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Remarkable Masons: Veterans of the 54th Regiment
by Stacey Fraser, Assistant Curator Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library
Massachusetts’ 54th Regiment was the first northern military regiment to enlist African American soldiers during the Civil War. This unit, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, existed from February 1863 to August 1865. Profiled here are two Masonic members of the regiment, one from Massachusetts and one from Pennsylvania. We salute their service to the United States.
William H. W. Gray (ca. 1825-ca. 1881)
First Sergeant William H. W. Gray (ca. 1825-ca. 1881) had been a sailor on at least three New Bedford whaling vessels prior to his February 1863 enlistment in the regiment. He served as an officer – Third Mate – on the Triton II, which may have been why he was promoted to First Sergeant immediately upon enlistment. During the Battle of Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863, Gray was wounded in the left leg. He soon returned to active service but filed an invalid pension application in 1876 due to the wound’s effects.
In the fall of 1863, Gray founded a Masonic lodge, chartered by the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, on Morris Island, South Carolina. The lodge met in “a dry spot in the marsh near our camp, where boards were set up to shelter the members.” In June 1865, the lodge moved to Charleston when the regiment relocated to the mainland. Members, numbering 25 to 30, met in a house across from the Citadel.
Gray chose to remain in South Carolina after the war’s end. He served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1868 and a member of the state House of Representatives from 1868 to 1870.
Albanus S. Fisher (1831-1900)
Sergeant Albanus S. Fisher (1831-1900) was employed as a laborer when he first enlisted in the regiment in April 1863. After Colonel Shaw’s death during the Battle of Fort Wagner, Fisher showed his affection for the abolitionist regimental leader in a letter he wrote to Captain George Pope on July 31, 1863: “I still feel more Eager for the struggle than I ever yet have, for I now wish to have Revenge for our galant Curnel [sic].”
Before and after the war, Fisher was an active member of Mount Pisgah Lodge No. 32, PHA, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He served as Senior Warden in 1860 and Master in 1898. He was also a member of Olive Branch Lodge No. 17 in Norristown, and in 1867, served as the District Deputy Grand Master of Pennsylvania’s First Independent African Grand Lodge of North America.
Fisher was also a member of the Grand Army of the Republic Post No. 80 in Philadelphia, Captain of the Norristown chapter of the Pennsylvania National Guard, and a trustee at Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Norristown. Upon his death in 1900, Fisher left his “weapons, books, papers, effects relating to the secret orders to which he belonged” to his son, Willard.
