New Content on Van GordenWilliams Library & Archives Digital Collections Website

by Jeffrey Croteau, Director of the Van Gorden-Williams Library and Archives

The Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives recently added new material to its digital collections website. You can now explore hundreds of digitized documents plus an online exhibition on the site.

Jacob Norton Papers

Masons today know that their Brothers likely have opinions about Freemasonry, sometimes ones that are in sharp contrast with their own ideas. This phenomenon is nothing new. Reading letters written by Masons over a century ago makes this clear. Bostonian Jacob Norton (1814-1897) was one such writer, and he corresponded with dozens of well-known nineteenth-century Masons who expressed their opinions to him in hundreds of letters.

Norton, of Polish ancestry and Jewish faith, was born in Middlesex, England. He was raised a Master Mason in London’s Joppa Lodge in 1839. In 1844, after immigrating to Boston, Massachusetts, Norton joined St. Andrew’s Lodge. He remained a member of St. Andrew’s for almost eight years until his petition to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts for the revision of its ritual and removal of overt Christian allusions was denied in June 1852. The Grand Lodge committee members who rejected this petition also recommended that he and his fellow petitioners withdraw from St. Andrew’s. Norton subsequently resigned from St. Andrew’s Lodge. Increasingly discontent with American Freemasonry, he wrote critical articles about the institution until his death. Norton did not remove himself from Freemasonry altogether. He continued to attend the meetings of Joppa Lodge when his business as a furrier took him to London. He also corresponded with many prominent Masons through 1897.

The Jacob Norton Papers collection of over 700 letters consists of Norton’s incoming correspondence from well-known nineteenth-century Freemasons such as Rob Morris (1818-1888) and Enoch Terry Carson (1822-1899). The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library recently added a small selection of these letters to its Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives Digital Collections website.

The letters in the Jacob Norton Papers collection offer us a chance to see what some prominent Masons thought about Freemasonry and give us the opportunity to see their thought process as they tackle thorny topics such as religion and race as they relate to Freemasonry.

Online Exhibition— Illustrated Patriotic Envelopes of the American Civil War

Historians view the American Civil War through a variety of lenses. Patriotic envelopes published during war present some of the bold rhetoric and political passions of the American Civil War, both by those in support of the Union cause as well those sympathetic to the Confederacy. A new online exhibition, “Illustrated Patriotic Envelopes of the American Civil War,” is also now available on the Van GordenWilliams Library & Archives Digital Collections website. The objects in the exhibition are from a collection of over 1,000 illustrated patriotic envelopes of the American Civil War that were donated to the museum by William Caleb Loring, 33° (1925-2011).

“Union” American Flag, 1861-1865, designed and engraved by Franklin Hedge (born ca. 1830), Boston, Massachusetts. Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Gift of William Caleb Loring, 33°, A85/012/0733.

“Union” American Flag, 1861-1865, designed and engraved by Franklin Hedge (born ca. 1830), Boston, Massachusetts. Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Gift of William Caleb Loring, 33°, A85/012/0733.

To browse the letters or see the exhibit, visit srmml.org and click on the Library & Archives Digital Collections button.

The Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives is located in Lexington, Massachusetts, at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, and is open to the public.

Have any questions about these offerings or something else? Drop us a line at library@ srmml.org or give us a call at 781-457-4109.