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Calendar Grand Lodge of San Diego Freemason
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Bernard Pierre Mangam, Marshall of
France and Senator was appointed Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France and
served from 1862 to 1865. This is unusual because he was not a Mason. He was
appointed by Emperor Napoleon III. Dr.
Joseph Ignace Guillotine was a member of Concorde Fraternelle Lodge of Paris
and a member of the French Assembly. He obviously invented the device that
bears his name and was later executed with one. The
Rev. William Dodd, first Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of England, was hanged for
forgery on June 2nd, 1777. In
1839 the Mormons left Missouri and settled in the area of Nauvoo, IL. On October 15, 1841, the IL Grand Master
issued a dispensation to form a lodge at Nauvoo. On March 15th, 1842, Joseph
Smith received his first degree and the others shortly after. Certain
irregularities were reported – in five months the lodge initiated 256
candidates and 243 were raised. After investigation, the Grand Master revoked
the dispensation, but the lodge continued to work. On April 5, 1844, the Mormon
masons dedicated a Masonic Temple. IL Masons got in trouble for taking part in
the ceremony. Opposition to the group and internal dissension led to the
assassination of Joseph Smith and the removal of the Mormons from IL. Operative
Lodge #150 in Aberdeen, Scotland is unusual in that it is only open to
operative stonemasons. Dr.
Edward Jenner, in 1789 discovered the vaccination process against smallpox. He
was worshipful master of Faith and Friendship Lodge #270 in Berkeley, England
at the time. In
July 1863, Confederate raiders rode into Versailles, IN, capturing the local
militia and stealing the county treasury. The next day, General John Morgan
(CSA), learned that his men had also made off with the jewels of the local
lodge. They were returned the following day. Morgan was from Daviess
Lodge #22, Lexington, KY. Wheelock
Commandery No. 5 in Texas had all 55 of its members killed serving in the
Confederate Army. The Commandery ceased to exist. Missouri’s
first Confederate Capitol was the Masonic Building in Neosho, MS. From here the
legislature passed the Act of Secession. USA
General Thomas Benton, also Grand Master of Iowa, ordered Federal troops to
protect Albert Pike’s home and prevent the library from being burned, when his
troops took Little Rock, AR. July
2, 1751, Ferdinand VI of Spain issued an edict against Freemasonry. Father Jose
Torrubia secured a special dispensation from the Pope, joined a
lodge, secured the names of its members, and proceeded to have them arrested.
Hundreds were arrested, persecuted, and imprisoned. When
Mussolini gained control of Italy, Masonic lodges were declared illegal and the
Grand Master was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, where he died. Mussolini
also ordered all Masonic references removed, including the emblems on the base
of Garibaldi’s monument in Rome. After
the restoration of the republic, fascist emblems were removed and the Masonic
emblems restored. In
Fascist Spain under Franco, it was a crime to be a freemason. Masons convicted
had to serve prison terms equal in years to the number of Masonic degrees
possessed. Master Mason – 3 years. Winnedumah
Lodge #287 of Bishop, CA holds its meetings at 270 feet below sea level, the
lowest lodge in North America. In
1954 Martin’s Station Lodge No. 188 of VA was opened 952 feet below the surface
of Cumberland Mountain in Cudjo’s Cave, which lies between Cumberland Gap,
Tenn. and Middleburo, KY. 345 Masons were present and a MM degree was
conferred. Chicago,
IL has three American Legion Posts whose memberships are entirely Masonic. All
four Presidents of the Republic of Texas, David Burnett, Sam Houston, Mirabeau
Lamar, and Anson Jones, were Masons. Between
1737 and 1779 two sailing ships of interest operated off the U.S. eastern
seaboard, Freemason and Master Mason. The Freemason caught fire and sank in Marblehead Harbor, Mass in 1779. On
November 10, 1928, the Grand Lodge of California held a special communication
at Culver City, to lay the corner stone of the Masonic temple. The lodge room
was so crowded that the Grand Lodge officers were unable to enter. They retired
to the Ladies’ powder room to open the grand lodge for the ceremony. In
1801, Czar Alexander I of Russia banned the craft. In 1803 he rescinded the
order and became a Freemason. But in 1822 he again ordered Freemasonry banned
in Russia. In
May, 1843, a group of representatives from fourteen Grand Lodges met in
Baltimore, MD, with the view of adopting uniform Masonic rituals. The meeting
was presided over by John Dove of VA; Charles W. Moore of Mass. prepared the
proposed ritual. The convention’s work was not generally accepted. In
1799, Barton Lodge in Upper Canada accepted “good merchantable wheat” in
payment of lodge dues. Lodge
St. George in Bermuda has rented an old state house since 1816 from the
Governor for the sum of “one peppercorn per year.” In
1892, the tallest building in the world was the Masonic Temple at Randolph and
State Streets, Chicago, IL. Brother
William Brockmeier (1866-1947) of St. Louis conducted 5586 Masonic funeral
services. Thomas
Jacob Shryock served as Grand Master of Masons in Maryland for 32 years. He
died after being elected to serve his 33rd Term. The
largest Master’s chair is in Ophir Lodge #33 Murphys, CA. It is 15 feet long
and can seat the Master, living Past Masters, and visiting dignitaries. On
June 7, 1921, Mystic Lodge #21 of Red Bank, NJ had conferred half of the MM
degree on brother Lyman C. Van when the power went out. He didn’t receive the
rest of the degree for several weeks, making him for a time, a “two and half
degree” mason. When
the great Obelisk of Alexandria (Cleopatra’s Needle) was moved to New York in
1880, there were discovered certain emblems on the original foundation and
pedestal. One is clearly a square, causing some to conclude that Masonry
existed in ancient Egypt. This issue is still open to debate. On
August 23, 1879, Lodge #239 of France held a meeting in a balloon flying over
Paris, at which time a candidate was initiated. On
his famous solo flight across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh wore a square and
compasses on his jacket as a good luck piece. He was a mason. Richard
E. Byrd and his pilot Bernt Balchen, both brothers, dropped Masonic flags over
the north and south poles. Brother Balchen also tossed his Shrine Fez on the
South Pole. Gordon
Cooper, in his Mercury capsule, carried a Masonic coin and a blue Masonic flag
on his 22 orbit flight, which he later presented to his mother lodge. Andrew
McNair, a Philadelphia Mason, rang the Liberty bell in Independence Hall of
July 8, 1776 to call the people together to hear the reading of the Declaration
of Independence. The bell developed a crack when it was rung for the death of
Chief Justice Marshall, Past Grand Master of Virginia. In
the spring of 1966, brother Dallas Coleman of Denison Lodge #373 of Kansas was
digging a pond when he came across an overturned gravestone marked with the
Square and Compasses. Research lead to a determination that it belonged to
Brother Henry Craig (1832-1862) of Valley Falls Lodge #21. The brethren of the
lodge reset and cleaned the monument and erected a fence around it to keep
livestock away and continue to maintain it. Lyndon
Johnson took the first degree of Masonry on October 30, 1937 but never
progressed any further. Sam
Rayburn, Speaker of the House took his first degree on August 7, 1922. He died
in 1961 without receiving the second. Warren
G. Harding was initiated on June 28, 1901 and it took him 19 years to complete
the other two. Lodges
in Mass. have no numbers. In
Penn. there are 11 lodges that have numbers but no names. In
Georgia there are two lodges with the number 1. In
Maryland, Tennessee and Penn. there is no lodge with the number 1 Hiram
Abiff Boaz, born Dec. 18 1866 in Murray, KY. Received his degrees in 1922
before an unusually large crowd and served as Grand Chaplin (TX) in 1953. Between
1890 (when it became a state) and 1951, every Governor of Wyoming, except one,
was a Mason. The one, Mrs. William A. Ross, was the wife of a mason and a
member of Eastern Star. Every
President from Tenn. was a Mason (Jackson, Johnson and Polk) President
FDR raised two of his sons on the same night, Nov 7, 1935 – Architect Lodge
#519 in NY. In
1951, while President, Harry Truman served as Master of his lodge. Paul
Revere was a Mason, as was his cohort, Robert Newman, who hung the lantern in
the Old North Church. Angelo
Soliman, was born in Africa in 1721 and brought to Europe as a slave at the age
of ten. He was educated, married, and became a favorite in the royal court in
Vienna. Somewhere before 1771 he became a mason. When he died 1776, the Emperor
had his body stuffed and mounted in the Natural History Museum, becoming not
only the first black of African birth to become a mason, but the also the first
mason to be stuffed, mounted, and displayed. John
Aasen of Highland Park Lodge No. 382 in Los Angeles, CA was the largest known
MM ever raised. At the time he was 8.5 feet tall and weighed 536 pounds. Charles
Stratton, a.k.a. Tom Thumb, was 24 inches high and weighed 16 pounds when
raised in 1862. Theodore
Parvin was Grand Secretary for Iowa from 1844 to 1901, except for 1852- 53 when
he was Grand Master. When
asked of Masonry, President William McKinley explained: “After the battle
of Opequam, I went with the surgeon of our Ohio regiment to the field where
5,000 confederate prisoners were under guard. As soon as we passed the
guard, the doctor shook hands with a number of prisoners and began passing out
his roll of bills. On the way back to camp I asked him, ‘Did you know those
men?’ ‘No’ ‘But you gave them a lot of money, do you expect to get it back?’
‘If they are able to pay me back, they will. It makes no difference to me; they
are brother masons in trouble and I am only doing my duty.’ I said to myself,
‘If that is Masonry, I will take some of it myself.'”
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