Murray Armour Scott Jr., P.M., 32°
December 17, 2018
Research Paper
The cause and decline of Masonry from 1826 to 1860
The cause of the decline of Masonry from 1826 to 1860 will be investigated. The results, accusations and final discovery will be given. The answer to the question, so what, will be discussed. This time period affected all of Free Masonry not just the Scottish Rite.
In 1826 William Morgan disappeared from Batavia, New York. This was after he threatened to disclose the secrets of Masonry. His supposed kidnappers received minimal punishment. The
Masons were accused of murdering him. This caused a backlash against all of Masonry. Thurlow
Weed became the leader of the political Anti-Masonic Party which was also the Anti-Andrew
Jackson Party. General and President Andrew Jackson was also a Mason. John Quincy Adams wrote a book that was highly critical of the Masons and he was well known Mason himself. This did not help. The Anti- Masonic Party ran William Wirt as their presidential candidate in 1828.1
The accepted birth date of William Morgan is August 7, 1771 in Culpeper County, Virginia. He later was an apprentice stone mason and worked as a stone mason in Lexington Kentucky. He then returned to Richmond, Virginia and worked on the construction of the Orange County
Court House. William Morgan, 45, married a 16 year old girl by the name of Lucinda Pendleton; she was the daughter of a Methodist minister. This took place in Virginia in 1819.2 In 1820 or
1821 they arrived in Canada and he found a job working on a farm. Next he worked in a brewery as a brew master until it was destroyed by a fire. In 1822 he returned to the United
States suffering in poverty. When Morgan and his wife returned the family had two young children. Morgan visited Masonic Lodges in the United States claiming he was made a Master
Mason in Canada but no record has been found there.3 Then Morgan moved to Batavia, New
York from Rochester, New York. Morgan then tried to visit two Masonic Lodges in Batavia and was refused admission in 1826. There is a record that he received the Royal Arch Degrees at Le- Roy, New York in 1825. William Stone sent a letter to John Quincy Adams about Morgan and it said: “he was a hard drinker, and his nights, and sometimes his days also, were spent in tipping houses, while occasionally, to the still greater neglect of his family, he joined in drinking carousals of the vilest and most worthless men; and his disposition was envious, malicious and vindictive” 4 This obviously is not how a Mason should or would act.
William Morgan claimed to have served in the War 0f 1812 with the rank of Captain. Several men with the same name are on the Virginia Militia rolls but none of them are listed as a
Captain.5 We don’t even know if one of them was the William Morgan of this research paper.
Not much about what Morgan claimed can be trusted. The newspaper publishers of the time loved all of this sensationalism as it sold more newspapers. If something was later unproven it
did not matter as the damage had already been done to the Free and Accepted Masons.
The Royal Arch Chapter in Batavia New York submitted a petition to the Grand Chapter of
New York with an appropriate number on Companions listed on it, including William Morgan, to establish a chapter in Leroy, New York. Some of the Brethren became very upset when they discovered Morgan’s name on it because of his bad reputation. So a second petition was done without his name on it. When Morgan found out he was very upset. He was very vengeful and threatened to publish and expose all the secrets of Masonry.6 David Cade Miller, a local newspaper publisher gave Morgan a sizeable advance to publish his book “Illustrations of
Masonry”. This was critical of Freemasons and revealed the ritual secrets which all Masons swear on the Bible to never reveal. Today you can probably find the secrets on the internet but not in the 1800’s. Miller had received the first degree in Masonry, the Entered Apprentice
Degree, but was denied further advancement by his Lodge. So David Cade Miller and William Morgan both had a grudge against the Masons. Millers newspaper office and print shop was set on fire, but no real damage was done, the cause being unknown. Of course the Anti-
Masonic Party accused the Masons.
Next Morgan was arrested on September 11, 1826 for failure to pay a loan and for stealing a shirt. When David Cade Miller learned of this he paid the fine and got Morgan out of jail.
Morgan was then rearrested for failure to pay a tavern bill. Four men: Nicholas Cheseboro, Col.
Edward Sawyer, Loton Lawson and John Sheldon showed up at the jail and got Morgan released. They helped him get on a stage coach headed for Fort Niagara, one hundred miles away. The stage coach driver reported that Morgan went willingly and was not restrained. The four men were later charged with conspiracy to seize him and carrying him to foreign parts.7
The men were initially found innocent but public outrage encouraged by the Anti-Masonic Party caused them to be retried and found guilty. The local Sherriff, Eli Bruce, was also charged and found guilty for his pre-knowledge of the plan of the four men, all served various jail sentences
. 8 There are several theories on what happened next. One theory is that Morgan was turned over to the Canadian Masonic brothers. Another theory is that he was murdered by his Masonic brothers by being thrown into the Niagara River resulting in his drowning. One theory was that he was paid a big sum of money to just disappear by the Anti-Masons.
After Morgan disappeared the publisher, David Cade Miller, did publish William Morgan’s book and it became a best seller.9 This also helped the Anti-Masonic Party. On October 7, 1827 a partly decayed human body was discovered on the beach at Oak Orchard Park, Lake Ontario, forty miles east of Fort Niagara. Mrs. Lucinda Morgan was summoned to identify the body.
She was accompanied by members of the Anti-Masonic Party. Her testimony was that she could not identify the clothing or tracts in his pockets. She then said the body was her husband
William Morgan. The newspapers were excited at the finding of the body.10 A newspaper in
Canada had carried a notice that a Timothy Monro of Clark Township had left for Newark in a small boat and while attempting to return had drowned in the Niagara River. Mrs. Monro with her son and a friend identified the body as that of Timothy Monro. They also identified the cloths and the contents of his pocket before seeing them. A Jury was formed and seven witnesses confirmed that the body was that of Timothy Monro and not that of William Morgan.
Two doctors testified that the teeth were that of Timothy Monro. The body was released to
Mrs. Monro for proper burial in Canada.11 The damage to Masonry had already been done!
The Anti-Masonic Party would not accept this so they had a memorial erected in 1882 by the
National Christian Association, a group that opposed secret societies. It was erected in the cemetery at Batavia, New York. The ceremony was witnessed by one thousand people. Some people believe William Morgan is buried there and some believe Timothy Monro is buried there under William Morgan’s name.
The monument reads:
“Sacred to the memory of Wm. Morgan, a native of Virginia, a Capt. In the War of 1812, a respectable citizen of Batavia and a martyr to the freedom of writing, printing and speaking the truth. He was abducted from near this spot in the year 1826, by Freemasons and murdered for revealing the secrets of their order. The court records of Genesee County and the files of the
Batavia Advocate, kept in the Recorders office contain the history of the events that caused the erection of this monument.” 12
So what happened to Freemasonry? In 1938 then Sovereign Grand Commander of the
Scottish Rite stated “The outstanding personality of the founders was John James Gourgas. It was he who kept the Scottish Rite alive during the years when-but for-him it would have faded out. It was Gourgas, assisted by Giles Fonda Gates who re-vivified the rite after the great anti- masonic agitation, and then started our Supreme Council on its career to become the strong, virile and successful organization which it now is.” John James Gourgas was Sovereign Grand
Commander from 1832 to 1851. Giles Fonda Gates was Sovereign Grand Commander in 1851.
Giles Fonda Gates received his 33° just as the anti-masonic movement was reaching its peak and many lodges as well as the Supreme Council curtailed their activities. He kept the Albany
Lodge of Perfection going. As Masonry began to rebound he encouraged John James Gourgas to reactivate the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.13
In the United States twenty-six Grand Lodges existed in 1826 and Masonic membership was estimated at 75,000. But people were suspicious of Masonic motives. They did not like an organization that met behind closed door and could identify each other by secret handshakes, gestures and words. These people referred to themselves as Anti-Masons.
Morgan had all but disappeared in 1826. This setting was ideal for the Anti-Masons to act on.
The Anti-Masonic Party made the most of this unfortunate and inaccurate situation. People rose against each other and even families were divided. It got so bad that the Governor and
Grand Master of Michigan Masons, Lewis Cass, asked all the Michigan Territorial Lodges to shut down until the Anti-Masonic sentiment quieted down. 14 This happened in Grand Lodges all across the United States.
General and President of The United States Andrew Jackson was also the Past Grand Master of Tennessee. He openly supported the Masons, saying “the Masonic Society was an institution calculated to benefit mankind and he trusted that it would continue to prosper.” 15 The Anti-
Masonic Party ran William Wirt of Maryland and Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania for President and Vice President of the United States in1932. They only received the seven electoral votes.
The power of the Anti-Masonic Party was over. Andrew Jackson was re-elected president for a second term and he was an outspoken and well known Freemason. 16 The wife of William
Morgan Lucinda (or supposed widow) remarried in 1932. In June of 1881 a grave was discovered in a quarry with bones and a metal box. Inside the box was a ring with the initials
“W.M” engraved on it.17
Morgan was about one hundred years to late revealing the ritual of Freemasonry in his book.
The first rituals of the Grand Lodge of England were printed in the London Times by a reporter.
This was right after the Grand Lodge of England was formed.18
Now we have the information on what caused the decline of Masonry in the 1800”s. For over a century the truth about the fate of William Morgan is unknown. “However in 1950 the Grand
Master of the Grand Lodge of Michigan, Morgan J. Smead, carried on an extensive correspondence with I. Dwight Hunter, the husband of the great granddaughter of William
Morgan, who lived in Belize, British Honduras, which proved conclusively that William Morgan left Batavia and crossed Lake Ontario into Canada. Morgan left Canada and was shipwrecked in
1827 in the Cayman Islands. He and his children eventually settled at Utilla in the Republic of
Honduras.” The correspondence was discovered in the Charles Fey papers at the Bentley
Historical Library, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.19
Hunters first letter to Smead said he had been collecting information on William Morgan for the past forty-five years. Covering from the time he had ship wrecked in the Cayman Islands in
1827. Hunter hoped to publish a book called “A SOJURNER IN THE CARRIBBEAN”. No record of the book has been found.20
In the second letter from Hunter he said two of the crew stayed in the Cayman Islands. They were William Morgan and James Wood Hunter (Dwight Hunters great grandfather). William
Morgan later married a local girl named Catherine Ann Page and they had six children. The grandson of William Morgan told Hunter that the reason he avoided strangers was because he had divulged Masonic secrets. Morgan’s granddaughter Letitia told Hunter that her mother told her that Moran did not want his identity revealed because he was supposed to be dead.21
Morgan told one of his daughters, not long before his death, that he left a wife and three small children behind in the United States. Morgan died around 1864 and is buried in an unmarked grave at his request on his former property in Utilla. The third letter talks about possible connections to other people and sending money to the Old North Church in Boston.
The fourth and last letter dated February 3, 1951 just asked Grand Master Smead if he had received the second letter dated December 16, 1950.22 So Morgan was not murdered but lived a natural life and even raised a second family.
So what did all this mean? Well in New York in 1826 there were about five hundred Lodges. In
1846 there were only 65 Lodges. By 1860 there were 432 Lodges. Not until 1860 had the fraternity regained the position of strength it had before the Morgan event and Anti-Masonry. This same thing happened in other states as well. In Michigan only one lodge stayed open. To this day some people still believe Morgan was murdered. People still believe the false statements the Anti-Masons made. There is still a lot of misinformation out there.
Masons do not have to be living under a dictatorship to experience hate and distrust. In Great
Britain in 1997 laws were recommended that police, judges and other government officials identify themselves and register on a list as being Freemasons. Recently members of Parliament are required to state their membership in the Masons. There is still a public perception of injustice. In France magazine covers still have anti-masonic headlines. The head of Vivendi-
Universal, the French parent of Universal Studios, blamed financial losses on a Masonic plot.23
To this day some churches give brethren a choice of either the Masons or them.
Authors still write books and sensualize them and tell wild stories about the Masons. This sells books. The news media uses sensualized stories on the news all the time to keep people interested.
What can we tell people to educate them that the Masons are good and not evil? I might tell people that the early stone masons traveled all over Europe. They set up lodges at the various building locations for fellowship and company. The lodge meeting followed a certain format or ritual. They had different grades of stone masons like apprentice, fellow craft and master. Each level had special handshakes, signs and pass words. This enabled men to travel from job to job and country and country and prove their qualifications. This proved they were not imposters but qualified tradesmen, kind of like the unions of today. As time went by the stone masons trade dwindled due to more modern building methods. Because of this change men who were not stone masons were allowed to join the lodges as Speculative Masons. Today the handshakes, signs and pass words are supposedly used to identify each other but are only used mostly in the Lodge. The format or ritual has not changed much to keep the history preserved, this is fun, educates and helps make men better. There is nothing sinister or evil in the means of identification or ritual, the traditions are just preserved. Religion and politics are not allowed to be discussed in the lodge. The Masonic values must be communicated to the outside world so people know us and what we stand for. People need to know about the charities we support. People see Masonic work every day but don’t know it.
In conclusion we now know that Morgan was not murdered and lived a long life. President
Andrew Jackson ran and was reelected for a second term and he was a Mason. The Anti-
Jackson Party turned into the Anti-Masonic Party. The Anti-Masonic Party tried to use it against
Andrew Jackson by making Masonry look bad. The Anti-Masonic Party lost the election and
Jackson won. The nation moved on to other issues like slavery. Could this happen again? Yes, if another President was a Mason and ran for election or reelection it could happen again.
1. Clegg, Robert Ingham, 33°, Mackey’s History of Freemasonry (The Masonic History Company, 1921), 2040
2. Bryant, Allison D., P.M., the Widow of William Morgan (Michigan Lodge of Research No.1 1990-1991 Volume Four) 44
3. Clegg, 2041
4. Clegg, 2042
5. Bryant, Allison D., P.M. Gladwin Lodge No. 397, F. & A. M The Morgan affair: What happened to Morgan Investigating A Speculation . http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/morgan_theory.html accessed 2018 6. Bryant, Allison D., P.M., the Widow of William Morgan (Michigan Lodge of Research No.1 1990-1991 Volume Four) 44
7. Clegg, 2044
8. Bryant, Allison D., P.M. Gladwin Lodge No. 397, F. & A. M The Morgan affair: What happened to Morgan Investigating A Speculation . http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/morgan_theory.html accessed 2018
9. Bryant, Allison D., P.M. Gladwin Lodge No. 397, F. & A. M The Morgan affair: What happened to Morgan Investigating A Speculation . http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/morgan_theory.html accessed 2018
10. Clegg, 2048
11. Clegg. 2049-50
12. Bryant, Allison D., P.M. Gladwin Lodge No. 397, F. & A. M The Morgan affair: What happened to Morgan Investigating A Speculation . http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/morgan_theory.html accessed 2018
13. Sovereign Grand Commanders https://scottishritenmj.org/about/history/sovereign-grand-commanders accessed6-27-2018
14. Doycher Jr., Raymond Wenzel., Freemasonry Comes To Michigan Along the Saginaw Indian Trail (Bookability LCC, 2016) 54-55
15. Clegg, 2054
16. Clegg, 2058
17. Bryant, Allison D., P.M. Gladwin Lodge No. 397, F. & A. M The Morgan affair: What happened to Morgan Investigating A Speculation . http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/morgan_theory.html accessed 2018
18. TODAY in Masonic History: The Morgan Affair https://www.masonrytoday.com/index.php?new_month=10&new_day=21&new_year=2017 accessed 2018
19. Bryant, Allison D., P.M., What Happened to Morgan-Investigation A Speculation (Michigan Lodge of Research No.1 1992-1993 Volume V) 7
20. Bryant (Michigan Lodge of Research No.1 1992-1993 Volume V) 8 21. Bryant (Michigan Lodge of Research No.1 1992-1993 Volume V) 9
22. Bryant (Michigan Lodge of Research No.1 1992-1993 Volume V) 10
23. Hodapp, Christopher, 33°, Freemasons for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River St., Hoboken, N.J. 2013) 84-85