Evangelical Churches and Freemasonry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v2i1.60Keywords:
Freemasonry, Evangelicalism, AntimasonryAbstract
The impact of the decline and resurrection of nineteenth century freemasonry on the Canadian-American borderlands has only recently attracted scholarly attention. Antimasonry’s significance within American political history is obviously less transferrable to British North America. However, the antimasonic movement reflected broader anxieties concerning social distinctions, gender, and Christianity, especially evangelicalism. This paper explores the relationship between evangelicalism and freemasonry in New Brunswick and eastern Maine, with a particular focus on coastal communities. On the one hand, early borderlands lodges reflected the increased Christianization of American masonry, and evangelicals were divided or ambivalent concerning antimasonry. Yet antimasonry was strong enough to close nearly all New Brunswick lodges for 15 years, After the 1840s, evangelical churches began their rapprochement with freemasonry. These changes reflected not only the lessening of political controversies, but the extent to which both the fraternal and the evangelical versions of masculinity had become more socially mainstream.
References
Primary Sources
Manuscript Sources
Project Preservation Collection (MC995, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick).
Wesleyan Methodist Records, St. David, St. Stephen, Milltown Circuits, 1794–1881.
Records of the Presbyterian Church, St. Stephen, 1854–82.
Records of the First Orthodox Congregational Church, Milltown, 1845–81.
Membership registers, Union Lodge and Alley Lodge, New Brunswick, United Grand Lodge of England, The Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London.
Records of the Congregational Church, Calais, Maine (Xerox, Maine Historical Society, Portland).
Government Records
Calais and Baring, Washington County, Census of Maine, 1850.
Calais and Baring, Washington County, Census of Maine, 1860.
Parish of St. Stephen, Census of the Province of New Brunswick, 1861.
Parish of St. Stephen, Census of Canada, 1871.
Newspapers
Calais Advertiser (Calais, Maine), 1844–46.
City Gazette (Saint John, New Brunswick), 1829.
Eastport Sentinel (Eastport, Maine), 1827–29.
Frontier Journal (Calais, Maine), 1845–51.
Maine Free Press (Hallowell, Maine), 1831–33.
St. Croix Courier (St. Stephen, New Brunswick), 1865–1878, 1894–96.
Zion’s Advocate (Portland, Maine), 1829–33.
Books and Pamphlets
Allen, Rev. Stephen and Rev. W.H. Pilsbury, History of Methodism in Maine, 1793–1886 (Augusta, ME: Charles E. Nash, 1887).
Bill, I. E., Fifty Years with the Baptist Ministers and Churches of the Maritime Provinces of Canada (Saint John, NB: Barnes and Company, 1880).
Bunting, William Franklin Bunting, History of St. John’s lodge, F. & A.M. of Saint John, New Brunswick: Together with Sketches of All Masonic Bodies in New Brunswick, from A.D. 1784 to A.D. 1894 (Saint John, NB: J. & A. McMillan, 1895).
Burrage, Henry S., History of the Baptists in Maine (Portland, ME: Marks Printing House, 1904).
Census of the Province of New Brunswick (Saint John, NB: George W. Day, 1861).
Chase, Clifford G., A History of Baring (Baring, ME: n.p., 1925, reprinted 1950).
Gould, Robert Freke, revised by Dudley Wright, History of Freemasonry Throughout the World, IV (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936).
Harris, Herbert, History of Warren Lodge no. 2 of Free and Accepted Masons, East Machias, Maine (Machias, ME: Republican Press, 1898).
Historical Sketch of the First Congregational Church, Calais, Maine, with Confession of Faith, Covenant, Rules and Catalogue of Members to May, 1877 (Boston, ME: Thomas Todd, 1877).
Grand Lodge and Grand Encampment, History of Odd Fellowship in Maine (Portland, ME: F. G. Rich & Co., 1878).
Knowlton, I. C. Annals of Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick (1875; reprinted, St. Stephen).
Lamb, Harry Edgar, The History of St. Croix Lodge, No. 46, F.A.M. 1809–1934 (Calais, ME: Advertiser Press, 1934).
McGregor, James, History of Washington Lodge, no. 37: Free and Accepted Masons, Lubec, Me., 1822–1890 (Portland, ME: E.W. Brown and James B. Neagle, 1892).
Mitchell, George O., History of Felicity Lodge, No. 19 (Portland, ME: Stephen Berry, 1892).
Pollard, Ralph J., Freemasonry in Maine, 1762–1945 (Portland, ME: Printed by Tucker Print. Co., 1945).
Proceedings of the Antimasonic Republican Convention, of the State of Maine, held at Hallowell, July 3d, & 4th 1834 (Hallowell, ME: Herrick & Rice, 1834).
Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of the Antient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons of New Brunswick, 1867–1876 (Saint John, NB: Daily News, 1878).
Proceedings of the Maine Convention of Universalists (Augusta, ME: 1851).
Saunders, Edward M., History of the Baptists of the Maritime Provinces (Halifax, NS: Press of John Burgoyne, 1902).
Universalist Almanac and Register, 1836–41.
Wilson, Robert, Methodism in the Maritime Provinces (Halifax, NS: S. F. Huestis, 1893).
Secondary Sources
Books
Barron, Hal S., Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth-Century New England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Brooks, Thelma Eye, Calais Maine Families (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2006).
Bullock, Steven C., Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
Carnes, Mark C., Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1989).
Clawson, Mary Ann, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
Davis, Harold Davis, An International Community on the St. Croix (1950; reprinted. Orono: University of Maine, 1974).
Dumenil, Lynn, Freemasonry and American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Goodman, Paul, Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826–1836 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Hamill, John, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry (Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, Crucible-Acquarian Press, 1986).
Harland-Jacobs, Jessica, Builders of Empire: Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717–1927 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Lipson, Dorothy Ann, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
McLeod, Wallace, Whence Come We? Freemasonry in Ontario 1764–1980 (Hamilton, ON: Masonic Holdings, 1980).
Roth, Randolph A., The Democratic Dilemma: Religion, Reform and the Social Order in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, 1791–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Semple, Neil, The Lord’s Dominion: The History of Canadian Methodism (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996).
Articles
Acheson, T. W., ‘Duncan M’Coll’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, V (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).
Lane, Hannah M., ‘Evangelicals, Church Finance, and Wealth-Holding in Mid-Nineteenth Century St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and Calais, Maine’, in Michael Gauvreau and Ollivier Hubert (eds), The Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth-and Twentieth Century Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 109–50.
Lane, Hannah M., ‘Revivalism, Historians, and Lived Religion in the Eastern Canada–United States borderlands’, in Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (eds), Revival and Resurgence in Christian History, Studies in Church History, 44 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 251–61.
Lane, Hannah M. ‘Tribalism, Proselytism, and Pluralism: Protestants, Family, and Denominational Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century St. Stephen, New Brunswick’, in Nancy Christie (ed.), Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada 1760–1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 103–37.
Raible, Chris, ‘‘‘The threat of being Morganized will not deter us”: William Lyon Mackenzie, Freemasonry and the Morgan Affair,’ Ontario History 100/1(Spring 2008), 3–25.
Ratliffe, Donald J., ‘Antimasonry and Partisanship in Greater New England, 1826–1836,’ Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Summer 1995), 199–239.
David A. Sutherland, ‘Voluntary Societies and the Process of Middle-Class Formation in Early Victorian Halifax, Nova Scotia’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la societé historique du Canada (1994), 237–64.
Theses
Hannah M. Lane, ‘Methodist Church Members, Lay Leaders and Socio-economic Position in Mid-Nineteenth Century St. Stephen, New Brunswick’, PhD thesis, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.
Manuscript Sources
Project Preservation Collection (MC995, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick).
Wesleyan Methodist Records, St. David, St. Stephen, Milltown Circuits, 1794–1881.
Records of the Presbyterian Church, St. Stephen, 1854–82.
Records of the First Orthodox Congregational Church, Milltown, 1845–81.
Membership registers, Union Lodge and Alley Lodge, New Brunswick, United Grand Lodge of England, The Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London.
Records of the Congregational Church, Calais, Maine (Xerox, Maine Historical Society, Portland).
Government Records
Calais and Baring, Washington County, Census of Maine, 1850.
Calais and Baring, Washington County, Census of Maine, 1860.
Parish of St. Stephen, Census of the Province of New Brunswick, 1861.
Parish of St. Stephen, Census of Canada, 1871.
Newspapers
Calais Advertiser (Calais, Maine), 1844–46.
City Gazette (Saint John, New Brunswick), 1829.
Eastport Sentinel (Eastport, Maine), 1827–29.
Frontier Journal (Calais, Maine), 1845–51.
Maine Free Press (Hallowell, Maine), 1831–33.
St. Croix Courier (St. Stephen, New Brunswick), 1865–1878, 1894–96.
Zion’s Advocate (Portland, Maine), 1829–33.
Books and Pamphlets
Allen, Rev. Stephen and Rev. W.H. Pilsbury, History of Methodism in Maine, 1793–1886 (Augusta, ME: Charles E. Nash, 1887).
Bill, I. E., Fifty Years with the Baptist Ministers and Churches of the Maritime Provinces of Canada (Saint John, NB: Barnes and Company, 1880).
Bunting, William Franklin Bunting, History of St. John’s lodge, F. & A.M. of Saint John, New Brunswick: Together with Sketches of All Masonic Bodies in New Brunswick, from A.D. 1784 to A.D. 1894 (Saint John, NB: J. & A. McMillan, 1895).
Burrage, Henry S., History of the Baptists in Maine (Portland, ME: Marks Printing House, 1904).
Census of the Province of New Brunswick (Saint John, NB: George W. Day, 1861).
Chase, Clifford G., A History of Baring (Baring, ME: n.p., 1925, reprinted 1950).
Gould, Robert Freke, revised by Dudley Wright, History of Freemasonry Throughout the World, IV (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936).
Harris, Herbert, History of Warren Lodge no. 2 of Free and Accepted Masons, East Machias, Maine (Machias, ME: Republican Press, 1898).
Historical Sketch of the First Congregational Church, Calais, Maine, with Confession of Faith, Covenant, Rules and Catalogue of Members to May, 1877 (Boston, ME: Thomas Todd, 1877).
Grand Lodge and Grand Encampment, History of Odd Fellowship in Maine (Portland, ME: F. G. Rich & Co., 1878).
Knowlton, I. C. Annals of Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick (1875; reprinted, St. Stephen).
Lamb, Harry Edgar, The History of St. Croix Lodge, No. 46, F.A.M. 1809–1934 (Calais, ME: Advertiser Press, 1934).
McGregor, James, History of Washington Lodge, no. 37: Free and Accepted Masons, Lubec, Me., 1822–1890 (Portland, ME: E.W. Brown and James B. Neagle, 1892).
Mitchell, George O., History of Felicity Lodge, No. 19 (Portland, ME: Stephen Berry, 1892).
Pollard, Ralph J., Freemasonry in Maine, 1762–1945 (Portland, ME: Printed by Tucker Print. Co., 1945).
Proceedings of the Antimasonic Republican Convention, of the State of Maine, held at Hallowell, July 3d, & 4th 1834 (Hallowell, ME: Herrick & Rice, 1834).
Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of the Antient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons of New Brunswick, 1867–1876 (Saint John, NB: Daily News, 1878).
Proceedings of the Maine Convention of Universalists (Augusta, ME: 1851).
Saunders, Edward M., History of the Baptists of the Maritime Provinces (Halifax, NS: Press of John Burgoyne, 1902).
Universalist Almanac and Register, 1836–41.
Wilson, Robert, Methodism in the Maritime Provinces (Halifax, NS: S. F. Huestis, 1893).
Secondary Sources
Books
Barron, Hal S., Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth-Century New England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Brooks, Thelma Eye, Calais Maine Families (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2006).
Bullock, Steven C., Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
Carnes, Mark C., Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1989).
Clawson, Mary Ann, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
Davis, Harold Davis, An International Community on the St. Croix (1950; reprinted. Orono: University of Maine, 1974).
Dumenil, Lynn, Freemasonry and American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Goodman, Paul, Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826–1836 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Hamill, John, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry (Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, Crucible-Acquarian Press, 1986).
Harland-Jacobs, Jessica, Builders of Empire: Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717–1927 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Lipson, Dorothy Ann, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
McLeod, Wallace, Whence Come We? Freemasonry in Ontario 1764–1980 (Hamilton, ON: Masonic Holdings, 1980).
Roth, Randolph A., The Democratic Dilemma: Religion, Reform and the Social Order in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, 1791–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Semple, Neil, The Lord’s Dominion: The History of Canadian Methodism (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996).
Articles
Acheson, T. W., ‘Duncan M’Coll’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, V (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).
Lane, Hannah M., ‘Evangelicals, Church Finance, and Wealth-Holding in Mid-Nineteenth Century St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and Calais, Maine’, in Michael Gauvreau and Ollivier Hubert (eds), The Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth-and Twentieth Century Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 109–50.
Lane, Hannah M., ‘Revivalism, Historians, and Lived Religion in the Eastern Canada–United States borderlands’, in Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (eds), Revival and Resurgence in Christian History, Studies in Church History, 44 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 251–61.
Lane, Hannah M. ‘Tribalism, Proselytism, and Pluralism: Protestants, Family, and Denominational Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century St. Stephen, New Brunswick’, in Nancy Christie (ed.), Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada 1760–1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 103–37.
Raible, Chris, ‘‘‘The threat of being Morganized will not deter us”: William Lyon Mackenzie, Freemasonry and the Morgan Affair,’ Ontario History 100/1(Spring 2008), 3–25.
Ratliffe, Donald J., ‘Antimasonry and Partisanship in Greater New England, 1826–1836,’ Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Summer 1995), 199–239.
David A. Sutherland, ‘Voluntary Societies and the Process of Middle-Class Formation in Early Victorian Halifax, Nova Scotia’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/Revue de la societé historique du Canada (1994), 237–64.
Theses
Hannah M. Lane, ‘Methodist Church Members, Lay Leaders and Socio-economic Position in Mid-Nineteenth Century St. Stephen, New Brunswick’, PhD thesis, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.
Published
2011-05-22
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Lane, H. M. (2011). Evangelical Churches and Freemasonry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Calais, Maine and St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 2(1), 60-78. https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v2i1.60
