THE AUTHOR
C. W. Torrence was born in St. Marys, Ohio, Nov. 14, 1871, and attended school at New Bremen, and Wapakoneta, Ohio. From the latter of which he was graduated May 18th, 1888 standing second in his class. In 1880 he moved with his family to Wapakoneta, Ohio. After his graduation from the public schools he served a year or two in his father's office of County Auditor and enrolled for a course in the Ohio University at Columbus, Ohio, from which he graduated with honors two years later.
There followed a five years service in the Peoples National Bank of Wapakoneta, as Teller and confidential advisor to the President of that institution. He severed his connection with the bank two years later, to accept a position with the Union Pacific Coal Company in Hanna, Wyoming, as cashier and pay master of that institution, which position he filled for three years. During the time he was employed by that company, he met and married Eva R. Bostwick, making his home in Hanna, Wyoming. To this union one child, whom they named Koneta, was born. He left Hanna to accept a managerial position with the Dayton Brass and Cornice Company in Dayton, Ohio. Two years later he was called to Cincinnati, Ohio, to fill a position in the offices of the Breese Bros. Co.
He entered the Masonic fraternity during the year 1896, joining Hamer Lodge No. 167 of Wapakoneta, Ohio in which he held his membership until the year 1917 when he demitted to Ely Lodge No. 29. He entered the Grand Lodge of Nevada in the year 1924, ten years later he was appointed Grand Historian by Grand Master H. R. Amens, and at once started to gather data for the history of the constituent lodges of the Jurisdiction of Nevada. The task was finished in 1941. The illustrations appearing in the book are from the collection of Past Masters Herman Davis and W. M. David who kindly loaned their volume of views collected during their terms as Grand Masters. Other views were taken by Chas. D. Gallagher or were furnished by the lodges as named.
In 1939 Mr. Torrence joined Reno Consistory No. 1 A. A. S. Rite.
In 1942 he was elected Worthy Grand Patron O. E. S.
In 1943 he joined Kerak Temple A. A. O. N. M. S.
He is also a member of St. Marys Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, which he joined in 1896.Always interested in writing, and a profound student of Masonic lore, his devotion to the cause of Masonry makes him an outstanding member of the Craft, and a logical person to write the History of the constituent lodges of Nevada, which is hereby submitted for your criticism.
PROLOGUE
MASONIC RAMBLES IN NEVADA
NEVADA--"Home of the sage and the pine," of sand covered plains, of rugged sun-kissed hills and mountains, a state of mystery and charm.
Buried 'neath its desert sands, and hidden in its canyons, the bones of hundreds lie, victims to the lure of its hidden wealth, and only the Great Architect of the Universe knows through what untold years its magic call has beckoned and enticed the adventurer with the lure of its mystic trails.
Remains of a long forgotten people have been uncovered by the geologist or their activities traced in pictured writings on bluffs, which ages ago were smoothed by erosive action of wind and sand. A race of beings who may have been strong and powerful, long before Noah launched his ark, long before the pyramids were built, or before the Ming dynasty of the flowery kingdom laid claim to power and prestige.
But, though Nevada has witchery and allurement, she has long since yielded to the spell of the white man's magic. Down her dim trails, first came the pioneer; the rumble of his prairie schooner disturbing the primeval silence of a rock bound wilderness, and widening the trail made by the hurrying fret of countless red men. For years, in an unbroken stream, this tide swept on, into the golden west, or, loitering by the side of trickling streams, gambled with the elements or diced with mother nature in quest of fickle fortune. Then came the locomotive, its shrieking whistle and clanging bell issuing a challenge to the howling defiance of the wolf and coyote, bearings its burden of humanity to distant fields, lured by the hope or promise of a golden hoard.
Today, motor cars and rumbling trucks flash over broad smooth roads, which were once dangerous wagon trails infested by prowling denizens of the mountains and plains, where traveling caravans were beset and harassed by cunning, blood thirsty Indians. High in the azure blue of the skies, the airplane roars its savage song, an evidence of mans inventive genius, an emblem of man's progression. From its dizzy height, it passes over mute evidences of decay, a deserted mining shaft, a decaying mill, where once the tide of golden fortune ebbed and flowed. It passes high above a town, whose once populous streets are overgrown with sage or mesquite bush, whose sagging roofs and battered walls are mute attestants to the remorseless hand of time, and the fickle tide of fortune. A town whose grandeur is gone, whose hum of industry has long since been silenced, and whose treasure is seemingly exhausted. And there are many such in Nevada. And yet, Nevada remains, and probably always will remain, a land of mystery and magic. Man may dynamite her mountains, he may pan her streams and rivers for its gold, he may bridge her chasms and build his cities, but he cannot chain that charm which lies in her mountains and hills; he cannot overcome the lure that haunts her ancient trails, nor can he silence the ceaseless echo of those spirit voices which sigh among the pine and balsam, and whisper her derision and contempt for his futile attempt to conquer her.
INTRODUCTION
The following historical manuscript, prepared by D. E. W. Williamson, was presented and read before the sixty-sixth annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of Nevada, Free and Accepted Masons of Nevada, convened in the city of Reno, in the Masonic Temple, on the 12th day of June, 1930.
It was published in the Annual Proceedings of that year, and is produced here in full. The text follows:
MORMONS AND MASONRY IN NEVADA
In speaking of the old town of Genoa in this state several months ago, the editor of the Carson Appeal said that the first gathering of Masons ever held in Nevada took place there, but inquiry as to his sources of information led to nothing definite, because the man who had told him, a former postmaster of Carson City, had long been dead. If any meeting of so-called Masons occurred at Genoa, it must have been a gathering of those who first saw the light in Illinois in lodges that on October 7, 1844, were declared by the Grand Lodge of Illinois to be clandestine. The first known informal meeting of Masons in Nevada of which there is any note took place in Virginia City in 1860. (Proceedings of G. L. of Nevada, 1928, Report of History Committee.)
But the fact that a meeting of clandestine Masons may have taken place at Genoa, which prior to the survey of Orson Hyde in 1855 was known as Mormon Station and was settled by Mormons almost exclusively, makes the relations of Mormons to Masonry in general and the attitude of Masonry in Nevada toward Mormons of especial interest to the Fraternity. Some of those Mormons, under a ruling of the Grand Lodge of Illinois in 1846, may even have been Masons in good standing, since little attention was then paid to non-payment of dues, and few if any jurisdictions required documentary evidence or a card such as now is demanded.
I.
There is no denying that most of the Mormons who came West from Nauvoo in 1847 had been made Masons in what were at the time regularly constituted lodges. On October 15, 1841, a dispensation was issued by Grand Master Jones of the Grand Lodge of Illinois for the organization of a Masonic Lodge at Nauvoo in that state and the lodge was set to work on March 15, 1842 (Goodwin, "Mormonism and Masonry" 4.) Quite a number of the Mormons had been raised in New York and Ohio. The dispensation was suspended on August 11, 1842, but was restored in November, 1842, on the recommendation of a Grand Lodge Committee which found that the chief irregularity had been collective balloting, and two more lodges were granted dispensations in Nauvoo, while one at Montrose, Ill., was given a charter as Rising Sun Lodge, No. 12, and a dispensation was given another in Keokuk. All these were strictly Mormon lodges and they continued to work, virtually unchallenged, until the Grand Lodge convened in October, 1843, when the charter of Rising Sun Lodge, No. 12, was suspended and the dispensations recalled from Nauvoo, Helm and Nye lodges in Nauvoo and Keokuk Lodge, all on the grounds of irregular work, of concealing their records and of disregarding Grand Lodge instructions and resolutions. (Op. cit. ch. v., p. 36.)
The lodges involved paid not the slightest attention to Grand Lodge orders, but continued to work as before, refusing to surrender their books and papers. They even went so far as officially to dedicate the Masonic Hall at Nauvoo on April 5, 1844, with Masonic ceremonies, although at that time they really had no existence as lodges, whatever, under the ruling of the Grand Lodge. Five hundred and fifty men, called Masons in the report of the proceedings, attended. The Grand Lodge of Illinois apparently did not know what to do about such behavior and it was not until its annual communication in 1846 that it at last took drastic action. It adopted a resolution declaring that the suspension of a subordinate Lodge by the Grand Lodge only affects the standing of its individual members so far as they participate in disregarding the edicts of the Grand Lodge after the first information thereof coming to their knowledge and providing such individuals by their act shall not have been the cause of the action of the Grand Lodge declaring such lodge suspended or clandestine. (Op. cit. ch. vi.,p.40,note.) It is said that Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, was still claimed to be a Mason at the time of his murder by a mob, and it is quite possible to believe that many Mormons, who took little active part in the lodges, imagined that they were still Masons three years later on coming West. Even John Doyle Lee, the leader of the Danites, who conducted the Mountain Meadow massacre in 1857, when he and his men murdered a band of 120 emigrants from Arkansas, laid claim to being a Mason and seemed quite sincere about it. In his confessions, published in 1905 under the title of "The Mormon Menace," this man, who was found guilty and paid the penalty of death in 1877 for his part in the massacre, tells of a meeting in Tennessee where he preached.
He says:
"I had just commenced speaking when one of the men began to swear and use indecent language and made a rush for me with his fist drawn. I made a Masonic sign of distress, when to my relief and yet to my surprise, a planter pushed to my aid. He took the drunken men and led them out of the crowd and then sat by me during the rest of the sermon, thus giving me full protection. That man was a stranger to me but he was a good man and a true Mason." (P. 169.)After the killing of Joseph Smith the Mormons remained on at Nauvoo until March, 1846, when they began the westward march that led to the settlement of Utah and the establishment of Salt Lake City.
II.
Returning to the subject of Genoa, Mormon Station was founded by a small party of Mormons in June, 1850, who had a band of cattle and in addition sold supplies to the emigrants to California who passed along the Carson Valley on their way West, but these people did not remain and in the spring of 1851 John Reese and Stephen Kinsey with a larger number of Mormons, reoccupied the station, taking formal possession on July 4 of that year. (Thompson and West, "History of Nevada.")
They formed quite a settlement and established fine farms in the neighborhood. Three years later, Orson Hyde, president of the apostles of the Mormon Church at Salt Lake City, was appointed probate judge of the newly formed Carson County, of which Genoa was the principal settlement, and led a party of seventy families who settled in and around Genoa and in the southern part of what is now Washoe county. Hyde, who was a close friend of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo and who had acted as missionary in England successfully, was one of the leaders in Mormonism and there cannot be the slightest doubt that he was a member of one of the Masonic Lodges at Nauvoo, for nearly every able-bodied Mormon belonged. With him was Enoch Reese, another active leader, and in his party were men known as Richard Bentley, Russell Kelly, William Nixson, Charles Loveland, Permins Jackman, Seth Dustin and others who afterwards were active in Salt Lake City. At the first election the county officers were all Mormons.
It was not altogether a bed of roses for them and Orson Hyde was busy with fulminations against the Gentiles from time to time. The miners of the territory could not understand why anyone should try to apply Mormon rules to them and they laughed at Hyde's efforts to introduce the Mormon taxes under the name of tithes. By 1856 there were as many Gentiles as there were Mormons and at one time there was almost a pitched battle between Gentiles and Mormons, but Orson Hyde called the latter off.
Properly to understand the feelings of Masons toward the Mormons in Nevada later, it is necessary to understand that this was only three years before the discovery of the Comstock Lode. The efforts to enforce Mormonism on Gentiles left their mark and about this time other causes increased the hostility of most Americans against the followers of Brigham Young. The records of the United States Court at Salt Lake City were burned and a federal judge was driven out of Utah by the Mormons and finally the intention of Brigham Young to fight the United States became so plain that the President sent General Albert Sydney Johnston with United States troops to Utah to maintain order. Brigham Young took alarm and issued an order to all Mormons in California and Nevada to return at once to Salt Lake City. They obeyed, sacrificing their property for whatever it would bring. P. J. Sessions led the first Mormon train of twenty-one families, which left Eagle Valley on July 16, 1857, and on September 5 another urgent message came by express which was followed by an exodus of 450 persons. Genoa was reduced to a small village, while the Washoe Valley was almost depopulated. (Stenhome, "The Rocky Mountain Saints," pp. 284, 285.) It is proper to say that some of the Mormon settlers refused to return to Utah and remained in Nevada, where they became fine citizens.
Brigham Young's clashes with the federal authorities lasted for months and were notorious throughout the United States, both Republican and Democratic parties in their national conventions denouncing the Mormons, and President Buchanan calling attention in a message to Congress to their defiant attitude toward the laws of the country.
Times have changed since then and last year the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Nevada approved a ruling of the Most Worshipful Grand Master that he could see no reason why a Mormon, otherwise qualified should not be made a Mason. But in 1866 the Mormons were distinctly regarded with suspicion by all with whom they came into contact. Proof existed that Brigham Young was hostile in the early years of the Civil war to the Union side and that he hoped for the success of the Confederacy. Besides this, emigrants from the East and Middle West told many stories of the unpleasant way in which they were treated while crossing Utah. In addition to these facts, disclosures of what occurred in the endowment house at Salt Lake City incensed Masons, who felt that the mysteries of Masonry were being profaned. For instance, in one of the grips of the so-called Melchizedek priesthood in the Mormon church, the colloquy is:
"What is this"
"The second grip of the Melchizedek priesthood, patriarchal grip or sure sign of the nail."
"Has it a name?"
"It has."
"Will you give it to me?"
"I cannot, for I have not yet received it." ...
"You shall receive it through the five points of fellowship through the veil. These are foot to foot, breast to breast, hand to back, and mouth to ear."
(Quoted by Goodwin, "Mormonism and Masonry," P. 59.)Understanding the ill regard in which Mormons and their faith were held, it is possible to comprehend the remarks of Grand Master Joseph DeBell, at the communication of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Nevada on September 18, 1866. Brother DeBell reported issuing a dispensation for the organization of Mount Moriah lodge in Salt Lake City and said that, when this lodge has been opened and had begun work, the question was submitted to him of how Mormons were to be created who claim to be Masons and ask the privilege of visiting. In issuing the dispensation, he said, he had required a pledge that the petitioners should carefully exclude all persons of the Mormon faith. "The general character of the Mormon people," Brother DeBell declared, "as it comes to us through the various channels of information, is of such a nature as should forbid their entrance into our fraternity. In answer to the question from Mount Moriah lodge, he replied:
"One known to be living in the daily violation of what is known as the proprieties and decencies of life, setting at naught the moral law as laid down in that Great Light that is ever open on our altars, should by the same rule be excluded from our assemblies. Therefore you will take notice that Mormons, claiming to be Masons, be excluded from the right of visiting; and also that petitions for the degrees of Masonry shall not be received from any person who is known to be a Mormon."The committee to which the grand master's address was referred reported fully concurring in his views and adding: "The man who is not true to his government and faithful to the laws of his country is unworthy the name of Mason and should not be admitted into the great Masonic family."
Mount Moriah lodge of Salt Lake objected to the ruling, holding that it should be the best judge of whom it should admit to the lodge as visitors or members. The communication of 1867 of the Grand Lodge, therefore, refused to grant a charter and directed that demits be sent to the members. Mount Moriah lodge subsequently obtained a charter from Kansas, which for a time caused some friction between the Grand Lodge of Nevada and that of Kansas, but the Salt Lake lodge changed its views and in Utah now a Mormon is not regarded as eligible to become a Mason. In practice a Mormon is not admitted to a lodge in several other jurisdictions, although they have no printed rules on the subject. (Editor's note - the above was correct at the time of printing of this book - 1944 - but has since changed; a Mormon - or a man of any faith - may now be admitted to a Utah - or any other - Masonic Lodge.)
The question of admission of Mormons to the Masonic bodies in Nevada remained without discussion in the form in which it had been decided by Brother DeBell until the communication of the Grand Lodge in 1913, when it was again brought up by representatives from the eastern part of the state. At that time arguments for and against the views of Brother DeBell were offered but no action was taken and the ruling remained undisturbed until it was set aside last year.
