A United Order True Sisters Anniversary Medal

United Order True Sisters Medal, ca. 1946. Gift of Clara W. Gnerre on behalf of Noemi No. 11. 91.032.1

The face of this round medal bears an embossed wreath which curves around the black enamel letters U, O, T, and S. These initials represent Unabhängiger Orden Treue Schwestern or United Order True Sisters, a German Jewish fraternal group which was the first independent national women’s organization in the United States. The group – sometimes known as the United Order of True Sisters - was founded in New York City in 1846 and became known for their charitable fundraising for cancer patients and children’s hospitals after World War II. The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library cares for a small collection of UOTS items, including this medal, which is connected to a fascinating Massachusetts woman.

The items in this collection were donated by Clara Cecile Wagner Gnerre (1920 - 2005) on behalf of her UOTS chapter, Noemi No. 11. This chapter was founded in 1878 in Boston, Massachusetts – the eleventh UOTS lodge in the country - and like its sister chapters in other states, sought to provide Jewish women with a sense of identity, purpose, and community. Due to anti-German sentiment during World Wars I and II and American antisemitism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women who joined UOTS may not have felt welcome in other fraternal orders. As past museum Assistant Director Barbara Franco has written of Jewish fraternal orders, “The rites, regalia, and mottoes of these organizations, based on Freemasonry and Odd Fellowship, offered an American aura that might be denied Jews elsewhere.”

United Order True Sisters Medal, ca. 1946. Gift of Clara W. Gnerre on behalf of Noemi No. 11. 91.032.1.

The reverse of the medal reads “PRESENTED AT THE CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 1846-1946”. To commemorate their one-hundredth anniversary, UOTS chapters produced souvenir medals like these, as well as centennial calendars and other ephemera. A February 1946 article from the Daily Argus (Westchester, New York) shows the kind of activities UOTS chapters were involved in that year. Activities included mahjong games, luncheons, educational lectures, and Red Cross sewing drives. The United States Treasury Department awarded a citation to Westchester No. 34 for raising nearly a quarter of a million dollars in war loan drives. After the war, in 1947, the UOTS formed a National Cancer Service initiative. This program funneled members’ fundraising skills and largesse towards medical charities.

Clara Wagner – later Clara Gnerre - was a member of Noemi No. 11 for forty years. She graduated from Girl’s Latin School in 1937 and attended Radcliffe College, where she graduated cum laude with a degree in chemistry in 1941. If she was a member of Noemi in 1946, she may have received this souvenir UOTS medal when it was first issued, when she was 26 years old.

She worked first for Carbon Black Co. as a rubber chemist and was employed there in 1950 when she married her husband C. Gerald “Jerry” Gnerre. A January 1954 Boston Globe article described her as a “research chemist and rubber technologist” at Godfrey L. Cabot, Inc. Research Laboratories on Cambridge’s “Research Row.” Gnerre was, at the time, one of few women working in industrial materials research and development, a growing field post-World War II in Cambridge.

In the 1980s, Gnerre became more active in Noemi No. 11, serving as its Recording Secretary in 1986 and President from 1987 to 1988. At this time, the chapter focused on fundraising for cancer services and children’s care at Boston’s Children’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals. At Noemi’s 110th Annual Luncheon, Gnerre was praised for her “warmth, encouragement, and good humor.”

After 111 years as a United Order True Sisters chapter, Noemi No. 11 dissolved in 1989. Perhaps inspired by a 1983 chapter visit to the then-eight-year-old Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Gnerre first donated a collection of material from the chapter to the museum in 1991. This medal was the first item that she donated. Over the next five years, Gnerre and other women from Noemi No. 11 donated UOTS material to the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, as well as to other historic repositories (see link below).

Clara Cecile Wagner Gnerre died in August 2005. Her Boston Globe obituary reads: “In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The United Order of True Sisters, Inc. . . . where she was a member for 40 years and past President of a local chapter (Noemi Chapter 11) or to a cancer organization of your choice.” Gnerre ably represented the United Order True Sisters and their philanthropic goals to the last.

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Further Reading:

• United Order True Sisters Noemi #1 Records at Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center, New England Historic Genealogical Society

Newly added to Digital Collections - Jacob Norton letters

The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library recently added a selection of letters to its Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives Digital Collections website. The digitized letters are selected from the over 700 that are in the Jacob Norton Papers collection, which consists of Norton's incoming correspondence from well-known nineteenth-century Freemasons, such as Rob Morris (1818-1888) and Enoch Terry Carson (1822-1899).

Jacob Norton (1814-1897), of Polish ancestry and Jewish faith, was born in Middlesex, England. He was a furrier by trade. He was raised to the degree of Master Mason in Joppa Lodge (London, England) on August 5th, 1839.

Norton took his business to the United States, and in 1842, demitted from Joppa Lodge. In 1844, after taking up residence in Boston, Massachusetts, Norton joined St. Andrew’s Lodge, and was made a member on November 14th. He remained a member of this lodge for almost eight years until his petition to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts for the revision of its ritual and removal of overt Christian allusions was denied in June 1852. The committee members who denied this petition also recommended that he and the other petitioners had to withdraw from St. Andrew’s. He subsequently resigned from St. Andrew’s Lodge and became increasingly discontent with American Freemasonry, writing critical articles until his death. Due to this, Norton was considered to be argumentative and opinionated by the Masons of the Massachusetts jurisdiction, and beyond. He collected some of these articles and new writings in a book called Masonic Fiction Exploded: Including the Pretended Grand Mastership of Henry Price, published in 1896.

Norton did not remove himself from Freemasonry altogether, however, as he continued to attend the meetings of Joppa Lodge in England when his trade took him there and also corresponded with Masons until his death. Additionally, he joined the Correspondence Circle of Quatuor Coronati Lodge in London in November 1887.

In his personal life, Norton was married to Miriam Norton (born 1829), and had three children, Edward, Rachel, and George. Sometime between 1852 and his death he renounced his Jewish faith and considered himself an atheist. He lived in Boston until his death in March 1897, aged 83.

In addition to the letters in the Jacob Norton Papers, the Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives Digital Collections website includes a number of different collections of letters and correspondence, including the Armand P. Pfister Masonic Papers, 1840-1846 and the G. Edward Elwell, Jr., Autograph Collection.

Caption:
Letter from William P. Mellen to Jacob Norton, 1856. Collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Museum Purchase, A2011/017/717.

 

New Acquisitions: Contextualizing the Lives of Early Jewish Scottish Rite Masons

At the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, we are conscious of the fact that Freemasonry does not take place in a vacuum. It is, and always has been, a part of a person's life. Freemasonry is one of many groups that a man belongs to - one that might overlap with family, business, religion, or friendship. To look at Freemasonry in its historical context then, is to understand how it fits into a person's life.

This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Scottish Rite's Northern Masonic Jurisdiction. On August 5, 1813, the Jurisdiction's first Supreme Council was formed by Emanuel De La Motta (1760–1821), in his capacity as the Southern Jurisdiction's Grand Treasurer General. The Council consisted of six members - Daniel D. Tompkins (1774–1825), Sampson Simson (1780–1857), John James Joseph Gourgas (1777–1865), Richard Riker (1773–1842), John Gabriel Tardy (1761-1831), and Moses Levi Maduro Peixotto (1767–1828).

Of these seven men, three were Jewish - De La Motta, Simson, and Peixotto - and, just as Riker and Tompkins were politically associated outside of Freemasonry, these three men were culturally and religiously connected through their faith. For example, Simson and Peixotto were both members of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel. Is it possible to learn more about the communities that these men lived in and how their faith may have played a role in their lives?

In addition to De La Motta, Simson, and Peixotto, other prominent Jews involved with the establishment and founding of the Scottish Rite include Moses Michael Hays (1739–1805), as well as three of the Southern Jurisdiction's founding members - Abraham Alexander (1743-1816), Israel Delieben (1740-1807), and Moses Clava Levy (1749-1839). The library recently acquired the books below in an effort to help researchers contextualize the lives of  Jewish men who played key roles in the founding of the Scottish Rite.

Josette Capriles Goldish. Once Jews: Stories of Caribbean Sephardim. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009.

Emanuel De La Motta and Moses Levy Maduro Peixotto were both born into Sephardic families in the Caribbean (San Croix and Curaçao, respectively) before moving to the United States. Although this book does not mention either man specifically, there is useful information about Dutch trade and Sephardic Jews in the Caribbean, which is essential to understanding the movement of pre-Scottish Rite degrees from their arrival with merchants in the West Indies in the mid-eighteenth century to their movement out of the West Indies to New Orleans, Charleston, and Albany later in that century. The book contains useful information about the common usage of "double names" among Caribbean Sephardim, specifically mentioning the persistence of the double name Levy Maduro.

James William Hagy. This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

I was surprised to find that, although published twenty years ago, this book was not yet in our collection. Four of the first Supreme Council members of the world's first Supreme Council, founded in Charleston, South Carolina in 1801, were drawn from its Jewish community. This book is a great genealogical resource. For example, it led me to an obituary for Emanuel De La Motta that I have not seen referenced elsewhere. Although Freemasonry is only mentioned on two pages, the author notes that "Perhaps the best example of Jewish participation in life in Charleston is provided by the Masons."

Michael Hoberman. New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.

In addition to contextualizing the lives of Jews and Puritans in early America, this book devotes an entire chapter to Moses Michael Hays. Hays is remembered for many important roles that he played - both within Freemasonry and without. Within Scottish Rite Freemasonry is best remembered as having been deputized by Henry Andrew Francken (ca. 1720–1795) to spread the Order of the Royal Secret, which eventually led to the founding of the Scottish Rite.

 

  Laura Arnold Leibman. Messianism, Secrecy and Mysticism: A New Interpretation of Early American Jewish Life. Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012.

In addition to containing information about Freemasonry, this book also features analysis of how symbols shared between Freemasonry and Judaism might have been viewed by Jewish Masons in the eighteenth century. Also contains interesting speculation and analysis about the use of the Mosaic pavement (black and white checkered floor) in Sephardic synagogues and homes in the colonial Caribbean and the relationship to its use within a Masonic context.

William Pencak. Jews and Gentiles in Early America, 1654-1800. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

The chapters in this book are arranged by important, early Jewish communities in America: New York, NY; Newport, RI; Charleston, SC; Savannah, GA; and Philadelphia, PA. Among other topics, the author looks at how colonial-era Jewish communities interacted with the larger gentile community, as well as how the Jewish communities in the Americas were connected to one another.