On the Higest Masonic Hill

Corinthian, No. 42 of Kokomo not only can boast of being the highest Lodge in the United States, elevation 10,618 feet, but also of having had a Master with one of the longest services on record.

Benjamin F. Rich refused to let the Lodge die though the area was depopulated and the membership dropped to as low as twelve. W. Bro. Rich enlisted the cooperation of the Grand Lodge so that an annual meeting could be held to maintain the charter. When he was presented with a 5O-year pin and Colorado Certificate in 1942, Grand Secretary Patton noted that W. Bro. Rich had been Master for 24 of the 50 years. Read more

Regional Groups

Study of Masonry beyond the ritual, Masonic fellowship, and cooperative solving of mutual problems have been the objectives of several voluntary groups in the last half-century since travel has become easier.

The San Luis Valley Masonic Association held annual gatherings before and after the turn of the century. It was composed of seven Lodges: Saguache No. 32, Alamosa No. 44, Monte Vista No. 73, Creede No. 94, Vulcan No. 103 of Hooper, Del Norte No. 105, and Center No. 128. They maintained a park where members had summer homes and recreational facilities. George E. Simonton, Grand Master in 1913, reported that over 400 Masons and families were in attendance when he visited there. Read more

50-Year Medals

In 1934 the Grand Lodge started the presentation of Gold 50-year pins to all members of the Jurisdiction who had completed 5O full years of Masonic membership. M. W. Bro. Howard T. Vaille recommended the practice in these words:

“For many years it has been the custom in many jurisdictions to give a medal to every member who completes 50 years of Masonic life. Every jurisdiction that has tried it is very enthusiastic about it. Several Grand Masters have heartily approved of it; as one of them expresses it ‘considering the pleasure they give, the cost is small.’
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Good Men and True

The responsibilities of the ballot were carefully considercd by the early Masons of Colorado. Grand Master Henry M. Teller at the Fourth Annual Communication admonished: “Admit no one because you can find nothing bad in him; make it a rule that no man shall be admitted who does not possess some trait of character which recommends him for admission.”

Grand Master Archie J. Van Deren in 1865 elaborated further: “The doors of our Lodges are thronged by persons anxious to be admittcd to our mysteries. . . . We cannot be too vigilant in guarding the doors of our Lodges or too careful in the use of the ballot. In this lies our safety. Allow none to pass the threshold except the worthy. Advance none who have not sufficient zcal to learn the lectures of the several degrees. . . . Avoid the blighting defect of filling your Lodges with inefficient and inactive members to become drones in the hive of Masonry, consuming it’s, vitality.” Read more

The Benevolent Fund – The Brightest Star in Masonry’s Crown

A donation of $60, the entire salary of the Grand Lecturer in 1900, was the start of the Grand Lodge Benevolent Fund.

Later during his tenure as head of the fund, the administration cost averaged Jess than $300 per year. And upon his death this man contributed $1000 to the fund provided that the Grand Lodge did likewise. Naturally, the Grand Lodge did.

The man was Ernest LeNeve Foster, secretary of Washington, No. 12 at Georgetown for many years and Grand Master in 1890. He officiated at the constituting of Temple Lodge No. 84 and later became a member of it. Read more

Outstanding Grand Officers

Including James R. Killian, the 1903 Grand Master and Oliver A. Whittemare, Past Deputy Grand Master and First Grand Secretary.)
Back row: Horace T. Delong, 1898; Alphonse A. Burnand, 1899: John M. Max. well, 1891; William D. Wright, 1892; James R. Killian, 1903; George D. Kennedy, 1901; Andrew Sagendorf, 1883: William D. Pierce, 1895; Ernest leNeve Foster, 1890; Cromwell Tucker, 1897.

Middle row: George W. Rose, 1896; Oliver A. Whittemore, 1861-65-67; lawrence N. Greenleaf, 1880; Chase Withrow, 1866; Henry M. Teller, 1861, 1867-72; Archibald J. Van Deren, 1864; Harper M. Orahood, 1876: Cornelius J. Hart, 1877; Frank Church, 1882.

Bottom row: George K. Kimball, 1887; Joseph M. Milsom, 1900; William D. Todd, 1888; James H. Peabody, 1884; William T. Bridwell, 1890; Marshall H. Dean, 1902.

Inserts: Jethro C. Sanford, 1893; Albert H. Branch, 1886; William l. Bush, 1894. Read more

The Early Grand Masters Were a Youthful Group

That the frontier is a young man’s country was proved by the age of the early Grand Masters at the time they occupied the Grand East.

Chivington, the first Grand Master was forty. Only two others of the first nineteen were older: Greenleaf who was forty-one and Sagendorf who was fifty-five.

Youngest was Chase Withrow, Grand Master at the ripe old age of twenty-six! Incidentally Withrow was a Mason for over seventy years, lived to be ninety-one one! in the Jast year of his life conferred the Third degree “in a perfect manner.”

Next youngest was Albert H. Branch, thirty years and nine months of age when he mounted the three steps to the East.

Ages of the first nineteen Grand Masters follow, except for Andrew Mason whose life record is unavailable:
Chivington, 40; Weston, 39; Teller, 33; Van Deren, 33; Mason; Withrow, 26; Anthony, 35; Henry, 33; Orahood, 35; Hart, 39; Woodbury, 37; Carr, 37; Greenleaf, 41; Quillian, 39; Church, 39; Sagendorf, 55; Peabody, 32; Wyman, 37; Branch, 30
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Organization of the Grand Lodge

The area later to be Colorado was in 1858 part of four Territories. Auraria was in Kansas Territory and so it was to the Grand Lodge of Kansas that the Brethren in Auraria applied for a dispensation for regular Masonic authority. This was granted and M. W. Bro. Rees of Kansas enthused to his grand session:

“Auraria Lodge is the first advance of Masonry thus far west into the confines of the Rocky Mountains, and it is located within the newly discovered Gold regions of the West and literally amidst the highest hills and lowest valleys, where the sun, reflecting from perpetual snow, warms the rich vale in its constant verdure. Truly, this is an age of penetration and progression, and the genial influence of Masonry, cementing and warming the hearts of its members, keeps pace with the march of civilization.

“To the care of R. W. Bro. D. P. Wallingford of Missouri, I committed this Dispensation, and he has doubtless set the brethren to work in AMPLE FORM in that far-distant land; and we will earnestly pray that they may quarry no stone unfitted for the building, but perform their work in peace and harmony.”

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Colorado’s First Masonic “Temple”

The gatherings of the Brethren at Auraria were interrupted in the spring of 1859 by news of the gold strike in Gregory Gulch, forty miles northwest in the High Rockies. Thousands of prospectors hurried there and again Masons sought their kind. Here the first Masonic “Temple” in Colorado was soon constructed.

W. M. Slaughter, one of the three who pre-empted a block of site, recalled that nearly one hundred Masons leveled the ground dragging in logs for the “Temple.” He wrote:

“Word had been passed about among the Masons of the several camps that a Masonic meeting would be held that night at dusk and as the hour arrived the trails and paths leading toward the ‘Temple’ began to be lined with Masons gathering together to meet each other from distant states and countries for the first time in this wild place amid the pine woods on a lone mountain side. Read more

The Original Seven

HENRY ALLEN

The life of Henry Allen, father of Colorado Masonry, is replete with accomplishment in fraternal and business circles. He was a pioneer in Masonry in Iowa, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana.

In Auraria and Colorado he organized many constructive projects. An owner of stock in the Auraria Town Co., in 1859 he was the organizer of the Minnehah Town and Marble Co., and became its president. The next year he developed the Capitol Hydraulic Co., which constructed Platte Water Company’s ditch, later the City Ditch of Denver.

He was a pioneer banker, associated with two other prominent Masons, W. M. Slaughter and R. Sopris. An early advertisement read “Allen, Slaughter & Co. Buy and Sell all kinds of real estate, mining claims and mining stock, collect debts, receive deposits, and in a short time will be prepared to sell exchange on the East.”

Politically, he was Auraria’s first Postmaster. In April of 1859 he presided over a meeting he had called to consider the advisability of a new Territory. He was a delegate to the first Constitutional Convention in 1859, having in view the formation of the State of Jefferson. He presided over this group as well as being chairman of its judiciary committee.

Allen was the first Senior Warden and second Master of Idaho Lodge No. 1 at Bannock (Idaho City). In 1866 or ‘67 he was admitted to Helena No.3 of Montana and became its Master in 1869. He had been electcd an honorary member of the Grand Lodge of Montana in 1867. That body upon his death in Los Angeles in 1871 inscribed a page in its proccedings to his memory: “A man of large and warm heart, of generous and active sympathies, a true and tried Mason who loved the institution and lived its principles. . . . An active and efficient promoter of peace and harmony in every community and institution in which he moved.”

DR. LEVI J. RUSSELL

Doctor Levi J. Russell was one of three brothers in the Russell prospecting party who first found gold in the Upper Reaches of Cherry Creek in 1857. They arrived at Cherry Creek and the Platte in October, 1853, naming the camp Auraria, after their hometown in Georgia.

As they were Southern sympathizers, the three fled to the South in 1862 after the Civil War started but were arrested enroute by Union troops. Denver friends obtained their release. The other two brothers left Denver in May, 1863, for the South but “the Doctor” journeyed to the new mining camps of Montana. After giving up prospecting he resumed the practice of medicine in Bell County, Texas.

 

 

  

  

  

WM. M. SLAUGHTER

Wm. M. Slaughter was not only one of “the Original Seven” but also was prominently associated with the erection of the first Masonic Temple at Gregory Gulch. His name has been preserved for posterity in the monument erected to that first Temple by the Grand Lodge. The inscription reads: “On this site there was erected in the Month of June, A. D., 1859, the first Masonic building in the State of Colorado. The Act of Pre-emption as shown by the Gregory Mining District Records:

‘Know all men by these presents that WM. M. Slaughter, John Hughes, and Joseph Castro, a building committee appointed by the Free and Accepted Masons, do this day Pre-Empt one block for the purpose of erecting a Masonic Temple June 12, 1859.

WM. M. Slaughter
John Hughes
Joseph Castro

“‘Erected by the Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of Colorado. AD 1932 AL 5932′”

 

OSCAR E. LEHOW

After the panic of 1857, Oscar E. Lehow a carpenter and joiner left Charleston, S. C., and came to Belleview, Neb., where he contracted until the fall of ‘58 when he crossed the plains in search of better promises.

When he arrived at Cherry Creek encampment or Auraria, now West Denver, there was but one cabin, that of old John Smith, the Indian guide and trader. He began prospecting for the yellow metal but was disappointed in the results.

However, after John Gregory and George A. Jackson proclaimed their discoveries of large deposits in the mountains, he went up to Vasquez fork and examined Jackson’s diggings on Clear Creek, but soon passed on to Spanish Bar, a mile above, where he and Andrew Sagendorf staked out and worked one of the better claims. In May, 1859, he sold his interest for $4,000, taking pay in cattle, horses, etc.

After acquiring land on Plum Creek, at the mouth of Platte Canon, and in thc San Luis valley, he again pioneered in the mining development near Silver Cliff in 1878 when there were only two cabins in that town.

 

 

ANDREW SAGENDORF

Andrew Sagendorf, born in 1828 in New York State, came to Nebraska in 1856 and then to Colorado in 1858 on account of tuberculosis. He and his associate, Oscar Lehow, built a double cabin, half of it on each partner’s lot, to comply with Auraria townsite regulations. Besides its size, it was noted for having a window with the settlement’s only pane of glass and a door made of boards.

Sagendorf, expressing surprise to see the boards in the bottom of their wagon upon arrival, was told by Lehow, “Partner, I never thought you’d make it here (they had walked the entire distance from Omaha) and these boards would have made your coffin if you didn’t.”

He became secretary of the Auraria City Town Company and was a prime mover in merging the competing towns of Auraria and Denver. He also was secretary to Gov. John Evans, Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, and Postmaster at Denver, resigning the latter position to go to Colorado Springs for his health.

Treasurer of Auraria Lodge U.D., he became Worshipful Master of two Lodges, Denver No.5 in 1864 and El Paso No. 13 in 1880. He was electeced Grand Master in 1883 when 55 years old and died at 83, the last survivor of the “Original Seven.”

 

 

J. D. RAMAGE

J. D. Ramage was one of the founders of Canon City and president of the Canon City company for two terms. He reported by letter in 1899: “My advent to Colorado was about Nov. 3rd, 1858.

I have had my share of the various trials we have to pass through in this world-amongst others, of having both feet cut off in front of the ankles-the consequence of freezing in the lumber regions of Canada and Maine, which makes it very hard for me to get around; otherwise I would have been in Colorado long ago, as I have very kindly remembrances of it.”

 

 

 

 

 

CHARLES H. BLAKE

Charles H. Blake became the third Worshipful Master of Auraria U. D. Blake Street in Denver was named after him. He and his partner Andrew J. Williams came from Omaha, arriving on October 29th, 1858 with four wagons of merchandise, each wagon drawn by four span of oxen.

They first sold direct from the wagons and were the first to open business in a log cabin on Cherry Creek in January, 1859. Disposing of the merchandise in four months, Blake purchased Denver’s first hotel, the Denver House, in May, 1859. He then engaged in the real estate business.

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