Category: History

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OCTOBER 12: HAPPY FRATERNAL DAY

 

Your mail wasn’t delivered today because it is Columbus Day, the federal holiday commemorating Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas in 1492. 

In 1892, America’s only Hoosier President, Benjamin Harrison, encouraged nationwide celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage. But it wasn’t until 1934 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt began issuing annual proclamations recognizing Columbus Day. Congress got around to establishing it as a federal holiday in 1968, and it was finally signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was eventually moved to the second Monday to in October in order to standardize three-day weekends for major national holidays.

In recent years, the second Monday in October has also become widely observed as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, honoring the history, cultures, and contributions of America’s original inhabitants. But if you happen to live in the state of Alabama, you’ve got a THIRD reason to celebrate today.

It’s also Fraternal Day!

 


No, I haven’t made that up. Alabama is apparently one of the few places left in America where somebody in the state legislature still remembers that fraternal organizations even exist. In fact, the state’s official 2026 holiday calendar lists the second Monday in October as “Columbus Day & Fraternal Day & American Indian Heritage Day.” Three holidays for the price of one. 

 
That there is a rare example of some pretty efficient government thinking.
 
 

Fraternal Day isn’t some recent invention dreamed up by a bored Shriner looking for another excuse to wear a fez in public and drag his little car out of the garage for the inevitable parade. Alabama established Fraternal Day way back on August 28, 1915, originally designating the second Thursday in October to recognize the contributions of fraternal organizations. It actually predated the establishment of Columbus Day as a federal holiday. 

 

Think about that for a moment. In 1915, the Golden Age of Fraternalism was in full swing and America was absolutely swimming in fraternal organizations. Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Moose, Eagles, Woodmen of the World, and almost a thousand other groups with their own elaborate rituals, mysterious passwords, impressive hats, and enough jeweled collars, swords, and embroidered aprons to keep the nation’s regalia manufacturers in business for generations. 

 

Fraternal groups were so numerous and widespread that a National Fraternal Congress of America was established at Chicago in 1913 as an umbrella organization to protect the interests of fraternalism and act as lobbyists in Washington DC. It’s still around today.

 


And they weren’t just social clubs. These organizations provided charitable assistance, life insurance, burial benefits, care for widows and orphans, hospitals, retirement homes, and a sense of community and belonging long before government programs took on many of those responsibilities. 

 
 

And Alabama’s legislators thought all of that was important enough to deserve a holiday.

There was even an effort in 1915 to establish a National Fraternal Day. Texas Senator Morris Sheppard introduced legislation proposing October 27th as a federal holiday. Unfortunately, that idea went nowhere. Apparently, Congress decided the American people already had enough holidays involving picnics, ceremonial speeches, parades, drill teams, and men wearing funny headgear.

 
Think of it: had Sheppard’s fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson ever gone beyond just his Entered Apprentice degree in Johnson City Lodge No. 561 in 1937, he might have pushed for a national Fraternal Day holiday after becoming president.
 
We can but dream.
 
 
That’s a damned shame, because Americans could stand to remember (or discover) just how important fraternal groups have been to the development of this country. Maybe we could push our legislators to resurrect the idea nationally, or state by state. After all, it costs nothing.

Of course, Fraternal Day doesn’t mean Alabama’s Masons get an extra day off from work. State offices are closed, but since it shares its date with Columbus Day, nobody gets to stack the holidays and take Tuesday off as well.Still, it’s a charming little historical survivor from an era when fraternalism was woven deeply into American civic life, and the contributions of our lodges and other organizations were considered worthy of statewide recognition.

 
 
Since it is also Columbus Day, there’s a fraternal connection to that holiday, too. When Father Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882, he deliberately named the new Catholic fraternal organization after Christopher Columbus. At a time when anti-Catholic prejudice was widespread in America, Columbus was celebrated as a national hero, and McGivney wanted to remind his fellow Americans that Catholics had played an important role in the nation’s history and could be just as patriotic as anybody else. The Knights went on to become one of America’s largest and most influential fraternal organizations, and were instrumental in promoting Columbus Day as a national observance. So there’s something rather fitting about Columbus Day and Fraternal Day sharing the same calendar square in Alabama. Somewhere, Father McGivney must be smiling at that little coincidence (even if he would have been a bit unnerved by the presence of us Freemasons for the occasion).
 

So, to all our Brethren in Alabama, Happy Fraternal Day! Wear your square and compasses proudly. Call an old Brother you haven’t seen in a while. Visit a lodge. Do something charitable for somebody who needs a hand. Maybe even invite a prospective member to dinner. And if you happen to find yourself in a restaurant tonight, raise a glass to the Masons, Knights, Prophets, Odd Fellows, Woodmen, Foresters, Red Men, Hibernians, Pythians, Eagles, Elks, Owls, Mooses, Macabees, Cincinnatis, Hoo-Hoos, and all the other fraternal organizations that have helped build American communities over the last three centuries.Just don’t expect the waiter to know what the hell you’re celebrating. (Practice your elevator speech – now’s your chance to explain it to him.)

Happy Fraternal Day, Brethren!

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The Marquis de Lafayette and His Tour of America



By Christopher Hodapp, President
Masonic Library & Museum of Indiana

“Of all the high gratifications I have experienced, in my progress through my adopted country, my receptions by the Grand Lodges of the United States have afforded me the greatest, because I beheld in them a new and beautiful exhibition of that Union on which the prosperity of this great Republic is based, and a sure pledge of its continuance.” – Marquis de La Fayette speaking to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1825.

This year begins the 200th anniversary of Major General Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette’s triumphant goodwill tour of America between 1824-25. Lafayette’s exploits in America during the American Revolution endeared him to the new nation, and he had long been regarded as one of the greatest heroes of the war. The young French nobleman was thoroughly dedicated to the cause of liberty, even before he arrived in America, and long after he returned home to France, where he was soon swept up in their own revolution. Over the course of his long and tumultuous life, Lafayette would know and dine with the first seven presidents of the United States: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and the future president Andrew Jackson. But in addition to his life as a military figure, statesman, diplomat, revolutionary, abolitionist, political prisoner, and so much more, he was also a Freemason.

“Hero of Two Worlds”

After the deaths of his father, mother and grandfather, young Gilbert du Moitier inherited the aristocratic title of Marquis de La Fayette, along with a massive estate and a vast family fortune, making him one of the richest men in France. His father had been a military commander, killed in the American colonies by British forces during what we call the French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Years War). Young Gilbert was intent on avenging his death. At just 14, he joined the Black Musketeers, King Louis XV’s horse guard, as a 2nd lieutenant. Two years later he married 14-year-old Adrienne de Noailles, whose own family was extraordinarily wealthy. And yet, with all of his wealth and honors, Lafayette (as his name was Americanized) became one of democracy’s greatest defenders, in both America and in France, eventually becoming ‘The Hero of Two Worlds.’

Lafayette in Revolutionary America
Lafayette’s role in the American Revolution is the stuff of legend. At the age of 19, when he learned of the Americans rebelling against Britain, he defied both his own family and a royal decree of King Louis’ that prohibited French officers and soldiers from fighting in America. Lafayette purchased his own ship, christened it Victoire, packed it full of military equipment and supplies, and sailed for Philadelphia, teaching himself English in the course of the voyage. The young man was no mercenary for hire—he volunteered his services to the Congress for no pay and was made a Major General in the Continental Army. George Washington almost immediately befriended the young, zealous Frenchman, who came to regard him as a father figure. Washington took him on as a member of his staff. Such was the Frenchman’s admiration for his commander that he named his son Georges Washington de La Fayette, in honor of his closest friend.


While recovering from a leg wound he received at the Battle of Brandywine, Lafayette had briefly sailed back to France in 1778 and joined envoys Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in wooing King Louis to support the American cause, diplomatically, militarily, and financially. When he returned, he brought 6 ships and 6,000 French troops with him. Lafayette was tasked with planning and attempting an invasion into Canada, which was aborted after Congress failed to send promised troops. When Benedict Arnold turned traitor against the Americans, it was Lafayette and his men who hunted him down. And Lafayette commanded troops from the Virginia Continental forces at Yorktown in the final battle against Britain’s General Cornwallis that won the war for the Americans.

When the peace treaty was signed ending the American Revolution, leading to the establishment of the new United States, Lafayette famously declared, “America is sure of her independence. Humanity has won its case, and freedom will never again be without an asylum.”

The French Revolution
Lafayette’s life in France over the next decades rivaled his activities in America. Returning to France, he joined the National Assembly, where he was instrumental in the adoption of the French ‘tri-color’ red, white and blue flag. He fought for the formation of a constitutional French monarchy, and in 1789, he drafted a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, written with the help of his friend Thomas Jefferson. It is one of the great Enlightenment documents of freedom.

Continue reading “The Marquis de Lafayette and His Tour of America”

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The Masonic Apron of Major General Lew Wallace, Author of Ben-Hur

Former Indiana Governor David Wallace’s original Masonic apron, later worn by his son, General Lew Wallace. (Leather with silk tape; c. 1826) On loan from the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, IN)

In January of 1851, 24-year old Lewis Wallace was raised a Master Mason at Fountain Lodge 60 in Covington, Indiana, just three years after the lodge had been chartered by the Grand Lodge. Lawyer, statesman, army general, diplomat, inventor and Renaissance man, Lew Wallace would become the best-selling author of the 19th century.

Lew Wallace may not be a well-known name today, but less than 30 years after becoming a Mason, he would be internationally known as the author of the world’s most popular novel, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. First published in 1880, the epic story of love, betrayal, cruelty, vengeance, faith and redemption, wrapped in a sweeping adventure out of the age of Romance, captured the imaginations of millions. The book inspired countless readers to convert to Christianity, or gave new purpose to lapsed Christians who rediscovered their own faith. Ben-Hur remained the most successful novel of all time up until Gone With the Wind’s publication in 1936. It has never gone out of print.

Brother Lew Wallace’s handwritten petition for the degrees of Freemasonry is still a prized possession of Fountain Lodge 60 today. Several years after the end of the Civil War, he moved and made his home in Crawfordsville, where he transferred his membership to Montgomery Lodge 50 before his death in 1905.

Now, thanks to a generous agreement with the Lew Wallace Study and Museum in Crawfordsville, the Masonic Library & Museum of Indiana is proud to display the Masonic apron worn by both author and statesman Lew Wallace, and his father, Indiana Governor David Wallace when they each first joined  the fraternity.

 *.  *   *

Born April 10th of 1827, Lew (he preferred the informal version of his name) had grown up in the shadow of his father, who had served as the sixth governor of the state of Indiana between 1831 and 1837, and as an Indiana Congressional Representative between 1941 and 1843 (David Wallace was himself a member of Harmony Lodge 11 in Brookville and joined in 1826). Lew was an incorrigible child who took full advantage of his father the governor’s important positions. He was a notorious discipline problem and in constant search of excitement and adventure, which often landed him in trouble with neighbors. At the age of six he was already threatening to run away from home and stow away on a steamboat.

Lew’s father refused to pay for college, so he went to work at age 16 in the Marion County clerk’s office. He began to study law at his father’s law firm in Indianapolis, but in 1846 at the age of 19, he became a recruiter seeking volunteers for the Mexican-American War (1846-48).  When the U.S. Civil War began in 1861, he was made the commanding officer of a brigade of Indiana militia volunteers, and was acclaimed for his role in the daring capture of the Confederate Fort Donelson, which overlooked the Cumberland River on the Kentucky/Tennessee border. In 1862 at the age of 34, he was made the youngest major general in the entire Union army.

Lew’s military career and reputation were wrecked by the Battle of Shiloh, after a miscommunication over confused orders issued by General Ulysses S. Grant contributed to an enormous number of Union casualties. Wallace had acted properly and successfully led his troops during the battle, but he became Grant’s scapegoat for many years during and after the end of the war for the terrible losses. Lew was stripped of active command, and what had looked like a brilliant future military career was brought to a sudden and ignominious stop. He was furious at Grant’s betrayal and spent years trying to restore his good name and character. Nevertheless, he continued to serve with distinction wherever he could throughout the conflict, later leading local volunteer troops to repel Confederate attacks on Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. It wasn’t until Grant wrote his autobiography in the 1870s that he admitted his own errors at Shiloh in print and finally vindicated Lew Wallace.

The hanging of the Lincoln assassination conspirators

Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865, Wallace was appointed to the commission that investigated and convicted eight co-conspirators in the murder plot. He was also appointed as the head of a committee that court martialed Henry Wirz, the former commandant of the South’s notorious Andersonville prison camp. Out of 45,000 Union troops held prisoner in the woefully over-crowded camp, more than a third of them had died from dysentery, scurvy and starvation. Wallace was in a unique position to investigate the actions of Wirz because he had briefly served in 1862 as the commander of one of the North’s own prison camps, Camp Chase, in Columbus, Ohio. Wirz was found guilty of war crimes by the commission and executed.

Wallace had long wanted to write novels. In the 1840s, he had written a manuscript called The Fair God, but it wasn’t published until 1873, and it was only marginally successful.  But it was enough to convince Lew he had a future as a novelist. After the war ended, Wallace returned to his home in Crawfordsville and began to work on what was first intended to be a short novel about the Magi, the three “wise men” who follow the Star of Bethlehem to Nazareth and pay homage to the newborn baby Jesus. On a train trip in 1876, Wallace had encountered a man named Robert Ingersoll, who was nationally known as “The Great Agnostic.” Ingersoll was an extremely opinionated and powerful orator who advocated what was then known as “Free Thought” in all matters—what would probably be called a “Progressive” these days. Ingersoll advanced the writings of Thomas Paine from the previous century and the belief that the Bible had been written, not by the word of God, but by the well-intentioned hands of men who had simply made up miracles, virgin births, and resurrections.

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Grand Lodge Basement Vault Yields Buried Treasure

On Thursday, Indiana Past Grand Master Mike Brumback let it slip that he had the combination to the massive Grand Lodge vault in the basement of Indiana Freemasons Hall. Such a revelation could not go unchallenged, and when he opened it, sure enough, it yielded up treasures. 

Treasures, at least, for Masonic history nerds.

The room somehow seemed to have escaped any flooding over the years. It’s packed with hundreds of printed copies of old Indiana annual proceedings, but it looks like the last things put inside were in 2012. 
 


The paw prints of Past Grand Secretary Dwight L. Smith are evident. At some point on or before the GL’s 150th anniversary in 1968-69, Dwight had apparently put out the word that he wanted to collect and protect copies or originals of the oldest physical documents he could find from lodges around the state. There’s an entire shelf of early 19th century handwritten minute books with notes inside stating they had been microfilmed by the Indiana Historical Society in 1969.

In the top photo by Bill Sassman, Mike Brumback and Chris Hodapp peer into the handwritten Grand Lodge minutes from December 24, 1838. They were written by then-Grand Secretary Abraham Harrison, and probably have not been looked since at least the 1960s – likely even before that. 

 

Grand Lodge used to meet twice a year, and this was just fifteen years after the City of Indianapolis was created in the wilderness. During the 1800s, Grand Lodge used to meet the day before Christmas (wives were doubtless thrilled over that) and then a second time in May. The 1837 minutes noted that the May meeting was to be held on the Thursday before the General Assembly convened (since many of our early members were also part of state government). If you have ever been curious how we picked the third week in May for our annual communications, that’s how.
Blake and Henderson ‘s Washington Inn on East Washington Street in the early 1830s.

These minutes also predate the first purpose-built Masonic hall in the city by about thirteen years. Early meetings were held in the public room of a local inn and tavern, Blake and Henderson’s Washington Hall, which was also the usual meeting spot for Centre Lodge 23, the first Masonic lodge chartered in the new capital city.

The 1850 Indianapolis Masonic Hall
Indiana’s first official Grand Lodge Masonic Hall was finally built in 1850 and opened the next year. It was deliberately built on the corner of Washington and Tennessee (now Capitol Avenue), diagonally from the statehouse. Before the Masons even moved in, they turned the use of the hall over to the State of Indiana to use for the delegates to the constitutional convention who were writing the new Indiana State Constitution at the beginning of 1851. The statehouse across the street was too small to accommodate both the General Assembly and the convention at the same time.
And this was just the first book we opened. Obviously, we will be exploring the vault’s contents carefully and determining the proper steps to preserve these historic documents going forward.
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Indiana Historical Society’s ‘History Happy Hour’: Freemasons In Indiana July 20th

Tune in today for the 

Join Michael Brumback and Chris Hodapp of the Masonic Library and Museum of Indiana for a discussion on the history of Indiana’s Freemasons and see highlights from the Museum’s collection.

“From our founding fathers to several Presidents, the legacy of the Masons has profoundly impacted the United States; but what do we know about them? Join Michael Brumback, President of the Masonic Library and Museum of Indiana, for a discussion on the history of the Indiana Masons and see highlights from the museum’s collection.”

This is a free program. ‘History Happy Hour’ takes place virtually over Zoom. You can either join through an internet-connected device or calling-in via phone.

This program will be an online Zoom presentation. It begins today (July 20th) at 5:30PM and ending at 6:30 (Eastern Time).

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Please note: Registration closes at 3:30PM – two hours prior to the start of the program.
When you register, you will receive a link and phone number through the email you used to register about two hours before the program begins. Don’t see the email? Make sure to check your spam or junk folder.
Also, if you don’t already have a free Zoom account, consider signing up ahead of time to help avoid connection delays. Visit Zoom HERE.

The Indiana Historical Society collects and preserves Indiana’s unique stories; brings Hoosiers together in remembering and sharing the past; and inspires a future grounded in our state’s uniting values and principles. IHS is a Smithsonian Affiliate and a member of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.

IHS is headquartered in the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center in Indianapolis.

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NEW BOOK: Along the Way – The Grand Masters Book

Indiana Past Master Barry B.L. White, OSM, has just published a new reference work of great importance to Indiana Freemasons. Along the Way: The Grand Masters Book, is a comprehensive listing of the men who have served as Grand Master for the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana, from 1818 through 2021, with histories, photographs, biographies of each of these brethren.
Proceeds from his new book will benefit the new Bartholomew County Masonic Museum taking shape in Columbus.
The price is $43.00 ($35 + postage) and may be ordered directly from Barry at barrywhite8098@gmail.com, or from the Masonic Library & Museum of Indiana.
Barry White served as Senior Warden of the Dwight L. Smith Lodge of Research U.D. in 2019-21, a Past Master of Hartsville Lodge 547, and is currently serving as Master of Hope Lodge 150. He is the author of two other Masonic histories in Indiana: Hartsville Lodge No. 547: From the Past To the Future, and Steadfast Roots: A History of Freemasonry in Bartholomew County. In addition to his Masonic history books, Brother White has written several training books, one for Secretaries and one for Lodge Officers. The quarterly newsletter for Bartholomew County Lodges was his creation along with starting the Bartholomew County Past Masters Association. For his boundless dedication to Indiana Freemasonry, he was awarded the Order of Service to Masonry by the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana in May 2018.