Maine Masons honor their past

By: Jeff Sukeforth, District Educational Representative, 7th District

SYLLABICATION: me·mo·ri·al

NOUN:
1. Something, such as a monument or holiday, intended to celebrate or honor the memory of a person or an event.

 

Memorial Day 2006, a day in which it seems everyone makes the trip to cemeteries in order to remember and pay tribute to those who have gone on before us.  It could be family members or relatives, friends, or in the case of Amity Lodge #6 in Camden, to remember those Brothers who have gone on to the Celestial Lodge above. Amity members voted several months ago to purchase Masonic Flags and place them onto graves of members of the lodge in the local cemeteries.

I took on this task in 2005 as Master of Amity Lodge and began researching the availability of Masonic flags. What was first thought to be an easy search project turned into six months worth of searching, finally locating a source in Texas. Once the flags were purchased the task turned to identifying buried members in the local cemeteries.

Thinking this was also going to be fairly easy, I set about using lodge resources to make a list of all members who had passed on. Those lodge resources were few and far between with the most bountiful source being an old copy of the first 100 years of History located in the lodge library and written by PM Ruel Robinson. That history book resulted in a list of all members through 1896 which left only those who from 1896 through the current year.

By April 2006 a computer list of everyone from the first 100 years had been compiled and the decision was made to begin researching the names we had against the town listings of cemeteries. Wor. Steve Gibbons, the current Master, and I met at his office in the Camden Fire Station where Steve had in hand a map of the local cemeteries. A call was placed to the Town Office where it was arranged to go over the files to identify burial locations in the cemeteries. Armed with the list, pad and pencil, I made my way to the Town Office thinking this is going to be easy, do a search on the computer of names and make note of the burial plots!  Well not quite that easy, it seems the town cemetery lists consist of five drawers of neatly handwritten 3x 5 cards! At least they were in alphabetical order so I jumped in. Twelve hours and 5 days later, 182 names of Brothers of Amity Lodge had been identified as being buried in the two town cemeteries.

After reporting the findings to the Craft at the regular meeting in May it was agreed upon to place flags at all graves we could identify. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well with map and flags in hand it was off to the cemeteries where I thought once again this should be fairly simple and once again I was caught by surprise to find stones which could not be read, stones missing and not all to sure the information gathered from the card files matched some of the map locations!

But to bring this to a close: Amity Lodge was able to recognize 160 members buried in Mt. View and Oak Hill cemeteries as well as several Brothers unknown to Amity but who are buried and have the Square and Compasses etched into their stones.

The picture with this article depicts the stones located on the burial plot at Mt. View Cemetery which belongs to Amity Lodge. Buried here are three members of the lodge; Bros. Jacob Patch, MD, Jonas Wheeler and Wor. George Ulmer. Also buried is the wife of Bro. and Dr. Patch, Rebekah. It should be noted that George Ulmer was one of the founders of Amity Lodge when in 1799 it was decided to request a Charter for a Masonic Lodge in Camden. Wor. Ulmer was the first Master of Amity Lodge in 1801 when the charter was granted and signed by the Grand Master of Massachusetts.

 

Moving Forward

It is the goal of the lodge to identify all members buried in the two cemeteries and to recognize them by placing a flag on their graves, because as we all know, our time on earth is short and we can only hope that when we too go to the House not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens, that our Brothers will remember us as well. 

 

Photos by Jeff Sukeforth