The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1866-11-26
FREEMAsONRY.
Its Introduction into the United
States ana its History.

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States and its History.
The address delivered by John II. B.
Latrobe, of Baltimore, at the laying OF
the cornerstone of the new Masonic
temple in that city, on the 10Th instant,
gave condensed history of Freema-
sonry. We quote a few passages:
"At the commencement of
the eighteenth century, Freemasonry
had ceased to be heaIthful and vigor-
GUS society, whose occupation consisted
In building editices. The ages were no
longer dark. Learning, emerging, as
the morning sun above the hill-tops,
from the gloom in which it had been
hidden, was gradually illuminating
europe. The printing press was revo-
ludoniHing the world. America had
been discovered. Enterprise was on
loot everywhere, and marching with a
giants strength. Labor, rattling impa-
lently the chains with which guilds
and corporations bound it, was struG-
gllng into freedom. Research, careless
about the mysteries of rites, was
bussying itself about the mys-
ter1es OF art, and year by wear,
unveiling them.Tg Other men be-
came competent as architects and
builders, and the Masons, ceasing to be
necessity as craftsmen, found Them
peculiar ceremonies only. Year after
year the society became feebIer. VIII
nam III. had been its last royal patron:
Sir Christopher Wren its last Grand
master in England; and, at length,
somewhere about the year A. d. i7l7,
Iour lodges. were all that remained of
the once powerful organization that
had built York and Westminster, and
Ely and Canterbury, and Lincoln and
Durham, and to which the monarch
had been indebted for his palace, and
the Baron for his hold. This was the
lowest ebb.in the fortunes of Ffeema-
sonry. The tide then turned. The
practical feature of the order was
abandoned altogether. 1t became spec
uiative in its character; and in n little
while we find the Grand Lodge of Lon
don permanently ablished, and Free
masonry once more attracting to its
lodges rank and wealth and influence.
But the Grand Lodge of London was
not without its troubles. Tho Masons
of York, rich in muniments, with a
charter dating back nine hundred
years, disputed the authority of the
new creation;i and it was not until the
beginning of the presentScentury .that
harmony was obtained, and the author
lty of the Grand Lodge of England re-
cognlsed by all parties. eli.
/. ."FreemnsOnry was introduced into
the United States in 1870, and seems to
have become popular at once. Wash
ington was the master of a lodge,
and the greater part of the Off
GERS Of the Army of the Revolution
were members of the fraternity. The
cornerstone of the hall we are about
TO leave was laid by governor of the
state, then Grand Master of the Grand
Lodge of Maryland, and the building
was inaugurated by the late General
Wtnder, who succeeded him in the
once. There is now n Grand Lodge in
every state of the Union; and the noble
edifices which are everywhere being
built for the accommodation of the
Order, while they do credit to the taste,
manifest, at the same time, the wealth
and prosperity of those to whom now
belongs the duty of transmitting, in all
their purity, to a distant future, the
principles of Freemasonry.
"You have, probably, seen, in the
papers Of the day, that the cornerstone
OF the old Masonic Hall, which we are
about abandoning, has recently been
unearthed. 1t was laid in 1911, more
than half century ago; and you must
have been struck by the fact, that not
wtthstanding the care taken to transmit
to posterity the history of the building
and some brief chronicle of tho times,
Two coins of gold, a half eagle of 1896
and an eagle of 1911, with the inscrip-
ton on the marble, were alone found
to be unimpaired. The silver was
blackened and defaced; the 1gures on
the copper had disappeared; and some
remnants of decayed' binding were all
that testified to the printed volumes
that had been placed within the stone.
Damp and mould and time, that ettax
reT1tn', in the short space of fffty-two
years, had defeated the purpose of the
builders to hand down to future ages
some memorials of their transactions.
But the eagle and halE-eagle were as
bright as when the coins first issued
from the mint. Itwould have been the
same, had the gold come from the foun-
dations of an Indian shrine or a temple
IN the Forum. 1t will be the same,
when as many years shall have rolled
over the new resting place, to which,
to-day, 1t is consigned, as have accu,
mulated since the remote past"