Darius Wilson, Confidence Schemes, and American Fraternalism 1869-1926
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v3i1.8Keywords:
Darius Wilson, American Fraternalism, Golden Age, BostonAbstract
Many scholars, including Mark Carnes and Mary Ann Clawson, have noted that the last quarter of the nineteenth century was the ‘golden age of fraternity’ in the United States. These years, during which America transformed from a rural society with an economy based in agriculture to an urban nation funded by industrial manufacturing, were also a time of frauds, hucksters, and charlatans who exploited the country’s rapid changes as opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of others. This paper examines the career of Darius Wilson, who founded the Royal Arcanum, assumed the title of ‘Grand Master of the Venerable Symbolic Grand Lodge Ancient Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry for the United States of America’, and claimed to have developed a cure for deafness. Between 1875 and 1915, Wilson was both hailed for providing insurance to poverty-stricken immigrants and decried as a fraud who foisted worthless fraternal, medical and financial certificates upon a credulous public. A resident of Boston, Massachusetts, Wilson was a member or Rochester, New York’s Yonnondio Lodge No. 163, F. & A.M., before he was expelled. Subsequently he was repeatedly arrested and tried for improperly selling masonic degrees. Wilson provides a case study for the exploration of issues of authority, legitimacy, and confidence within the American industrializing economy, and will provide new perspectives for understanding fraternalism at the birth of the twentieth century.
References
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Clawson, Mary Ann, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
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Stevens, Albert C., comp. and ed., The Cyclopedia of Fraternities, 2nd ed. (New York: E. B. Treat and Company, 1907).
Tabbert, Mark A., American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities (New York: New York University Press, 2005).
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Turnbull, Everett R., The Rise and Progress of Masonry in Illinois, 1783-1952 (n.p: The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Illinois, 1952).
Van Deventer, Fred, Parade to Glory: The Story of the Shriners, their Hospitals for Crippled Children and their Institutes for Burns (New York: Pyramid Books, 1964).
Warvelle, George W. (ed.), A Compendium of Freemasonry in Illinois, Vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: Lewis Publishing, 1897).
Yates, Keith L., ‘The Secretaries Section’s First President was W. O. Robson’, The Fraternal Monitor 107(7) (July 1997): 42-43.
Masonic Periodicals:
The American Tyler
The Freemason Masonic Advocate
The Masonic Standard
Masonic Token Proceedings of the Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of Alabama
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Council of Deliberation
Newspapers:
The Atlanta Constitution
Baltimore American and Commercial
The Bee (Earlington, KY)
Boston Daily Globe
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Chicago Daily Tribune
The Daily Bulletin (Honolulu, HI)
Daily Evening Bulletin (Maysville, KY)
Detroit Free Press
Dubuque Sunday Herald
The Evening News (Providence, RI)
The Evening Times (Washington, D.C.)
Evening Telegraph (Providence, RI)
The Independent (St. Petersburg, FL)
The Meriden Daily Journal (Meriden, CT)
New Haven Register
The New York Times
New-York Tribune
Newburgh Daily Journal
The News-Democrat (Providence, RI)
The Norwalk Hour (Norwalk, CT).
Omaha Daily Bee
The Paterson Press (Paterson, NJ)
The Post Express (Rochester, NY)
The Salt Lake Herald
San Francisco Chronicle
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The (Baltimore) Sun
The Sun (New York)
The Telegraph (Nashua, NH)
Times and Register
The Washington Herald (Washington, DC)
The Washington Post Wichita Daily Eagle
Burt, Calvin C., Egyptian Masonic History of the Original and Unabridged Ancient and Ninety-Six (96°) Degree Rite of Memphis (Utica, NY: White & Floyd, 1879).
Carnes, Mark C., Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).
Clawson, Mary Ann, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
‘Closing Up the Weaklings’, The Insurance Economist 19 (146) (January 1896): 5.
Constitutions and Laws of the Royal Arcanum, Governing the Supreme, Grand, and Subordinate Councils (Boston, MA: The Supreme Council, 1888).
Constitutions and Laws of the Royal Arcanum, Governing the Supreme, Grand, and Subordinate Councils (Boston, MA: The Supreme Council, 1891).
C.C. Darling & Co., Illustrated Catalogue of Solid Gold & Rolled Plate Society Emblems, Charms, Pins, Lapel Buttons, etc., (Providence, RI: The Firm, 1902).
Cook, James W., The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Cummings, William L., ‘The Spurious Rites of Memphis and Misraim’, Heredom 9 (2001), 147-97.
Deer, Dorothy E., (ed.), Royal Arcanum: 125 Years of Fraternalism (Boston, MA: Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum, 2002).
Directory of Yonnondio Lodge, No. 163, F. and A. M., Rochester, N.Y. for 1897 (Rochester, NY: Rochester Litho Co., 1897).
Dumenil, Lynn, Freemasonry and American Culture 1880-1930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Dunn, Edward James, Builders of Fraternalism in America (Chicago, IL: Fraternal Book Concern, 1924).
Evans, C. H. (ed.), Educational Year-Book and Universal Catalogue: A Hand-Book of Education (St. Louis, MO: C. H. Evans & Co., 1883).
Evans, Isaac Blair, The Thomson Masonic Fraud: A Study in Clandestine Masonry (Salt Lake City, UT: Privately Printed, 1922).
Fels, Anthony D., ‘The Square and Compass: San Francisco’s Freemasons and American Religion, 1870-1900’. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1987.
Fox, William L., Lodge of the Double-Headed Eagle: Two Centuries of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in America’s Southern Jurisdiction (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1997).
Godwin, Joscelyn, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994).
Homan, William, The Scottish Rite (New York: n.p., 1905).
Kaufman, Jason, For the Common Good? American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Kaufmann, Christopher J., Faith and Fraternalism: The History of the Knights of Columbus 1882-1982 (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).
Lang, Ossian, ‘Clandestine Masons and Their Makers’, Masonic News 8(2) (Feb. 1927), 16-17, 25-26.
Lang, Ossian, History of Freemasonry in the State of New York (New York: Grand Lodge, F. & A. M., 1922).
Lee, Alfred E., History of the City of Columbus, Capital of Ohio (New York: Munsell & Co, 1892).
‘The Legion of Honor’, The Manhattan 1(1) (January 1883), 58.
Leonard, John W. (ed.), Who’s Who in America, 1901-1902 (Chicago, IL: A.N. Marquis & Co., 1901).
Leonard, John W. (ed.), Who’s Who in New York City and State, 3rd ed., (New York: L.R. Hamersley & Co., 1907)
The Life Insurance Independent and American Journal of Life Insurance 16(6) (June 1904).
Medical and Surgical Directory of the United States (Detroit, MI: R. L. Polk & Co., 1886).
Moore, William D., Masonic Temples: Freemasonry, Ritual Architecture, and Masculine Archetypes (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2006).
Moore, William D., and Mark A. Tabbert (eds), Secret Societies in America: Foundational Studies of Fraternalism (New Orleans, LA: Cornerstone, 2011).
Morais, Henry Samuel, The Jews of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA: The Levytype Company, 1894).
New Haven Directory 1899 (New Haven, CT: Price & Lee, 1899).
Royal Arcanum’s New Schedule (New York: The Insurance Press, 1900).
The Royal Masonic Rite: Its Origin, History and Powers ([Boston?]: The Sovereign Sanctuary, 1903).
Sackett, M. W., Early History of Fraternal Beneficiary Societies in America: Origin and Growth 1868-1880 (Meadville, PA: Tribune Publishing, 1914).
Stevens, Albert C., comp. and ed., The Cyclopedia of Fraternities, 2nd ed. (New York: E. B. Treat and Company, 1907).
Tabbert, Mark A., American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities (New York: New York University Press, 2005).
The Boston Almanac and Business Directory 1888 (Boston, MA: Sampson, Murdock, & Co., 1887).
The Boston Almanac and Business Directory 1891 (Boston, MA: Sampson, Murdock, & Co., 1890).
Turnbull, Everett R., The Rise and Progress of Masonry in Illinois, 1783-1952 (n.p: The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Illinois, 1952).
Van Deventer, Fred, Parade to Glory: The Story of the Shriners, their Hospitals for Crippled Children and their Institutes for Burns (New York: Pyramid Books, 1964).
Warvelle, George W. (ed.), A Compendium of Freemasonry in Illinois, Vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: Lewis Publishing, 1897).
Yates, Keith L., ‘The Secretaries Section’s First President was W. O. Robson’, The Fraternal Monitor 107(7) (July 1997): 42-43.
Masonic Periodicals:
The American Tyler
The Freemason Masonic Advocate
The Masonic Standard
Masonic Token Proceedings of the Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of Alabama
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Council of Deliberation
Newspapers:
The Atlanta Constitution
Baltimore American and Commercial
The Bee (Earlington, KY)
Boston Daily Globe
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Chicago Daily Tribune
The Daily Bulletin (Honolulu, HI)
Daily Evening Bulletin (Maysville, KY)
Detroit Free Press
Dubuque Sunday Herald
The Evening News (Providence, RI)
The Evening Times (Washington, D.C.)
Evening Telegraph (Providence, RI)
The Independent (St. Petersburg, FL)
The Meriden Daily Journal (Meriden, CT)
New Haven Register
The New York Times
New-York Tribune
Newburgh Daily Journal
The News-Democrat (Providence, RI)
The Norwalk Hour (Norwalk, CT).
Omaha Daily Bee
The Paterson Press (Paterson, NJ)
The Post Express (Rochester, NY)
The Salt Lake Herald
San Francisco Chronicle
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The (Baltimore) Sun
The Sun (New York)
The Telegraph (Nashua, NH)
Times and Register
The Washington Herald (Washington, DC)
The Washington Post Wichita Daily Eagle
Published
2013-10-15
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Moore, W. D. (2013). Darius Wilson, Confidence Schemes, and American Fraternalism 1869-1926. Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 3(1), 8-32. https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.v3i1.8
