Masonic Trench Art

2009 marks the fifth anniversary of an agreement between the National Heritage Museum and the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, which brought the Grand Lodge collection to the Museum on extended loan.  Both organizations have seen many benefits over the past five years.  The Grand Lodge collection is professionally cared for, with each object inventoried and tracked.  In turn, the Museum is able to research, exhibit and publish the objects in the collection, along with new information about them.

I have been fortunate to work with the Grand Lodge collection for almost three and a half years.  Among the more than 12,000 objects, I have many favorites; the pendant pictured here is near the top of my list.  Made in one century and sold at auction in another, this small item attests to the universality of Freemasonry’s tenets and reminds us of the importance of tradition.

The pendant is similar in form and materials to many that were made as an early form of “trench art” by French prisoners in England during the Napoleonic Wars.  Between 1793 and 1814, there were over 120,000 French soldiers and sailors in British prisons.  Using what was handy, including bone, straw from their mattresses, paper, their own hair, and other materials, the prisoners fashioned these small pictures.  Many sold or traded their work for food, clothing or bedding to improve their living conditions at the prison.  French Freemasons in the prisons were allowed to form lodges.  Pendants like this one may have helped those Masons to remember their teachings and might have been used in the prison lodges to teach new members or to identify lodge officers.  These items were undoubtedly appealing souvenirs for English Masons, who purchased or traded for them with the prisoners.  

A century after it was initially made, this pendant was purchased at the 1901 auction of industrialist John Haigh’s (1832-1896) library by former Grand Master of Massachusetts Samuel Crocker Lawrence (1832-1911).  John Haigh was a native of England, but came to America in 1855.  Apprenticed as a calico printer, Haigh worked at the Pacific Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and later became part owner of the Middlesex Bleachery and Dye Works.  Initiated into a local lodge in Lawrence in 1859, Haigh was an active Freemason who frequently served as an officer.

Samuel Crocker Lawrence was initiated into Hiram Lodge in West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts, in 1854.  A Civil War general, Lawrence became president of the Eastern Railroad Company in 1875 and served as the first mayor of the city of Medford, Massachusetts, from 1892 to 1894.  An active Freemason, Lawrence bequeathed his extensive Masonic library to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts when he died in 1911.  Today, the Grand Lodge Library is named in his honor.

References:

Jane A. Kimball.  Trench Art: An Illustrated History.  Davis, CA: Silverpenny Press, 2004.

Mark J.R. Dennis and Nicholas J. Saunders.  Craft and Conflict: Masonic Trench Art and Military Memoribilia.  London: Savannah Publications, 2003.

William Hammond.  Masonic Emblems and Jewels: Treasures at Freemasons’ Hall.  London: A. Lewis, 1920.

Masonic Pendant, 1793-1815, England, Collection of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts at the National Heritage Museum, GL2004.3033.  Photograph by David Bohl.

Lincolniana and other new and recommended books: March 2009

While some may think things have gotten too carried away for the Lincoln Bicentennial, there really are some new books, programs and exhibits worth knowing about.  We've added several titles on Abraham Lincoln to our collection and we've listed them along with all our other new Masonic and fraternal and general American history titles on our website's New Acquisitions page.  Please take a look.

If you're out and about in the Boston area (after having visited the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, of course!) and you're looking for Lincoln and Civil War related exhibits, you might check out the following:  The Medford Historical Society is home to one of the world's greatest collections of Civil War photographs and many are on display this month as part of their Of the People: Faces of the Civil War exhibit.  Some of their photographs, from the General Samuel Crocker Lawrence collection* also may be seen at the Brookline Public Library along with an exhibit, Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America.

Lots of other interesting exhibits and events are scheduled throughout the area and information on them is available at the Massachusetts Lincoln Bicentennial website.  National events and a state-by-state guide may be found at the Lincoln Bicentennial website.

*Landscapes of the Civil War, an exhibit of photographs from this same collection appeared at the National Heritage Museum in 1999 and an accompanying book (Landscapes of the Civil War: Newly Discovered Photographs from the Medford Historical Society. Edited by Constance Sullivan.  N.Y.: Knopf, 1995.  Call number E 468.7 .L25 1995)  is available in our collection along with other materials by and about the collector and Freemason, Samuel Crocker Lawrence.  More on Lawrence also is available in the library that bears his name at the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.

Abraham Lincoln signature from the Library of Congress Prints and Photograph Division.