The masonic links of some of the major figures in the American Independence story may be familiar to many readers. Some decades prior to Independence in 1734, Benjamin Franklin was Grandmaster of Pennsylvania Freemasons. George Washington, the fledgling nation’s first President, took his oath of office on a Masonic Bible at his inauguration. Some sources suggest the association between Freemasonry and American patriotism stems from Washington’s own involvement with the Craft along with several of his generals. On September 18, 1793 the cornerstone of the Capitol Building was laid by Washington in full masonic regalia and the whole proceedings were organised by the Grand Lodge of Maryland and attended by Washington’s own lodge, Alexandra No 22 Lodge of Virginia.
    The number of lodges multiplied rapidly both prior to the War of Independence and afterwards in the early nineteenth century as Freemasonry appealed to growing numbers of the professional and merchant classes. However, there were opponents and an unsavoury scandal in 1826 resulted in a backlash against the movement. This led to the first of the now familiar political conventions when, in September 1831, the newly formed ‘Anti-Masonic’ party met in Baltimore to select a Presidential Candidate.
    Baltimore had staged a less well known occasion where the Grand Lodge of Maryland played a significant ceremonial role in the laying of the first stone of the Continent’s first railroad. The appropriate date of the 4 July 1828 was chosen for the grand ceremony, reportedly attended by 50,000 people. Charles Carroll, then aged 90 and the solitary survivor from the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, performed the ceremonial task of cutting the first sod of this revolutionary new means of transport. The Baltimore and Ohio had been spawned the previous year at a meeting of 27 local businessmen held at the home of George Brown, who became treasurer of the new enterprise. The aim was to link the growing port of Baltimore to the Ohio River, then at the cutting edge of the fast expanding hinterland of the new country.
    Brown was the second of four sons of Alexandra Brown who had emigrated to Baltimore from Ballymena in Northern Ireland at the turn of the century. In keeping with the tradition of many merchant classes of the time, all four returned to England for education at Catterick. By 1827 George had risen to a Directorship of the Baltimore Mechanics Bank, major sponsors of the railroad, and the family merchant business had achieved substantial prosperity. Two of Alexandra’s three other sons were dispatched to open branches of the family enterprise in New York and Philadelphia and (possibly because his health did not stand up to the rigours of the Chesapeake Bay climate) William, the eldest, developed the firm’s trading interests back in Liverpool. William Brown was to become a founder of the Bank of Liverpool in 1831, a Member of Parliament in 1847 and High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1863. He also left a memorial which has lasted to this day, for the city’s William Brown Library was endowed with a £10,000 gift from Brown in 1856. A statue of William along with other prominent Liverpool citizens of the Victorian era, is today in Liverpool’s superb St. George’s Hall.
    The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad prospered too. Despite the ravages of the American Civil War, when the B&O was a pioneer in moving troops and supplies to and from the frontlines, and then the failure of one of its major backers (Baring Bank in London in 1893), the B&O reached its centenary in rude health. A spectacular celebratory dinner was held at Baltimore’s Lyric Theatre on 24 September 1927. There were almost 1,000 diners, including the whole of the Maryland legislature. After the meal, re-enactments were staged of the original meeting at George Brown’s house and of the laying of the first stone at Mount Clare by Charles Carroll and the assembled Grand Lodge of Maryland.
    In common with other American railroads, the B&O was about to reach its zenith for, by the early 1950s, the airlines were hitting passenger revenues. Today the B&O is just a memory to savour in the heart of Baltimore; a museum which, in the opinion of this writer, is equal to our own National Railway Museum in York.
    One further remnant of both the 1827 founding and the centenary celebrations of the railroad is the famous blue and white china produced specially for the occasions. The original 19th century Staffordshire blue china was imported from Enoch Wood of Burslem. In 1927 various designs, based on Burslem product, formed dinner services for the B&O’s dinning cars, which were furnished in the old American Colonial style. The border on the china plates depicted a series of events in the railroad’s history; among them the 4 July 1828 gathering of the Grand Lodge of Maryland, presiding over the first stone laying of the new county’s first railroad.