International News

Grand Charity Grant Aids Namibia Flood Victims

Help for the Red Cross emergency appeal following the worst floods in Namibia for 40 years has been provided by the Freemasons’ Grand Charity with an emergency £5,000 grant.
     The money will help fund the cost of the deployment of the mass sanitation emergency response unit, which specialises in preventing the outbreak of diseases, vital where there is flooding and where thousands have been displaced.
     About 700,000 Namibians are believed to have been affected by the severe flooding which affected six regions of the country and led to the declaration of a state of emergency.
     The grant will help the Red Cross relief work. In addition to constructing temporary latrines and assisting with sanitation and waste disposal, the Red Cross distributed thousands of blankets, tents, mosquito nets, hygiene kits and more than 500,000 water purification powder sachets.

American Legend Kit Carson Celebrations

American masons are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of the famous frontiersman, mountain man, Indian scout, General and Indian Agent and member of the Craft – General Christopher Houston ‘Kit’ Carson. The anniversary involved a parade in September which included masonic bodies at Taos, New Mexico, where he and his family lived for more than 25 years.
     He became a Mason in his later years. He was initiated on 29 March 1854 at Montezuma Lodge No. 1 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They soon demitted and the lodge surrendered its charter as the Civil War broke out and everyone went their own way.
     They received a charter to start a lodge in Taos in 1860 named Bent Lodge No. 42, after the murdered mason and first Governor, Charles Bent, which celebrates its centenary this year.
     At the time all lodges in the west were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Missouri, as this was the starting point of the Santa Fe trail.
     Kit Carson died relatively young at 59 in 1868. The following year his wife’s family removed the remains from Boggsville, Colorado to Taos, New Mexico, where they now rest.
     Carson took his masonry seriously, and many stories tell of him riding his horse 65 miles to Montezuma Lodge for almost every meeting.
     The Grand Lodge of New Mexico bought Kit Carson’s house and then sold it to Bent Lodge. It officially became a museum in 1961.
     Story courtesy J Mark Drummond, Executive Director, Kit Carson Home and Museum.

Peter Lowndes Leads Team to Caribbean

Pro Grand Master Peter Lowndes, along with Grand Secretary Nigel Brown, Grand Director of Ceremonies Oliver Lodge and Deputy Grand Director of Ceremonies Philip Purves, has installed Walter Scott as both Grand Master and Grand Superintendent of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
     The new District Grand Master then installed the Hon Justice Patrick Brooks as Deputy District Grand Master and reappointed Harding Watler and Dr. Basil Robinson as Assistant District Grand Masters.
     There are 22 lodges in Jamaica and two in the Cayman Islands. Freemasonry began in the islands in 1742 under the Premier Grand Lodge, and in 1797 a Grand Lodge was formed under the Antients, the two coming together in 1813 under the newly formed United Grand Lodge of England.
     In 1865 overseas Grand Lodges were designated as Districts.

The Masons Who Pioneered the West

A monument commemorating the establishment of the first masonic lodge west of the Mississippi River – Louisiana Lodge No. 109 – has been erected just south of South Gabouri Creek, Missouri. The Monument reads:

The first Masonic lodge
west of the Mississippi River
met across the street in the
Green Tree Tavern
on November 14, 1807.

Freemasonry multiplied from
this lodge and the
Grand Lodge of Missouri
creating the thousands of
lodges and millions of
members in 23 States.

Within Ste. Genevieve’s National Historic District is the Nicholas Janis Home (circa 1790), which later became the Green Tree Inn, operated by his son Francois in 1800.
     This site is historically recognised as the meeting place of the first lodge to be chartered west of the Mississippi River, on 14 November, 1807.
     Thirteen charter members petitioned the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania with the approval of Western Star Lodge No. 105 of Kaskaskia, Illinois to create a new lodge on the west bank of the river in the newly acquired Louisiana territory.