Historical Sketch of Ark Lodge No. 39, A.F. & A.M.
“When things are come to some perfection, it delighteth people to look back at their founders, and glorie in their worthie enterprises …”
The history of Ark Lodge No. 39, A.F. & A.M. and of early Freemasonry in Connecticut has its roots firmly embedded in the American Revolution. During the winter of 1778 - 1779 the sound of axe, hammer, saw and other tools of iron rang through the air over Redding. General Israel Putnam’s Division of the Continental Army was preparing to lay in winter quarters there.
By the middle of February, 1779, most of the cantonments were in order. There were three, located in low dales more or less protected from the inclemencies of the weather. One such camp was near the present West Redding Station, a second on Gallows hill, and the third or most easterly at the present Israel Putnam Memorial Camp Grounds, commonly called Putnam Park.
Among the officers in Putnam’s Brigade were a few who had been active members of American Union Lodge, which had been organized in the Connecticut Line at the Siege of Boston two years before. Others had been made in New Haven, where was located the only Connecticut Lodge which worked without interruption throughout the Revolution - and has ever since. By mid-February camp routine was well established, and with deep snow on the ground, and the Sound frozen over, no enemy action was anticipated to disturb the daily schedule, nor any alarm which might require a patrol to hurry down to the shore. It was only natural, therefore, that the call to labor should issue. That call is recorded in the books of American Union Lodge as follows:
“The necessity of attending to the business of war, under the dispersed condition, by those who were formerly members, such as were still living in the Army, belonging to different regiments and brigades, made it impracticable to carry on the Grand Design until the present winter, when the Army being collected in winter quarters, at the request of the Brethren, it was concluded to issue a summons to call the members together, for the purpose of re-establishing the Ancient Craft in the American Union Lodge, agreeable to which a Summons was issued, desiring the Brethren of the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons to meet at the widow Sanford’s near Redding Meeting House, on Monday the 15th of February instant at 5 o’clock P.M., the Members to attend early at 4 o’clock on Special Business.”
Only the constitutionally necessary three could get together as American Union Lodge had suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of Long Island, the Capture of Fort Washington, and the Battle of Harlem Heights and White Plains. The remnant were scattered to different posts of duty as through by the four winds of heaven. Joel Clark, the organizing Master of American Union Lodge, had died in a British prison hospital in New York after languishing for months from wounds received on the Heights of Brooklyn. He had been made a Mason in New Haven and was a member of King Solomon’s Lodge when it was organized at Waterbury in 1765.
At the first meeting of American Union Lodge in Redding the three members in attendance first accepted several others as members of the Lodge and then proceeded to the election of officers in preparation for a busy period of labor. The Master then chosen was Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons who had been made in Middletown, crafted at New Haven, and was an original member of American Union Lodge when first congregated at Roxbury, outside Boston, and in which he was one of the first to be raised. During Putnam’s encampment in Redding, General Parsons lived in the house opposite Christ Church on Redding Ridge.
American Union Lodge was unique in that it did not have a charter. Joel Clark had been “commissioned” to form a lodge by John Rowe, Grand Master of St. John’s Provincial Grand Lodge at Boston, and was authorized to assemble a lodge and work in any place where no Grand Master had jurisdiction. The Grand Lodge of Connecticut would not be founded until July 8, 1789, although local lodges were already in existence and operation (the latter under charters from the States of New York and Massachusetts). There was, then, no Grand jurisdiction over Connecticut.
During the encampment in Redding the Brethren of American Union Lodge, with a sword in one hand and trowel in the other, made 22 Masons between the last week in February and the first week in May, 1779. While not the cradle of Freemasonry in Connecticut, here assuredly was nurtured the enthusiasm, energy and desire for unity which carried over into the early days of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut and the lodge which was to be known as Ark Lodge No. 39.
Among the many names appearing on the minutes of American Union Lodge while sitting at Redding, are the following: Jonathan Heart, who served as Secretary or Master of American Union Lodge for more than 15 years; William Judd, Connecticut’s second Grand Master and the one who granted the original charter to Ark Lodge No. 39; Henry Champion, Connecticut's Grand Treasurer for 33 years; John Mix, Connecticut’s Grand Secretary for more than 30 years and signer of the original charter of Ark Lodge No. 39; Moses Cleaveland, the first Grand Marshal of Connecticut and the man who laid out the city of Ohio which bears his name; Albigence Waldo, well known physician and writer of Pomfret, eulogist at the Masonic Funeral of Israel Putnam; William Little, who was later to become the Grand Treasurer of Massachusetts; and Rev. Israel Evans, later a Grand Chaplain of New Hampshire. Among the invited guests and registered visitors were Major General Israel Putnam; one of his aides, Major Oliver Lawrence; and Henry Dearborn of New Hampshire, later Secretary of War and a Major General in the War of 1812.
Although American Union Lodge was to meet in New York, New Jersey and other states before settling down and finding its permanent home in Marietta, Ohio, where it still survives today, it was really a Connecticut lodge, or, better said, a lodge of Connecticut Masons. For years, Connecticut Grand Lodge sessions must have resembled a meeting of American Union Lodge. But strangely enough, no Redding men were ever made in American Union Lodge. The Redding area was then a hotbed of Tory activity. One of the local citizens, however, was “Squire” William Heron, a native of Ireland. Heron had been a teacher at the Greenfield Hill Academy and a surveyor before coming to Redding, where he became a gentleman farmer, trader and land speculator. During the Revolution he acted in a dual capacity and historian are not agreed on the question of whether he was a patriot or a Tory. The evidence seems to show that the British regarded him as one of their most valuable and trustworthy agents. He had friends or relatives on the British staff in New York which gave him contacts there, and his letters in the records of the British Secret Service are listed under the code name “Hiram,” which seems rather mysterious inasmuch as he did not represent that ancient hero until some years later when he was raised in St. John’s Lodge in Fairfield, no St. John’s #3 of Bridgeport. On the other hand, he was implicitly trusted by Generals Washington and Parsons, and during the was served in the Connecticut Legislature, on various colonial committees and “turned out on every alarm.”
It would be some 18 years after Putnam’s division marched off to Peekskill that Freemasonry would be reborn in Redding. The Grand Lodge of Connecticut had been established in 1789, and on October 19, 1796, laid over until its next meeting a petition from “sundry Freemasons resident in the towns of Reading and Weston” to charter a Lodge. On May 17, 1797 the charter was granted to “brethren … residing in the towns of Weston and Reading, in the County of Fairfield and parts adjacent” and when issued under date of June 10, 1797 and over the signature of William Judd, Grand Master and John Mix, Grand Secretary, was known as “Ark Lodge No. 39, to be holden in the town of Weston, aforesaid.” The applicants for the charter and the ones to whom it was issued were William Heron (Redding), Nathan Hubbel (Weston, now Easton), Benjamin Hall, Nathan Wheeler (Weston’s first Town Clerk), Lyman Edwards, Samuel Hall, Thomas Davis (a doctor from Redding), James Rockwell, David Jackson, Jr., William Hawley, Jr. (Georgetown), Joseph Prince, Jr., Henry Beardsley, Lockwood DeForest (Easton), and Abel Hall (Easton). William Heron was named first Master, Nathan Wheeler, first Senior Warden, and Benjamin Hall, first Junior Warden. Heron had been made in and had served as the Master of St. John’s #3 at Fairfield. The other charter members had been made in lodges in Monroe, Stratform and Norwalk.
The first meeting of Ark Lodge No. 39 was held at the home of Brother Lockwood DeForest on June 20, 1797, and, as the pages following will show, it was customary in those days to meet in private homes, taverns and public houses at different locations. Not until 1823 was a permanent lodge hall constructed, the first meeting being held there on November 11th of that year. Located at “the rear of the church on Redding Ridge,” the “Masonic Hall” was used as the meeting place of the lodge until its last communication of record, December 22, 1836. While the records of the lodge do not so indicate, it seems that the Morgan Episode or Anti-Masonic Movement in America during the late 1820’s and 1830’s was as responsible as anything for the disintegration of the original Ark Lodge No. 39.
The Movement was touched off in Western New York State by the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan of Batavia, New York, an itinerant worker who prepared for publication a book, “Illustrations of Masonry” revealing the secrets of the order. Charged with stealing and indebtedness, possibly as a pretext to seizing and arraigning him, Morgan was committed to jail in September, 1821 and kidnapped shortly after his release. His ultimate fate was never known although the opinion was widely held by non-masons that he had been murdered. When Masonic leaders refused to cooperate in the excited and prolonged search for clues and culprits, the press,, churches and temperance and antislavery elements joined in condemning all Freemasonry as responsible for the “murder.” The whole affair soon became a political one and by 1831 had grown into a National Party. While the movement had, by 1836, died out, the attendance at Ark Lodge was too weak and in 1841 the charter was surrendered to the Grand Lodge.
Until 1845 Weston included all of what is now Easton, but in that year they split and became two separate towns. Thus, when we read in the minutes that the lodge met “in Weston” it really means Easton, for if it had meant the Weston of today it would have said Norfield. The municipal incorporation of Easton as a separate town in 1845 has significance because it was during that time that Ark Lodge No. 39 was dormant. By the time the lodge would be revived and reconstituted the brethren in Easton would be under the jurisdiction of another lodge. The resuscitated Ark Lodge No. 39 would have jurisdiction over Weston, Wilton and Redding, but never again over Easton.
By 1869 a new village had grown up around the wire mill at Georgetown, where three towns came together. A number of Masons, finding each other through certain signs, tokens and words, petitioned for a charter. None were aware that a lodge of Masons had ever existed in Redding and Weston before, and not a single member of the original Ark Lodge would ever become affiliated with the new one. It had been 34 years since the last record of Ark Lodge appeared in Grand Lodge proceedings and 43 years since the last member had been raised.
On December 23, 1869 a dispensation was issued by the Grand Lodge to Brother Charles A. Jennings and 12 others to open Ionic Lodge U.D. (under dispensation). Most of the 13 had been made in Jerusalem Lodge #49 in Ridgefield, with one demitting from St. John’s #6 in Norwalk. Jerusalem Lodge is, then, the mother lodge of the present Ark Lodge No. 39 even though it carried a higher number.
On May 18, 1870 the Grand Lodge heard from the Grand Master that Ionic Lodge U.D. had been at work, had made 5 masons and that the dispensation would be returned. By this time it had been discovered by the Grand Secretary that a lodge known as Ark Lodge No. 39 had once flourished in Weston and Redding and the Grand Master recommended that the old name, number and charter be returned. Thus it is that we are today known as Ark Lodge No. 39 instead of Ionic #110, which would have been our name and number had the old charter not been found. It is interesting to note that on the same day that Ark Lodge No. 39 was reconstituted that a lodge in Stafford Springs took the name of Ionic #110.
On June 23, 1870 Grand Master Asa Smith of Norwalk came to Georgetown, constituted the lodge, installed officers, and dedicated the hall in which they met.
The reconstitution of Ark Lodge No. 39 in 1870 simply marked the rebirth of Freemasonry in Weston and Redding for the second time. Of course, no direct line of descent is claimed from the earlier Ark Lodge much less from American Union Lodge, but the introduction of Masonry into the jurisdiction of Ark Lodge No. 39 must be marked from these early lodges. Ark Lodge has, therefore, three anniversaries that it can properly celebrate: (1) that of American Union Lodge, (2) that of the original Ark Lodge No. 39, and (3) that of the reconstituted Ark Lodge No. 39.
That the brothers of the new Ark Lodge No. 39 were in earnest in their desire to reestablish the tenets of Masonry in Redding, Weston and Wilton, is proven by the land records of the Town of Redding. Between 1870 and 1876 meetings were held over the meat market owned by Charles Olmstead. In November, 1875, Aaron H. Davis, Treasurer of Ark Lodge No. 39 executed a lease agreement with Eugene S. Parketon of Redding to rent from him “the second story and attic of the building I am now erecting in said Redding at Georgetown… for the purpose of a lodge room.” The term of the lease was for five years at $60 per year. In October, 1918 the lodge purchased the building from the then owner. Sarah A. Mills, for $2000. Title was taken by Charles A. Jennings, T. M. Stocking and Willie Lockwood, as Trustees of Ark Lodge No. 39, A.F. & A.M. in 1963, through a Special Act of the Connecticut Legislature, the lodge hall was transferred to Ark Lodge Corporation of Georgetown, the present owner of the building.
The mid 1950’s was the occasion for both joy and despair for the brothers of Ark Lodge. In 1954 the lodge took an active part in the 17th anniversary celebration of American Union Lodge held in Redding at the Center School, Grand Master George S. Hull presiding. In October, 1955, however, a hurricane which threatened the building caused the entire first floor of the lodge to be submerged in water and mud. Worse, it destroyed the original charter of our lodge. The height to which the waters reached may be seen by a marker on the first floor of the lodge hall. But the building, like the Ark that delivered Noah to safety over the flood waters of Biblical fame, rode out the inclement weather and survived.
June 24, 1970 the brethren celebrated the 100th anniversary of the reconstituted Ark Lodge No. 39 with Grand Master Carl O. Carlson in attendance. An address by the Grand Historian, James R. Case, highlighted the evening. On June 10, 1972 Ark Lodge No. 39 again celebrated a birthday, the 175th anniversary of the granting of the original charter. The ceremonies of the day were marked by the attendance of the Grand Master, William Neu, an Address by the Grand Historian Mr. Case, and the participation of the Redding, Weston, Wilton and Easton historical societies.
Between 1870 and the present time, the reconstituted Ark Lodge No. 39 has made more than 450 masons. Its backbone has always been the devotion and loyalty of its Past Masters. Its popularity among visiting brethren has always been the result of the friendly and fraternal spirit of its brothers.
George C, Guidera - Master, 1972
(R.W.) James R, Case - Grand Historian
Willard Fanton, P.M.
John Ferris, P.M.