MW this is so true. I make it my mission to do my small part whenever I can. Back on July 4th I was in Augusta, Georgia to celebrate not only the National Birthday but my own 52nd birthday! As part of that I took part in a ceremony at the Signers Monument in downtown Augusta that I restarted in 2011. Back then I was in Augusta with my family and realized that there was nothing going on in Augusta on the 4th to honor Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The Signers Monument had been dedicated July 4, 1848 in a hugh ceremony that included the Masons of the State. The Grand Master of the time gave one of the keynote speeches.
The plan had been to bury all three of the Signers in vaults under the Monument but they could only locate two, Lyman Hall and George Walton. Button Gwinnett had been killed in a duel in Savannah in 1777 and buried in an unmarked grave. Today nobody is truly sure where he is buried although Savannah believes they have located the proper burial location.
At any rate rumor has it that when they dug up Lyman Hall they also dug up his wife so she wouldn’t be alone in the family cemetery. They say they buried her in the vault meant for Gwinnett.
Anyway in 2011 we held an informal ceremony and had maybe 10 people including the six I brought from Delaware. This year marked the 13th annual ceremony and we had upwards of a hundred.
We have speeches and read the names of the Signers while the children present get to ring a bell after each name is read.
After running it largely by myself from 700 miles away I have over the last couple of years turned the ceremony over to members of the National Sojourners, to lead it. They have assisted in getting more and more local Masons and Lodges to take part over the years.
One of the Signers, George Walton was a Mason and George Walton Lodge in Augusta is named for him. His home is also in Augusta and is owned by the DAR. When we started in 2011 his home was actually closed on the Fourth of July of all the days!
After several years of pushing them they have taken to opening the home for free tours on the Fourth and have a whole day of programming there for the public. It has fast become their biggest visitation day of the year and the “donations” they take in far exceed what they would have gotten from an average day at $4 a tour.
But this year as we were finishing on off the Brothers who is a PM and Secretary of Webb Lodge (yes named for Thomas Smith Webb) asked me how long I would be in Augusta, I told him that I was headed to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee that afternoon. He advised not before he gave me something he had picked up two years before and had been meaning to give me during one of my visits.
As the chairs needed to be returned to Webb Lodge I agreed to meet him there. When he arrived he presented me with a framed letter from President Reagan to the then Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Delaware in March of 1982. The Grand Master had written him in late 1981 and sent him, his pin for the year and advised the President that the Grand Lodge of Delaware was celebrating its 175th anniversary that year. The President thanked the Grand Master and wished the Grand Lodge well in its anniversary.
Somehow this amazing piece of history had gotten separated from PGM Craig’s estate, when he died several years ago. Maybe his family didn’t care about it. Whatever the reason at least it wasn’t thrown out! But it made it to a random coin store in Augusta where PM Goldenberg found it and just knew he needed to get it and ensure it made it back to Delaware through me. So on my 52nd birthday it was one of the greatest gifts I received. Yesterday when I came home it made it’s way back to Delaware again, this time for good!
There isn’t a function to share a photo or I would but I was struck by your message and just wanted to share my own little story about saving our Masonic history.
Fraternally,
James R. Hanby, Sr.
RW Senior Grand Warden, Deputy Grand Master Elect, Grand Lodge of Delaware
It's amazing what treasures you can find in your home lodge if you start looking around.
At the lodge in Port Orchard, there is a section under part of the foyer and adjacent to the dining area they call the dungeon. It's all cinderblock and cement, and features a number of cubby holes and lockers for storage. There is even a room off to the side featuring a massive vault door that you'd find in a turn of the century bank. A lot of the lodge (and concordant bodies) filing cabinets and records as well as piles upon piles of junk are buried there. But along the junk there are treasures to be found if you bother to look long enough.
One brother had found a late 1800s cavalry sword and scabbard literally rusting away in the vault, sitting in a puddle of water that had seeped through the walls. He took it, cleaned up up as best he could, and it now sits proudly in a display case in the tyler's room. It's believed that it belonged to one of the founding members of the lodge, an ex army officer who might have donated it to act as a tyler's sword. It's an amazing piece of lodge history that should never have been treated the way it was. It does beg the question, why? Why was it relegated to the floor of a dingy dirty musty wet area of the lodge, instead of displayed properly? We may never know, but I have my suspicions.
It would be a good exercise to have new members rummage throughout lodges across the state and look for these forgotten treasures occasionally. You never know what you'll find.
Sadly, it has always seemed to me like America as a country is in a habit of just throwing out the old to make way for the new. In the old world, there are structures hundreds and even thousands of years old that people take great care to maintain for future generations but we, here, are always ready to bulldoze the old stuff down so we can build the next whatever. Don't get me wrong, I think throwing out some of the old is healthy, but not all. The problem is it seems to be a part of the culture at this point that we just don't care all that much about history. How do we shift the culture?
MW this is so true. I make it my mission to do my small part whenever I can. Back on July 4th I was in Augusta, Georgia to celebrate not only the National Birthday but my own 52nd birthday! As part of that I took part in a ceremony at the Signers Monument in downtown Augusta that I restarted in 2011. Back then I was in Augusta with my family and realized that there was nothing going on in Augusta on the 4th to honor Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The Signers Monument had been dedicated July 4, 1848 in a hugh ceremony that included the Masons of the State. The Grand Master of the time gave one of the keynote speeches.
The plan had been to bury all three of the Signers in vaults under the Monument but they could only locate two, Lyman Hall and George Walton. Button Gwinnett had been killed in a duel in Savannah in 1777 and buried in an unmarked grave. Today nobody is truly sure where he is buried although Savannah believes they have located the proper burial location.
At any rate rumor has it that when they dug up Lyman Hall they also dug up his wife so she wouldn’t be alone in the family cemetery. They say they buried her in the vault meant for Gwinnett.
Anyway in 2011 we held an informal ceremony and had maybe 10 people including the six I brought from Delaware. This year marked the 13th annual ceremony and we had upwards of a hundred.
We have speeches and read the names of the Signers while the children present get to ring a bell after each name is read.
After running it largely by myself from 700 miles away I have over the last couple of years turned the ceremony over to members of the National Sojourners, to lead it. They have assisted in getting more and more local Masons and Lodges to take part over the years.
One of the Signers, George Walton was a Mason and George Walton Lodge in Augusta is named for him. His home is also in Augusta and is owned by the DAR. When we started in 2011 his home was actually closed on the Fourth of July of all the days!
After several years of pushing them they have taken to opening the home for free tours on the Fourth and have a whole day of programming there for the public. It has fast become their biggest visitation day of the year and the “donations” they take in far exceed what they would have gotten from an average day at $4 a tour.
But this year as we were finishing on off the Brothers who is a PM and Secretary of Webb Lodge (yes named for Thomas Smith Webb) asked me how long I would be in Augusta, I told him that I was headed to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee that afternoon. He advised not before he gave me something he had picked up two years before and had been meaning to give me during one of my visits.
As the chairs needed to be returned to Webb Lodge I agreed to meet him there. When he arrived he presented me with a framed letter from President Reagan to the then Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Delaware in March of 1982. The Grand Master had written him in late 1981 and sent him, his pin for the year and advised the President that the Grand Lodge of Delaware was celebrating its 175th anniversary that year. The President thanked the Grand Master and wished the Grand Lodge well in its anniversary.
Somehow this amazing piece of history had gotten separated from PGM Craig’s estate, when he died several years ago. Maybe his family didn’t care about it. Whatever the reason at least it wasn’t thrown out! But it made it to a random coin store in Augusta where PM Goldenberg found it and just knew he needed to get it and ensure it made it back to Delaware through me. So on my 52nd birthday it was one of the greatest gifts I received. Yesterday when I came home it made it’s way back to Delaware again, this time for good!
There isn’t a function to share a photo or I would but I was struck by your message and just wanted to share my own little story about saving our Masonic history.
Fraternally,
James R. Hanby, Sr.
RW Senior Grand Warden, Deputy Grand Master Elect, Grand Lodge of Delaware
It's amazing what treasures you can find in your home lodge if you start looking around.
At the lodge in Port Orchard, there is a section under part of the foyer and adjacent to the dining area they call the dungeon. It's all cinderblock and cement, and features a number of cubby holes and lockers for storage. There is even a room off to the side featuring a massive vault door that you'd find in a turn of the century bank. A lot of the lodge (and concordant bodies) filing cabinets and records as well as piles upon piles of junk are buried there. But along the junk there are treasures to be found if you bother to look long enough.
One brother had found a late 1800s cavalry sword and scabbard literally rusting away in the vault, sitting in a puddle of water that had seeped through the walls. He took it, cleaned up up as best he could, and it now sits proudly in a display case in the tyler's room. It's believed that it belonged to one of the founding members of the lodge, an ex army officer who might have donated it to act as a tyler's sword. It's an amazing piece of lodge history that should never have been treated the way it was. It does beg the question, why? Why was it relegated to the floor of a dingy dirty musty wet area of the lodge, instead of displayed properly? We may never know, but I have my suspicions.
It would be a good exercise to have new members rummage throughout lodges across the state and look for these forgotten treasures occasionally. You never know what you'll find.
Sadly, it has always seemed to me like America as a country is in a habit of just throwing out the old to make way for the new. In the old world, there are structures hundreds and even thousands of years old that people take great care to maintain for future generations but we, here, are always ready to bulldoze the old stuff down so we can build the next whatever. Don't get me wrong, I think throwing out some of the old is healthy, but not all. The problem is it seems to be a part of the culture at this point that we just don't care all that much about history. How do we shift the culture?