clark, a