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Article A REPLY TO MASSACHUSETTS. Page 1 of 2 Article A REPLY TO MASSACHUSETTS. Page 1 of 2 →
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A Reply To Massachusetts.
A REPLY TO MASSACHUSETTS .
FKOM THB KEYSTONE . NO one dislikes controversy more than we do . We greatly prefer to have every one agree with ns . It is painful for ns to have a difference with any one , much more with a Brother Mason . Besides , wo never possessed the faculty to make tho worse appear the better reason . When the facts are with us wo oau express them with some degree of clearness , and arrango them in somo sort of consecutive
order , but more than this we canuot do . Wo would not manufacture facts , and wo cannot torture arguments . We are no advocate . But we are always willing to labour for Freemasonry , aud our purpose ever is first to discover the truth , and then to propagate it . As many as nine years ago , we thought that wo had discovered certain Masonio truth . Our discovery was afterwards corroborated
by the independent investigations of other brethren , brethren , too , on both sides of the ocean . This fortified us in our opinion . It led us to believe that we had not erred . But now , alas , we have had a sort of wooden nutmeg oast at us from New England—in the shape of a five-page article in the ( Providence , B . I . ) Freemasons' Repository , and we are pleasantly asked either to have onr metaphorical head
broken by it , or else to admit , in a manly manner , that we have " ducked " to avoid it . The same artiole lias appeared , in substance , in the London Freemason ' s Chronicle . Between the two , our favourite " opinion" ia to be decently laid out , and Masonically interred , and we are asked to appear among the mourners . We cannot do it . We are entirely too cheerful to join the proposed funeral throng .
Besides , we do not think the corpus delicti has been proven . 1 here is no body to bury . It wonld be a sham funeral . We have always been opposed to shams . No , Bro . " Undertaker " Norton , it is your funeral , not ours . At all events , it is Massachusetts' funeral , not Pennsylvania ' s , and non . affiliate Bro . Jacob Norton is the selfappointed principal conductor of ceremonies to the late lamented
Boston " notion , that Freemasonry on this continent had its origin in Massachusetts—to the quiet shades of the cemetery of oblivion . We cannot quote our brother ' s artiole entire , but we will give its caption and olose . It is entitled ( Yankee fashion ) " Was Lodge No . 79 , of 1730 , a Philadelphia Lodge ? " and it concludes : I now respectfully request of my friend , Bro . MacCalla , either to disprove the
facts and inferences given in this paper , or to confess , fair and square , that the English Lodge , No . 79 , was not located in Philadelphia , either in 1736 , or in any subsequent year . " We cannot honestly " confess , " Bro . N ., so we must try to " disprove . " And yet , why should our brother ask us to disprove this Lodge 79 theory ? We were not the discoverer of the fact that Lodge
79 and "The Hoop , " in Water Street , in Philadelphia , were identical . A far more learned , and a muoh better known brother , has that honour , one whose fame as a careful Masonio student and noted Masonio author is co-extensive with the prevalence of the English language , and indeed with universal Freemasonry around the globe . Bro . Wm . James Hnghan was the discoverer of the printed Lodge
list of 1735 , whioh states that Lodge 79 was our first Philadelphia Lodge , — "The Hoop . " He says it is worth all it states , and that it affords impartial contemporaneous evidence in favour of Philadelphia ' s primaoy in Masonry on thi 3 continent . Now , although Bro . Norton ought to have aimed his article at Bro . Hughan , since
he has seen fit to aim at us we will try to show him how little there is in it . First we will fairly epitomise Bro . Norton ' s arguments : Rawlinson ' s List of Lodges ( of A . D . 1733 ) from No . 1 to No . 116 , has Lodge No . 79 blank Pine ' s List , of 1734 , also has Lodge No . 79 blank .
"Smith ' s Pocket Companion" ( London 1735 ) also has Lodge No . 79 blank . " Here then ( says Bro . N ., ) we have three London brethren of 1733 and 1734 testifying that Lodge No . 79 was erased from the English register in the years of 1733 and 1734 . " " Smith's Pocket Companion " ( Dublin , 1735 ) has Lodge No . 116
( equivalent to Lodge No . 79 in the three preceding lists , the thirty . seven Irish Lodges being enumerated first in order in the Dnblin list ) as follows : " 116 , The Hoop , in Water Street , in Philadelphia , 1 st and 3 rd Thursday . " Bro . Norton remarks upon this HARD FACT in favour of Philadelphia :
"As No . 79 was the only erased Lodge on the list , and as tbe Dnblin reporter was probably puzzled as to why and wherefore that number was not filled up ; and probably HAVING HEARD ABOUT THE IXISTENCE OF A LODOE IN PHUADELPHIA , he therefore jumped to the conclusion that the Philadelphia Lodge was No . 79 , and so he filled the blank . "
Bro . Norton has conceded too much . He could not help it , we know , and it is highly creditable to him . The Dnblin reporter had heard " about the existence of a Lodge in Philadelphia , " No . 79 , of date 1730-1 . Indeed ! Dublin and Philadelphia were as far apart , then , as the Poles are now . Depend upon it he never learned of this Philadelphia Lodge from a mere rumour that straggled across the
Atlantic . No , he conld not have learned of it in that way . It is far more reasonable to suppose that he received his intelligence from London , rather than from Philadelphia , and from official souroes , rather than from rumour . But we will quote again from Bro . N . A Pine ' s list of Lodges of A . D . 1736 gives Lodge No . 79 as alive , meeting at " The Two Angels and Crown , London . "
Bro . Gould ' s list of A . D . 1730-32 gives "No . 79 , Castle , in Highgate . " And then Bro . N . asks , " in the name of common sense how can any one pretend to believe that Lodge No . 79 was located at Philadelphia in 1730 ?" We wish Bro . Norton had asked ns a harder question . We can answer him out of his own mouth , with his own words , and thoso of onr esteemed Bro . Gould . Bro . N . has told us , again and again , that
A Reply To Massachusetts.
the number of a Lodge signified nothing . One year it would belong to one Lodge , and the next to another . Numbers were bought and sold . Numbers were exchanged . Numbers lay around loose . Bro . Gould corroborates Bro . Norton , or Bro . Norton Bro . Gould , whichever he chooses . We do not desire to impeach Bro . N . ' s character as an original discoverer , particularly when he thus explains away his own
difficulties . We believe an English list of Lodges of 1731 or 1732 will yet be discovered , with the Philadelphia Lodge on as No . 79 . Bro . Hughan favours this expectation . The reasonable explanation of Bro . Norton's difficulty is , that our English Brethren , having received no returns ( as was the custom of foreign Lodges ) from the Philadelphia Lodge , warranted in 1730-1 , erased it , left it in blank
for several years , aud finally gave that number to another Lodge . This is all there is iu it . We have the HARD . FACT , that in 1735 , in the Dublin "Freemasou ' s Pocket Companion , " Lodge No . 79 ( whioh is set down between Lodges admittedly warranted in 1730 and 1731 ) is the Lodge at " The Hoop , in Water Street , Philadelphia . " Bro . N . 's own table , in the artiole we now oritioise , admits that Lodge No . 79 ,
of 1730 , afterwards became , in succession , Nos . 68 , 42 , 35 , 31 , 29 and 45 ! In 1832 this Lodge disappeared entirely . The value of this Lodge 79 testimony is only to corroborate other documentary , contemporaneous , official Masonio evidence , whioh proves that Philadelphia is the Mother-city of Masonry in America , or , as Bro . Hughan has phrased it , the premier Masonio jurisdiction
on this continent . We re-stated , in brief , the evidence of this faot in THE KEYSTONE of last week . We will only additionally state now , that the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania warranted Lodges in the following States of the United States : New Jersey , Delaware , Maryland , Virginia , North Carolina , South Carolina , Georgia , Louisiana , Ohio , Indiana , Missouri , North-West Territory and Indian Territory
—leaving only the New England States , or rather the Territory immediately adjacent to Massachusetts , to receive Masonic light from that jurisdiction ( see THE KEYSTONE for 26 th June 1883 ) . This list abundantly proves Pennsylvania ' s title to be regarded as the mother jurisdiction of ilasonry in America . Priority and maternity both have been positively proven .
Such is Pennsylvania ' s position , with a lawful Deputation or Charter granted by the Grand Master of England , 5 th April 1730 , and duly recorded in England at that time ; with a lawful Provincial Grand Lodge , organised under and in accordance with the pi'ovisions of said original Charter , at Philadelphia , on 24 th June 1732 ; with a regular annual election of Grand Officers
consecutively thereafter j with a record of its first Lodge , " The Hoop , in Water-street , in Philadelphia , " in the Dublin " Freemasons' Pocket Companion " of A . D . 1735 , and with the testimony of Henry B ^ s ' s letter of 17 th November 1754 , all in its favour . Now , on the other hand , what is Massachusetts' position F We dislike to state it , but the unjustifiable attaok of Massachusetts
on Pennsylvania compels us to do so . There is no regularity or lawful character whatever about early Massachusetts Masonry . It claims a Deputation from the Grand Master of England to Henry Price , of date 30 th April 1733 . There is no record or note of this Deputation on the books of the Grand Lodge of England . Henry Price was appointed Prov . Grand Master in 1768 , Thirty-five years after
his alleged first Deputation of 1733 , and he then asserted that he had been appointed in 1733 . The only evidence of it now remain , ing , is a Boston record , not made up until 1752 , which gives what purports to be a copy of it . In other words we are asked to believe in a copy of a paper of which there is no evidence that the original ever existed . We have Brother Jacob Norton ' s authority for these
statements . We have his articles on the subject before us as we write . He says , this Henry Price was " an illiterate tailor ; " that the first Lodge ( St . John's in Boston " never had a charter before it received one from the United Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1792 " ( and yet this very regular Lodge just celebrated its 150 th anniversary , and our esteemed Brother Sereno D . Niokerson , Grand
Secretary , delivered the laudatory historical address , in which , however he entirely failed to notice the unhistorical charaoter of tniB first Boston Lodge . ) Brother Norton further says : " In 1734 Price pretended to have received from the Earl of Cran . ford , Grand Master of England , an extension of jurisdiction , as Grand Master of all North America , and by virtue of which the record
claims that Price chartered Lodges at Philadelphia , at Charleston , S . C ., at Annapolis , at Halifax , Nova Scotia , aud at Portsmouth , N . H . Now all these statements I have elsewhere proved are unfounded . Price did not receive anything from the Earl of Cranford , nor did he grant charters to Philadelphia , Charleston , Nova Scotia , or Ports , mouth . * * When we find so many misstatements in the Boston
record , we may be allowed to doubt the rest , including Price's appointment in 1733 . " Further on , speaking of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts , Bro . Norton says : " The Grand Lodge kept no record whatever before- 1752 . The So-called original record of Massachusetts , from 1733 , 1 demonstrated
to have been manufactured by Charles Pelham , in or near 1752 . * * The Boston Provincial Grand Lodge held no Quarterly Communications before 1750 , it made no annual statements to the Grand Lodge of England , and it paid no two guineas for its new Lodges . * * In 1857 , Moore , in his life of Price , said that St . John ' s Lodge was without a charter till 1792 . "
It is very pleasant to be able to answer our critical Bro . Norton by quoting to him so acceptable and unimpeachable an authority ( to him ) as Bro . Norton ! And all this is not " only assertion and assumption . " There are many hard facts presented . Will our Massachusetts brethren fraternally clear up their own record , before they assume to attack Pensylvania ? We have no manufactured Lodge or Grand
Lodge minutes , written up eighteen years after the events pretende 1 to be narrated , and containing statements that are unwarranted by any corroborative evi ence whatever . No , we have only an original , lawful , duly registered in England , deputation in 1730 to Daniel Coxe ; a duly organized Provincial Grand Lodge in 1732 , as authorized by said deputation ; and other lawful evidence sufficiently
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
A Reply To Massachusetts.
A REPLY TO MASSACHUSETTS .
FKOM THB KEYSTONE . NO one dislikes controversy more than we do . We greatly prefer to have every one agree with ns . It is painful for ns to have a difference with any one , much more with a Brother Mason . Besides , wo never possessed the faculty to make tho worse appear the better reason . When the facts are with us wo oau express them with some degree of clearness , and arrango them in somo sort of consecutive
order , but more than this we canuot do . Wo would not manufacture facts , and wo cannot torture arguments . We are no advocate . But we are always willing to labour for Freemasonry , aud our purpose ever is first to discover the truth , and then to propagate it . As many as nine years ago , we thought that wo had discovered certain Masonio truth . Our discovery was afterwards corroborated
by the independent investigations of other brethren , brethren , too , on both sides of the ocean . This fortified us in our opinion . It led us to believe that we had not erred . But now , alas , we have had a sort of wooden nutmeg oast at us from New England—in the shape of a five-page article in the ( Providence , B . I . ) Freemasons' Repository , and we are pleasantly asked either to have onr metaphorical head
broken by it , or else to admit , in a manly manner , that we have " ducked " to avoid it . The same artiole lias appeared , in substance , in the London Freemason ' s Chronicle . Between the two , our favourite " opinion" ia to be decently laid out , and Masonically interred , and we are asked to appear among the mourners . We cannot do it . We are entirely too cheerful to join the proposed funeral throng .
Besides , we do not think the corpus delicti has been proven . 1 here is no body to bury . It wonld be a sham funeral . We have always been opposed to shams . No , Bro . " Undertaker " Norton , it is your funeral , not ours . At all events , it is Massachusetts' funeral , not Pennsylvania ' s , and non . affiliate Bro . Jacob Norton is the selfappointed principal conductor of ceremonies to the late lamented
Boston " notion , that Freemasonry on this continent had its origin in Massachusetts—to the quiet shades of the cemetery of oblivion . We cannot quote our brother ' s artiole entire , but we will give its caption and olose . It is entitled ( Yankee fashion ) " Was Lodge No . 79 , of 1730 , a Philadelphia Lodge ? " and it concludes : I now respectfully request of my friend , Bro . MacCalla , either to disprove the
facts and inferences given in this paper , or to confess , fair and square , that the English Lodge , No . 79 , was not located in Philadelphia , either in 1736 , or in any subsequent year . " We cannot honestly " confess , " Bro . N ., so we must try to " disprove . " And yet , why should our brother ask us to disprove this Lodge 79 theory ? We were not the discoverer of the fact that Lodge
79 and "The Hoop , " in Water Street , in Philadelphia , were identical . A far more learned , and a muoh better known brother , has that honour , one whose fame as a careful Masonio student and noted Masonio author is co-extensive with the prevalence of the English language , and indeed with universal Freemasonry around the globe . Bro . Wm . James Hnghan was the discoverer of the printed Lodge
list of 1735 , whioh states that Lodge 79 was our first Philadelphia Lodge , — "The Hoop . " He says it is worth all it states , and that it affords impartial contemporaneous evidence in favour of Philadelphia ' s primaoy in Masonry on thi 3 continent . Now , although Bro . Norton ought to have aimed his article at Bro . Hughan , since
he has seen fit to aim at us we will try to show him how little there is in it . First we will fairly epitomise Bro . Norton ' s arguments : Rawlinson ' s List of Lodges ( of A . D . 1733 ) from No . 1 to No . 116 , has Lodge No . 79 blank Pine ' s List , of 1734 , also has Lodge No . 79 blank .
"Smith ' s Pocket Companion" ( London 1735 ) also has Lodge No . 79 blank . " Here then ( says Bro . N ., ) we have three London brethren of 1733 and 1734 testifying that Lodge No . 79 was erased from the English register in the years of 1733 and 1734 . " " Smith's Pocket Companion " ( Dublin , 1735 ) has Lodge No . 116
( equivalent to Lodge No . 79 in the three preceding lists , the thirty . seven Irish Lodges being enumerated first in order in the Dnblin list ) as follows : " 116 , The Hoop , in Water Street , in Philadelphia , 1 st and 3 rd Thursday . " Bro . Norton remarks upon this HARD FACT in favour of Philadelphia :
"As No . 79 was the only erased Lodge on the list , and as tbe Dnblin reporter was probably puzzled as to why and wherefore that number was not filled up ; and probably HAVING HEARD ABOUT THE IXISTENCE OF A LODOE IN PHUADELPHIA , he therefore jumped to the conclusion that the Philadelphia Lodge was No . 79 , and so he filled the blank . "
Bro . Norton has conceded too much . He could not help it , we know , and it is highly creditable to him . The Dnblin reporter had heard " about the existence of a Lodge in Philadelphia , " No . 79 , of date 1730-1 . Indeed ! Dublin and Philadelphia were as far apart , then , as the Poles are now . Depend upon it he never learned of this Philadelphia Lodge from a mere rumour that straggled across the
Atlantic . No , he conld not have learned of it in that way . It is far more reasonable to suppose that he received his intelligence from London , rather than from Philadelphia , and from official souroes , rather than from rumour . But we will quote again from Bro . N . A Pine ' s list of Lodges of A . D . 1736 gives Lodge No . 79 as alive , meeting at " The Two Angels and Crown , London . "
Bro . Gould ' s list of A . D . 1730-32 gives "No . 79 , Castle , in Highgate . " And then Bro . N . asks , " in the name of common sense how can any one pretend to believe that Lodge No . 79 was located at Philadelphia in 1730 ?" We wish Bro . Norton had asked ns a harder question . We can answer him out of his own mouth , with his own words , and thoso of onr esteemed Bro . Gould . Bro . N . has told us , again and again , that
A Reply To Massachusetts.
the number of a Lodge signified nothing . One year it would belong to one Lodge , and the next to another . Numbers were bought and sold . Numbers were exchanged . Numbers lay around loose . Bro . Gould corroborates Bro . Norton , or Bro . Norton Bro . Gould , whichever he chooses . We do not desire to impeach Bro . N . ' s character as an original discoverer , particularly when he thus explains away his own
difficulties . We believe an English list of Lodges of 1731 or 1732 will yet be discovered , with the Philadelphia Lodge on as No . 79 . Bro . Hughan favours this expectation . The reasonable explanation of Bro . Norton's difficulty is , that our English Brethren , having received no returns ( as was the custom of foreign Lodges ) from the Philadelphia Lodge , warranted in 1730-1 , erased it , left it in blank
for several years , aud finally gave that number to another Lodge . This is all there is iu it . We have the HARD . FACT , that in 1735 , in the Dublin "Freemasou ' s Pocket Companion , " Lodge No . 79 ( whioh is set down between Lodges admittedly warranted in 1730 and 1731 ) is the Lodge at " The Hoop , in Water Street , Philadelphia . " Bro . N . 's own table , in the artiole we now oritioise , admits that Lodge No . 79 ,
of 1730 , afterwards became , in succession , Nos . 68 , 42 , 35 , 31 , 29 and 45 ! In 1832 this Lodge disappeared entirely . The value of this Lodge 79 testimony is only to corroborate other documentary , contemporaneous , official Masonio evidence , whioh proves that Philadelphia is the Mother-city of Masonry in America , or , as Bro . Hughan has phrased it , the premier Masonio jurisdiction
on this continent . We re-stated , in brief , the evidence of this faot in THE KEYSTONE of last week . We will only additionally state now , that the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania warranted Lodges in the following States of the United States : New Jersey , Delaware , Maryland , Virginia , North Carolina , South Carolina , Georgia , Louisiana , Ohio , Indiana , Missouri , North-West Territory and Indian Territory
—leaving only the New England States , or rather the Territory immediately adjacent to Massachusetts , to receive Masonic light from that jurisdiction ( see THE KEYSTONE for 26 th June 1883 ) . This list abundantly proves Pennsylvania ' s title to be regarded as the mother jurisdiction of ilasonry in America . Priority and maternity both have been positively proven .
Such is Pennsylvania ' s position , with a lawful Deputation or Charter granted by the Grand Master of England , 5 th April 1730 , and duly recorded in England at that time ; with a lawful Provincial Grand Lodge , organised under and in accordance with the pi'ovisions of said original Charter , at Philadelphia , on 24 th June 1732 ; with a regular annual election of Grand Officers
consecutively thereafter j with a record of its first Lodge , " The Hoop , in Water-street , in Philadelphia , " in the Dublin " Freemasons' Pocket Companion " of A . D . 1735 , and with the testimony of Henry B ^ s ' s letter of 17 th November 1754 , all in its favour . Now , on the other hand , what is Massachusetts' position F We dislike to state it , but the unjustifiable attaok of Massachusetts
on Pennsylvania compels us to do so . There is no regularity or lawful character whatever about early Massachusetts Masonry . It claims a Deputation from the Grand Master of England to Henry Price , of date 30 th April 1733 . There is no record or note of this Deputation on the books of the Grand Lodge of England . Henry Price was appointed Prov . Grand Master in 1768 , Thirty-five years after
his alleged first Deputation of 1733 , and he then asserted that he had been appointed in 1733 . The only evidence of it now remain , ing , is a Boston record , not made up until 1752 , which gives what purports to be a copy of it . In other words we are asked to believe in a copy of a paper of which there is no evidence that the original ever existed . We have Brother Jacob Norton ' s authority for these
statements . We have his articles on the subject before us as we write . He says , this Henry Price was " an illiterate tailor ; " that the first Lodge ( St . John's in Boston " never had a charter before it received one from the United Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1792 " ( and yet this very regular Lodge just celebrated its 150 th anniversary , and our esteemed Brother Sereno D . Niokerson , Grand
Secretary , delivered the laudatory historical address , in which , however he entirely failed to notice the unhistorical charaoter of tniB first Boston Lodge . ) Brother Norton further says : " In 1734 Price pretended to have received from the Earl of Cran . ford , Grand Master of England , an extension of jurisdiction , as Grand Master of all North America , and by virtue of which the record
claims that Price chartered Lodges at Philadelphia , at Charleston , S . C ., at Annapolis , at Halifax , Nova Scotia , aud at Portsmouth , N . H . Now all these statements I have elsewhere proved are unfounded . Price did not receive anything from the Earl of Cranford , nor did he grant charters to Philadelphia , Charleston , Nova Scotia , or Ports , mouth . * * When we find so many misstatements in the Boston
record , we may be allowed to doubt the rest , including Price's appointment in 1733 . " Further on , speaking of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts , Bro . Norton says : " The Grand Lodge kept no record whatever before- 1752 . The So-called original record of Massachusetts , from 1733 , 1 demonstrated
to have been manufactured by Charles Pelham , in or near 1752 . * * The Boston Provincial Grand Lodge held no Quarterly Communications before 1750 , it made no annual statements to the Grand Lodge of England , and it paid no two guineas for its new Lodges . * * In 1857 , Moore , in his life of Price , said that St . John ' s Lodge was without a charter till 1792 . "
It is very pleasant to be able to answer our critical Bro . Norton by quoting to him so acceptable and unimpeachable an authority ( to him ) as Bro . Norton ! And all this is not " only assertion and assumption . " There are many hard facts presented . Will our Massachusetts brethren fraternally clear up their own record , before they assume to attack Pensylvania ? We have no manufactured Lodge or Grand
Lodge minutes , written up eighteen years after the events pretende 1 to be narrated , and containing statements that are unwarranted by any corroborative evi ence whatever . No , we have only an original , lawful , duly registered in England , deputation in 1730 to Daniel Coxe ; a duly organized Provincial Grand Lodge in 1732 , as authorized by said deputation ; and other lawful evidence sufficiently