THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

difficult as tracing its early history, owing to the secrecy in which
it enwrapped its movements. For example, in 1680 there came to South
Carolina one John Moore, a native of England, who before the close of
the century removed to Philadelphia, where, in 1703, he was Collector
of the Port. In a letter written by him in 1715, he mentions having
"spent a few evenings in festivity with my Masonic brethren."[136]
This is the first vestige of Masonry in America, unless we accept as
authentic a curious document in the early history of Rhode Island, as
follows: "This ye [day and month obliterated] 1656, Wee mett att y
House off Mordicai Campanell and after synagog gave Abram Moses the
degrees of Maconrie."[137] On June 5, 1730, the first authority for
the assembling of Free-masons in America was issued by the Duke of
Norfolk, to Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, appointing him Provincial
Grand Master of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and three
years later Henry Price, of Boston, was appointed to the same office
for New England. But Masons had evidently been coming to the New World
for years, for the two cases just cited date back of the Grand Lodge
of 1717.
How soon Coxe acted on the authority given him is not certain, but the
_Pennsylvania Gazette_, published by Benjamin Franklin, contains many
references to Masonic affairs as early as July, 1730. Just when
Franklin himself became interested in Masonry is not of record--he was
initiated in 1730-31[138]--but he was a leader, at that day, of
everything that would advance his adopted city; and the "Junto," formed
in 1725, often inaccurately called the Leathern-Apron Club, owed its
origin to him. In a Masonic item in the _Gazette_ of December 3, 1730,
he refers to "several Lodges of Free-masons" in the Province, and on
June 9, 1732, notes the organization of the Grand Lodge of
Pennsylvania, of which he was appointed a Warden, at the Sun Tavern, in
Water Street. Two years later Franklin was elected Grand Master, and
the same year published an edition of the _Book of Constitutions_--the
first Masonic book issued in America. Thus Masonry made an early
advent into the new world, in which it has labored so nobly, helping to
lay the foundations and building its own basic principles into the
organic law of the greatest of all republics.
II
Returning to the Grand Lodge of England, we have now to make record of
ridicule and opposition from without, and, alas, of disloyalty and
discord within the order itself. With the publication of the _Book of
Constitutions_, by Anderson, in 1723, the platform and principles of
Masonry became matters of common knowledge, and its enemies were alert
and vigilant. None are so blind as those who will not see, and not a
few, unacquainted with the spirit of Masonry, or unable to grasp its
principle of liberality and tolerance, affected to detect in its
secrecy some dark political design; and this despite the noble charge
in the _Book of Constitutions_ enjoining politics from entering the
lodge--a charge hardly less memorable than the article defining its
attitude toward differing religious creeds, and which it behooves
Masons to keep always in mind as both true and wise, especially in our
day when effort is being made to inject the religious issue into
politics:
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