Freemasons in Maynard

From 1922 to 2013 the imposing wooden building at 100 Main Street, currently housing 5 PEAKS Fitness (until recently, Legends Comix and Games), Classic Hair, Siam Village and Boston Bean on the first floor, Concord School of Taekwon-Do above, was known as the Masonic Building. 

Entrance to second and third floor of 100 Main Street
when it was still the Masonic Building.

The Charles A. Welch Lodge (http://www.charlesawelch.com/), founded by Welch in 1872, has since ceased to be housed in Maynard. Meetings were initially held at the Darling Block, a building on the northeast corner of Nason and Summer Streets. The lodge moved into the Main Street building in 1888 – the Maynard Block – but after the Masonic Corporation bought it in 1922, renamed the Masonic Building. The Freemasons occupied the top floor and rented out the rest.

The primary reason for selling the building in 2013 was the high valuation and hence high property taxes set by the Town of Maynard. The actual sale price was below the town's assessment. The Lodge continues to meet as Maynard's lodge, meetings held at the Masonic Corinthian Lodge, 58 Monument Square, Concord. The Corinthian Lodge was chartered in 1797 – by Paul Revere. Concord’s building (built 1820) serves as host to other fraternal organizations in addition to Maynard’s group. 

For those not familiar with Freemasonry, the initials A.F. & A.M. (see photo) stand for Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. All lodges in Massachusetts are A.F. & A.M., as that was the designation of the initial colonial Grand Lodge, in Boston, in 1733. In some states the term is F. & A.M. (Free and Accepted Masons). The difference is a carry-over from a 1700s schism among England's Masons into Ancient and Modern. The separation has long since been resolved. States' Grand Lodges and their member lodges recognize each other’s members as true Freemasons.

Circa 1900, when the west corner (now Boston Bean) was the Post Office

An important point here is that Freemasonry is not a beneficial fraternal order. Many of the nineteenth century organizations were created in part to pool resources of members so as to provide life insurance and other benefits. Some even owned cemetery burial plots for members and their families. Masonic charity is directed toward those who have met with misfortune, but in no way limited or preferential to members.  

As an aside, Freemasons did not drink at meetings, but unlike some of the other traditional fraternal orders which had a temperance (anti-alcohol) policy written into their founding documents, might tipple on their own time. The Masons definition of Temperance was and is that members, as a Cardinal Virtue, should ‘temper,’ i.e., manage and practice restraint, of their behavior in all things. The other three virtues are Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice. “The Four Cardinal Virtues of Freemasonry provide a framework for daily living and serve as a guide for our relationship with God and our fellow man.”

Dave Griffin and Paul Boothroyd of the Maynard Historical
Society holding the first petition to create a new town.

There is a small but interesting story linking Maynard’s Masons to the history of the creation of Maynard. In their possession was an original, never-submitted, petition to create a new town. This predated the official ‘Fowler’ petition of January 1871. In it, the town-to-be did not yet have a name and it called for some land to be taken from Acton and Concord in addition to Sudbury and Stow. How it came into possession of the Lodge is an unplumbed mystery, although there was a note that many of signers had been Masons. Lodge member Frederick S. Johnson was arranging to transfer it to the Maynard Historical Society in 2013 when he died, leaving the document’s location unknown. The task fell to his nephew, John Taylor III, who lived in Mansfield but had a family history with Maynard (his grandfather had owned the mink farm off of Concord Street). The framed document was given to the historical society on March 12, 2014.

Of Maynard’s many, many beneficial fraternal orders of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, only the Masons and Elks, smaller now, survive. The same attrition has occurred nationwide – a diminishing of local social groups as a consequence of an increasing mobile society. Same for churches. Same for bowling leagues for that matter. Robert Putnam’s book, “Bowling Alone,” describes the disintegration of our social networks, and the consequences on our physical and mental health of living a less connected life.