Taking Care of Clocks in the Collection

Collections Manager Maureen Harper winding a clock in "Keeping Time: Clockmakers and Collectors."

Of the over fifty clocks featured in “Keeping Time:  Clockmakers and Collectors” at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, several clocks in the exhibition are running. Care for the objects in the collection falls to Maureen Harper, the museum’s Collections Manager and a staff member for over twenty years. Among her many duties, Maureen winds, sets and looks after the operating clocks on display. Here she talks about the working clocks under her care.

What do you do to keep the clocks on display running?

Currently we have a handful of working clocks on view in the “Keeping Time” as well as a tall case clock by Nathaniel Mulliken, Jr., that is always in the Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives. They are all eight-day movements. I try to wind them weekly so they won’t run down. I go up to the gallery on Tuesdays with a box of all the clock door keys (some have two) and winders, each tagged with the number of the clock it fits. The clocks that run consistently are pretty accurate but I check the time and reset them or adjust the pendulum if a particular clock is running a little off. 

What do you like about working with the operating clocks?

Most things in our collection don’t move. The running clocks are different. Even though they are antique, with winding they come to life. It is thrilling!

What do you do if one of the clocks stops working?

The older clocks don’t always work perfectly, although some are more reliable than others. The Mulliken in the library, as an example, needs very little done to it. If one of the other clocks stops, I wind it and start the pendulum. If it still isn’t working, I call the horologist to come in and take a look. 

Of the clocks on display, do you have a current favorite?

In “Keeping Time” the George Hoff tall case clock has a pretty bell that rings on the quarter hour. It is also wonderful to see the organ clock running. For years it needed conservation. We kept it in our vault.  Because various elements of the clock were large, the hood, works, face surround and the body of that clock were not assembled while they were being stored. It was hard to get a sense of how the parts would look together. It has been great to be able to have that clock’s backdrop, works and the pipes conserved in the past year. The bellows were also rebuilt; the restorer used kangaroo leather for them. Now when I go into the gallery, I take a lot of satisfaction in seeing the whole clock assembled and, from time to time, hearing it chime and play a tune at a few minutes past the hour.

A Fraternity Rises Again: New Acquisition Highlights the Rebirth of Freemasonry

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Letter to Thomas W. Smith from John C. Humphreys, October 5, 1844.

Brunswick Oct. 5, 1844 Dear Sir, We have erected a new Masonic Hall at Brunswick, and by a vote of the Lodge last evening we have decided to have it dedicated on the 24th inst. in the evening, in a public manner, and if it accords with your wishes, we would respectfully request your aid in the matter, but if it should be inconvenient for you, or Mr Childs to attend, we should like to have you appoint the Hon. R. P. Dunlap to discharge that duty. Yours truly John C. Humphrey Master, United Lodge To the Most Worshipful Thomas W. Smith Augusta, ME

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While the content of this letter may seem unexciting upon first glance, research into this record held in the collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library draws attention to a period of rebirth in American Freemasonry. As Masonic historian Ralph Pollard points out, the fifteen years leading up to 1844 had been quite hard on the Fraternity, the “effect of the Anti-Masonic movement on the Maine Lodges was paralyzing. Candidates ceased to apply for the degrees. Members ceased to pay their dues. The indifferent, the timid, and the weak deserted the Fraternity in droves.”

By 1844, with the worst of the anti-Masonic furor finally over, John C. Humphreys, the Master of United Lodge, No. 8, of Brunswick, Maine, sent the above message from his Lodge to Thomas W. Smith, the Grand Master for the Grand Lodge of Maine. In his letter, Humphreys invited Smith to preside over the rededication ceremony of the old Masonic Hall currently residing on Mason Street. United Lodge, No. 8, had built and dedicated the Hall in 1807, and now in 1844 its members wished to have the old building, which had been recently enlarged and refurnished, rededicated by the Grand Lodge of Maine. A report in the Freemason’s Monthly Magazine documents this event, which Smith did preside over and gave the main address.

Twenty-eight years after the rededication, United Lodge, No. 8, had outgrown the old Masonic Hall on Mason Street, and sold it to town of Brunswick, which converted the building into a firehouse for Engine No. 3, the “Niagara.” United Lodge, No. 8, moved into the third floor of the newly built Adam Lemont Building on the corner of Maine and Pleasant Streets on October 3, 1872. The new accommodations were “a marked improvement” Deputy District Grand Master Joseph M. Hayes reported to the Grand Lodge in 1873; “United Lodge, at Brunswick, has now one of the best arranged suites of rooms for masonic uses in the District…”

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Captions

Letter to Thomas W. Smith from John C. Humphreys, October 5, 1844. Gift of Carl W. Garland. Collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, MA 260.002.

References

Grand Lodge of Maine (1872). Fourteenth District. In Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, 1870 - 1872, (Vol. 7, pp. 652 – 653). Portland, Maine: Stephen Berry.

Grand Lodge of Maine (1875). Fourteenth District. In Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, 1873 - 1875, (Vol. 8, pp. 205 – 206). Portland, Maine: Stephen Berry.

Moore, Charles W. (1845). Masonic Chit Chat: Dedication of a Masonic Hall. In Freemason’s Monthly Magazine. (Vol. 4, pp. 64). Boston: Tuttle and Dennett. https://books.google.com/books?id=6SIsAAAAMAAJ&vq 14 November 2015.

Pollard, Ralph J. (no date). Freemasonry in Maine, 1762-1945. Portland, Maine: Tucker Printing Company. http://www.mainemasonrytoday.com/history/Books/Pollard/index.htm 14 November 2015.

Pumper Niagara, Brunswick, c. 1920, in the Maine Memory Network, The Maine Historical Society. Portland, ME, USA. https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/12170 14 November 2015.

Taoab (2013). 1870 Adam Lemont Building, 144-150 Maine St., Brunswick, Maine, in Panoramio, Google Maps. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/96419157 14 November 2015.

Wheeler, George Augustus, and Henry Warren Wheeler (1878). History of Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell, Maine, Including the Ancient Territory Known as Pejepscot. Boston: Alfred Mudge and Son. https://archive.org/details/cu31924028809873 14 November 2015.

A Civil War Masonic Military Lodge

Interior View of Rustic Masonic Lodge, 1863, Sam A. Cooley; E.W. Sinclair, Folly Island, South Carolina, Collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Special Acquisitions Fund, 88.42.94.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In its collection,the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library has a number of Masonic and fraternal artifacts related to American Civil War history. Freemasons were among the thousands of Confederate and Union soldiers fighting throughout the four-year conflict. This stereocard shows a Masonic military lodge that was reportedly photographed in November 1863 on Folly Island, South Carolina. It was not uncommon for Masons in the military to form military or traveling lodges during times of war.  The 1^st New York Engineer Regiment is believed to have established this particular lodge. They constructed the lodge with materials found on the island. This  photograph is one of the most unique Masonic lodge images in our collection.

Military lodges were usually connected to specific units. These lodges received a special dispensation from the Grand Lodge of the state in which the regiment was organized in order to be chartered and recognized as a lodge. Like other lodges, military lodges needed “volume of sacred law”, most likely a bible, and “working tools” commonly used in ritual, like a square and compasses. 

In 1861, the Grand Lodge of New York passed a resolution granting dispensations for military lodges with a stipulation that no men from outside of New York could be made Masons without the permission of the Grand Lodge. In addition, the dispensation had to be recommended by a lodge in the state and bear the names of seven petitioners. Many Grand Lodges granting dispensations for military or traveling lodges were concerned about how these lodges and their operations might impact the integrity of Freemasonry.  In 1863, due to overwhelming jurisdictional issues and questions about legality, New York passed a resolution against the "further establishment or continuance of military lodges."

These special lodges were just one of the many ways that Freemasonry was visible during the Civil War. For more information about our collection as it relates to Freemasonry during the Civil War please visit our previous blog posts at: http://bit.ly/1HD7som

To see this photograph and others from our collection on our HistoryPin map please visit:  http://www.historypin.org/en/person/64613  

 

References:

Halleran, Michael A., The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 2010.

Ross, Peter, A Standard History of Freemasonry in the state of New York, New York: The Lewis Pub. Co., 1899.

Hyde, William L., History of the One hundred and twelfth regiment, N.Y. volunteers,Fredonia, NY: McKinstry, 1866.

 

 

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Staff Picks: Jeff Croteau, Director of Library & Archives

Title page and ownership label from Thomas Smith Webb's The Freemason’s Monitor; or Illustrations of Freemasonry (Salem: Published by Cushing and Appleton, 1816). RARE 14 .W368 1816f. Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, Lexington, Massachusetts.

My favorite object in the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library's collection is a copy of Thomas Smith Webb’s book The Freemason’s Monitor, formerly owned by Richard P.G. Wright (1773?-1847).

This book is my favorite object because it tells a fascinating story that is not apparent at first glance. It is one of four copies in the library’s collection of the 1816 edition of Webb’s Monitor, published in Salem, Massachusetts. But it is only this particular copy that is my favorite, because of its history of ownership. I have always loved the idea that marks in books can tell us something beyond the object itself. As the rare books librarian Roger Stoddard observed in his 1985 book Marks in Books, Illustrated and Explained, “When we handle books sensitively, observing them closely so as to learn as much as we can from them, we discover a thousand little mysteries...”

This copy of Webb’s Monitor has both paper ownership labels inside, as well as handwriting, indicating that the book was originally owned by Richard P.G. Wright, who acquired it in 1822. I was not originally familiar with Wright’s name, and it was only when I noticed that someone had pasted a short newspaper article about African-American participation in Freemasonry into the back of the book that I wondered whether Wright himself was black. I asked myself whether, if I dug a bit deeper, perhaps this book might tell a bigger story. And it did.

 

Wright family ownership marks from Thomas Smith Webb's The Freemason’s Monitor; or Illustrations of Freemasonry (Salem: Published by Cushing and Appleton, 1816). RARE 14 .W368 1816f. Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, Lexington, Massachusetts.

A little investigation revealed that Richard P.G. Wright was a black abolitionist and a Freemason who, along with his more well-known son, the preacher Theodore Sedgwick Wright (1797-1847), was active in predominantly white lodges in Schenectady, NY, as early as 1818 until their deaths in 1847. We can assume that this book held important meaning in Wright’s family since this copy of Webb’s Monitor also contains ownership marks indicating that it was later passed down to Wright’s daughter, Lydia L. Thompson, and then to his grandson,  Samuel Thompson.

Inspired by my curiosity from the markings in this book, I eventually followed a trail that showed that, at the same time that they were active Masons, both Richard P.G. Wright and Theodore Sedgwick Wright were heavily involved in the abolitionist movement. Both men were members of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Committee of Vigilance. Richard P.G. Wright’s Schenectady barbershop was located along the Erie Canal, and was known to be part of the Underground Railroad. Theodore S. Wright came to abolitionism through his father, Richard P.G. Wright, who himself attended abolitionist meetings at least as early as 1816, and who named his son after Theodore Sedgwick, a Massachusetts jurist and legislator who successfully defended an enslaved Massachusetts woman against her master, from whom she had fled.

Richard P.G. Wright, then known as Prince G. Wright, was raised a Master Mason in a lodge of black abolitionists – Boston’s African Lodge No. 459 – in 1799. Yet upon relocating to Schenectady, both he and his son were members of, or visitors to, at least five different predominantly white Masonic lodges or chapters. In Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Wright served as both Treasurer and Tiler in Schenectady’s Delta Lodge of Perfection as early as 1822, serving alongside Giles Fonda Yates (1799-1859), who would later become Sovereign Grand Commander of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction’s Supreme Council.

Unlike much archival material, books – even the rarest of books – are not unique. However, individual copies of books, with interesting histories of ownership, like this one, can tell a story different from every other copy of this book in existence. We can be grateful that the Wright family wrote their names in this book so that we can tell their story today.

"Badge of a Freemason" Book Featured in The New York Times

The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library is pleased to share a recent article from The New York Times antiques section featuring our book, The Badge of a Freemason: Masonic Aprons from the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library.  Click on this link to see the article.

The book makes a wonderful holiday gift.  To order, visit www.scottishritenmj.org/shop.  The book is available for $39.95 plus shipping and tax (if applicable).

Author - and the Museum's Director of Collections - Aimee E. Newell, Ph.D., will be offering an up-close look at a selection of aprons from our collection on April 9, 2016.  The fee is $15 for Museum members and $20 for non-members.  Space is limited.  Register by March 30, 2016, by emailing programs[@]monh.org.  For more information on the workshop and on becoming a member, visit our website.