Ark Lodge History   

“When things are come to some perfection, it delighteth people to look back at their founders, and glorie in their worthie enterprises .”  

The history of Ark Lodge No. 39, AF & AM, and of early Freemasonry in Connecticut has its roots firmly imbedded in the American Revolution of 1775.  During the winter of 1778 – 1779, the sound of the axe, hammer, saw and other tools of iron rang through the air over Redding.  It was the first week of December 1778 and General Israel Putnam’s Division of the Continental Army, some 2,900 soldiers were preparing to lay in winter quarters in a wooded valley just east of the small rural town of Redding Connecticut.  Israel Putnam was one of four Major Generals under General George Washingtons Command.

By the beginning of February, 1779, most of the cantonments were in order.  There were three, located in low dales more or less protected from the inclemency’s of the weather.  One such camp was near the present West Redding Station[1], a second on Gallows Hill[2] and a third[3], the best known and most easterly at the present Israel Putnam Memorial Camp Grounds, commonly known as, Putnam Park, on route 58, on the Bethel Redding town line.  These Redding encampments, put the soldiers within easy striking distance of both the Hudson River and the Connecticut coast, where British ships often landed to attack inland.  A year before, in the spring of April 1777, the British had marched 2,000 troops north from the coast up through this wooded valley in Redding on their way to Danbury where they attacked and destroyed the American supply depot[4] located there, along with a soldier’s hospital.  The British then fled south through Ridgefield where the American militia, led by Benedict Arnold[5] was waiting for them.

Among the officers in Putnam’s Brigade were a few who had been active members of American Union Lodge, which had been organized in the Connecticut line by Connecticut Soldiers, at the Siege of Boston two years before, during the winter of February of 1776.  Other Masons had been made in New Haven, where was located the only Connecticut Lodge  Hiram #1, which worked without interruption throughout the Revolution and has ever since, to date.  By mid-February camp routine was well established, and with deep snow on the ground, and the Sound frozen over, no enemy action was anticipated that would disturb the daily schedule, nor any alarm which might require a patrol to hurry down to the shore.  It was only natural, therefore, that the call to labor should issue.  That call is recorded in the books of American Union Lodge as follows:

“The necessity of attending to the business of war, under the dispersed condition, by those who were formally members, such as were still living in the Army, belonging to different regiments and brigades, made it impracticable to carry on the Grand Design until the present winter, when the Army being collected in winter quarters, at the request of the Brethren, it was concluded to issue a summons to call the members together, for the purpose of re-establishing the Ancient Craft in the American Union Lodge, agreeable to which a summons was issued, desiring the Brethren of the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons to meet at the Widow Sanford’s[7]  near the Redding Meeting House[8] , on Monday the 15th of February 1779, instant at 5 o’clock pm, the members to attend early at 4 o’clock on special business.

Only the constitutionally necessary three could get together as American Union Lodge had suffered heavy casualties in the battles of Long Island (Aug. 1776),  Harlem Heights (Sept. 1776), White Plains (Oct. 1776), and the capture of Fort Washington on Manhattan.  The remnants were scattered to different posts of duty as though by the four winds of heaven.  Joel Clark, the organizing Master of American Union Lodge, captured during the battle of Long Island had now died in a British prison hospital in New York after languishing for months from wounds received on the Heights of Brooklyn.  He had been made a Mason in New Haven and was a member of King Solomon’s Lodge when it was organized at Waterbury in 1765. 

At the first meeting of American Union Lodge in Redding the three members in attendance first accepted several others[1] as members of the Lodge and then proceeded to the election of officers in preparation for a busy period of labor.  The Master then chosen was Brigadier General Samuel Holden Parsons who had been made in Middletown, crafted at New Haven, and was an original member of American Union Lodge when first congregated at Roxbury, outside Boston, (1776) and in which he was one of the first to be raised.  During Putnam’s encampment in Redding, General Parson’s lived in the house opposite Christ Church on Redding Ridge.

American Union Lodge was unique in that it did not have a charter.  Joel Clark had been “commissioned” to form a lodge by John Rowe, Grand Master of St. John’s Provincial Grand Lodge at Boston, and was authorized to assemble a lodge and work in any place where no Grand Master had jurisdiction.  Although 12 Lodges [2] were already in existence in Connecticut under charters from the States of New York and Boston, there was, then, still no Grand jurisdiction over Connecticut, as the Grand Lodge of Connecticut would not be founded until July 8th, 1789,

During the encampment in Redding the Brethren of American Union Lodge, with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other, made 22 Masons between the last week in February and the first week of May 1779.  While not the cradle of Freemasonry in Connecticut, here assuredly was nurtured the enthusiasm, energy and desire for unity which carried over into the early days of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut, and the Redding Lodge which was to become known as Ark Lodge No. 39. 

Among the many names appearing on the minutes of American Union Lodge while sitting at Redding, are the following:

  • Jonathan Hart, who served as Secretary or Master of American Union Lodge for more than 15 years;
  • William Judd, Connecticut’s second Grand Master and the one who granted the original charter to Ark Lodge.
  •  Henry Champion, Connecticut’s Grand Treasurer for 33 years; John Mix, Connecticut’s Grand Secretary for more than 30 years and signer of the original charter to Ark Lodge;
  • Moses Cleaveland, the first Grand Marshal of Connecticut and the man who laid out the city in Ohio which bears his name;
  • Albigence Waldo, well known physician and writer of Pomfret, eulogist at the Masonic funeral of General Israel Putnam;
  • William Little, who was later to become the Grand Treasurer of Massachusetts; and the
  • Reverend Israel Evans, later a Grand Chaplain of New Hampshire. 
  • Among the invited guests and registered visitors were: Major General Israel Putnam; one of his aides, Major Oliver Lawrence; and Henry Dearborn of New Hampshire, later Secretary of War and a Major General in the War of 1812. 

American Union Lodge was thus really a Connecticut Lodge, a Military Lodge, established by Connecticut soldiers from within the Connecticut Line during the Revolutionary War.  American Union Lodge would go on to meet in New York, New Jersey and other states, before finally settling down and finding its permanent home in Marietta, Ohio, where it still survives today, as of 2023[3].  For years, early Connecticut Grand Lodge sessions must have resembled a meeting of American Union Lodge.  But strangely enough, no Redding men were ever made in American Union Lodge as the Redding area was then a hotbed of Tory (British loyalist) activity. 

During the War, a local resident of interest was “Squire” William Heron, a native of Ireland.  Heron had been a teacher at the Greenfield Hill Academy Church[4] in Fairfield and a surveyor before coming to Redding where he became a gentleman farmer, trader and land speculator.  During the revolution he acted in a duel capacity and historians are not agreed on the question of whether he was a Patriot or a Tory.  The evidence seems to show that the British regarded him as one of their most valuable and trustworthy agents. 

He had friends or relatives on the British staff in New York which gave him contacts there, and his letters in the records of the British Secret Service are listed under the code name “Hiram”, which seems rather mysterious inasmuch as he did not represent that ancient hero until some years later when he was raised in St. John’s Lodge in Fairfield, now Fidelity St. John’s #3 of Bridgeport.  On the other hand, he was implicitly trusted by Generals Washington and General Parsons, and during the war served in the Connecticut Legislature, on various colonial committees and “turned out” on every alarm.

Heron, in personal bearing, was aristocratic and domineering, far from popular.  Yet, while at the at a banquet of the American Union Lodge held at the windows Sanfords, with General Parsons, as Master presiding, Heron was given one of the most prominent seats, which would not have been the case had there been any question as to his loyalty.

April 1779, Putman’s Division would leave the Redding encampments, marching off to defend Peekskill. The war would end in 1781, formally in 1783 and some 13 years would pass, when on October 19th, 1796, the Grand Lodge of Connecticut (established since 1789) received a petition from “sundry Freemasons, residents in the towns of Redding and Weston” to charter a lodge.  That petition would lay over till its next Grand Lodge meeting in 1797, and Freemasonry would be reborn in Redding with the Charter and birth of Ark Lodge 39. 

Ark Lodge 39

On May 17th, 1797, the Charter was granted to “Bretheren . . . . residing in the towns of Weston and Redding, in the County of Fairfield and parts adjacent” and when issued under the date of June 10th, 1797 and over the signature of William Judd, Grand Master and John Mix, Grand Secretary, was known as “Ark Lodge No. 39 to the holden in the town of Weston, aforesaid”.  The application for the charter and the one to whom it was issued were William Heron of Redding, Nathan Hubbel (Weston, now Easton, see p7), Benjamin Hall, Nathan Wheeler (Weston’s first Town Clerk), Lyman Edwards, Samuel Hall, Thomas Davis (a Doctor from Redding), James Rockwell, David Jackson jr., William Hawley jr. (Georgetown) Joseph Prince, Henry Beardsley, Lockwood DeForest (Easton), and Abel Hall (Easton).  See p7 bott on original booklet.

William Heron was named the First Master[5], of Ark Lodge, Nathan Wheeler, first Senior Warden, and Benjamin Hall, first Junior Warden.  Heron had been made in and had served as the Master of St. John’s #3 at Fairfield, (now Fidelity St John of Bridgeport).  The other charter members had been made in lodges in Monroe, Stratford and Norwalk. 

The first meeting of Ark Lodge was held at the home of Brother Lockwood DeForest[6] on June 20th, 1797 in Weston /Easton, and as the pages following will show, it was customary in those days to meet in private homes, taverns and public houses at different locations.  Not until 1823 was a permanent lodge hall constructed, the first meeting being held there on November 11th, 1823.  Located at “the rear of the church[7] on Redding Ridge,” the “Masonic Hall” was used as the meeting place of the lodge until its last communication of record on