Frontier Freemasons: Masonic Networks Linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic World, 1750-1820
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Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations January 2020 Frontier Freemasons: Masonic Networks Linking The Great Lakes To The Atlantic World, 1750-1820 Kevin H. Nichols Wayne State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Recommended Citation Nichols, Kevin H., "Frontier Freemasons: Masonic Networks Linking The Great Lakes To The Atlantic World, 1750-1820" (2020). Wayne State University Dissertations. 2500. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/2500 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. FRONTIER FREEMASONS: MASONIC NETWORKS LINKING THE GREAT LAKES TO THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1750-1820 by KEVIN H. NICHOLS DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILISOPHY 2020 MAJOR: HISTORY Approved By: _________________________________________ Advisor Date ________________________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ _________________________________________ ©COPYRIGHT BY KEVIN H. NICHOLS 2020 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION I would like to thank Marguerite Leonard for more things than this simple paragraph can communicate. She was there through the years when I could not be and kept the home-fires burning without burning down the house. I never had to worry about things back home when I was away overseas, which is more comforting than many realize and likely something only those who have been there truly appreciate. I always knew that she had my back, and everything back home was in good hands. Moreover, Marguerite provided valuable feedback, comments, suggestions, and editing that helped make this dissertation better than it would be if left to my own devices. She did all of these things while juggling her own career and many obligations. Marguerite has my deepest thanks and respect. This Dissertation is dedicated to her. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many that I would like to thank who have helped me through the dissertation writing process. Most of all, I would like to thank the Freemasons themselves. Over the past three centuries, the masons have preserved their records and history and have made much of it open to the public. Without their dedication to preserving the history of their fraternity, this project would not have been possible. The best records in the world are not much help without the training and guidance to examine, interpret, and write about them in a meaningful way. To that end, I would like to thank my mentor and advisor, Dr. Eric Ash. Dr. Ash’s expertise was invaluable in helping me for formulate research questions, keeping my project on track against a tight timeline and guiding me through what can only be described as an unusual time at Wayne State. By that, I mean Dr. Ash worked with me through numerous overseas deployments and writing a dissertation during a pandemic. Never will one find a more dedicated, thoughtful and supportive mentor, for which I am grateful. I would also like to thank the Wayne State University History Department for awarding me the Graduate Professional Scholarship and the Dr. Gerald Dreslinski research award. In addition, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the Michigan Master Masons Scholarship Fund for providing support for me to finish this study. Lastly, I would like to thank the faculty, fellow graduate students, and the masons of Romeo #41 Masonic Lodge. Throughout this process, all of these people have influenced and supported me on this project. The training, coursework, conversations, and support have made my time at Wayne State enjoyable and productive. My sincere thanks to all. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication___________________________________________________________ ii Acknowledgements___________________________________________________ iii List of Figures________________________________________________________ v Introduction_________________________________________________________ 1 Chapter 1 The History, Philosophy and Spread of Freemasonry_________________ 14 Chapter 2 Military Masonic Lodges and the Spread of Freemasonry_____________ 40 Chapter 3 Masonic Brotherhood and the Creation of Regional Business Networks _ 84 Chapter 4 The Masonic Network, Great Lakes to the World ___________________ 145 References _________________________________________________________ 186 Abstract ___________________________________________________________ 207 Autobiographical Statement ___________________________________________ 209 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Example of the Regius Manuscript…………………………………………………………………………… 18 Figure 2: The Symbol of Freemasonry…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 23 th th Figure 3: Great Lakes Fur Trade Routes, 17 – 19 centuries………………………………………………….. 67 Figure 4: Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) Saving the Life of CAPT. John McKinstrey, A Brother Freemason………………………………………………………………………………………………. 79 Figure 5: The Great Lakes, Canada and New England Regions, along with key cities, th settlements and trading centers in the early 19 century………………………………………. 86 Figure 6: The Bark Lincoln in Smyra, Turkey, July 4th, 1853………………………………………………..... 147 Figure 7: The bark Isaac Rich as it entered the port of Leghorn, Italy, in 1876………………………. 148 Figure 8: Account book for the North West Company for 1815-1814 including the goods carried on the Colonel Allan………………………………………………………………………………... 160 v 1 Introduction: The Atlantic World, Great Lakes and Freemasonry The Atlantic World was a European invention, not because Europeans were its only occupants, but because advances in European ship technology allowed the Europeans to be the first to connect its four sides into a single entity. While Europeans were the first to do this, all non-European peoples shared in this development. This is different from other bodies of water such as the Indian Ocean which had been fully integrated prior to the arrival of the Portuguese and is the object of studies such as: Crossing the Bay of Bengal by Sunil S. Amrith.1 In the fifteenth-and sixteenth-centuries Europeans started to build ships that could make regular Atlantic crossings as well as have the logistical capabilities to support permanent overseas colonization and imperial aspirations. It is worth noting that, early on, Viking groups established settlements in parts of Newfoundland but ultimately had to abandon them due to conflicts with native peoples as well as distance from the homeland. The long-ship simply could not perform that kind of logistics operation. At its core, the study of Atlantic History is connected to the study of European maritime history and the movement of goods, people, and cultures through an emerging state-level economic system. As scholars began to look at the Atlantic Ocean as a system for analysis, questions about the migration of people, networks, cultural and material goods, trade and exchange could be looked at in new ways. By shifting the framework from a given landmass to the oceans, studies focused on networks, exchanges, colonialism and patterns that led to the development of the modern world. Historians looked at networks on a world scale. For example, Sven Beckett in his innovative study, Empire of Cotton, A Global History, examines the role of a commodity and 1 Sunil S. Amrith. Crossing the Bay of Bengal, The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). 2 how it shaped empires, economic systems, networks of exchange and slavery.2 Atlantic and World history often focused on networks and the interconnectedness of regions. Sunil Amrith’s, Crossing the Bay of Bengal, The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants examined the Bay of Bengal as both a highway and barrier for traders, workers, migrants, and slaves and how this highway changed due to political developments, statehood and boundaries that disrupt centuries old ways of life. Atlantic and global perspectives allowed for new modes of inquiry; however, some scholars are still “straight jacked by the primary organizing unit of the modern political world, the nation-state.”3 Ideas of citizenship and nation states were still new in the eighteenth- century and were often shifting in the Great Lakes region. This study examines the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century’s Great Lakes region and its connection to the Atlantic world. The region was one of shifting political boundaries, where national identities were just beginning to form. In this environment, supranational organizations like the Freemasons developed a network of connections that crossed national, religious and ethnic boundaries. Many masons were traders, government officials, and military officers. These men were brothers in a fraternity that reached from frontier trading posts in Mackinaw back to London and the rest of the world. Scholars of the Atlantic world generally ignore the Great Lakes region and do not consider its role in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. This is somewhat ironic given that the Seven Year’s War, arguably the most important of the eighteenth-century wars for empire, began in the Ohio Valley and not in Europe, the Caribbean, or India. 2 Sven Beckert. Empire of Cotton, A Global History. (New York: Vintage Books, 2015). 3 Jessica Harland-Jacobs,