http://www.addisonindependent.com/200610masonic-historical-documents-found

JOHN TESTER, SECRETARY of the Orwell Freemasons, talks to Orwell students Tuesday about the 800 historical documents that he found in a Masonic Lodge desk. The documents, some dating back almost 200 years, trace the history of the Orwell Freemasons.

ORWELL — When John Tester, secretary of Masonic Independence Lodge No. 10 in Orwell, sat down at the lodge’s 1864 flip-top desk to do some spring cleaning last May he made an unexpected find — almost 200 years of handwritten history. About 800 documents, written on tri-folded parchment in impeccable condition and neatly tucked into the back of the desk, told the story of the Orwell Freemasons like Tester had never seen it before.

He brought the documents — and a lesson in Freemason, town and U.S. history — to Orwell middle school students on Tuesday.

Most of the documents were created before 1880 and are petitions to apply for membership to the order.

“The Masonic rituals have been unchanged for 700 years,” Tester told the Orwell students gathered at the town hall. “The qualifications for acceptance have always been the same: A man freeborn, of good and worthy standing, who believes in a higher being, whether that be God or Allah or someone else.”

Tester recognized the names of prominent families in Orwell like the Bascoms, the Barbers and the Bottums. Roswell Bottum, who wrote his petition in 1817, had been a district court judge in Middlebury as well as Orwell town clerk.

Some members of Independence Lodge recognized the pencil handwriting on the back of each document, a brief sentence from the last time these papers had been sorted, as belonging to Julius C. Thomas, whose 91-year-old son still lives in Orwell. Julius Thomas had been the secretary of the fraternity in the early 1920s, and in 1934, he was the first Orwell member to become Grand Master of Vermont.

The documents also include correspondence from other lodges in Vermont, discussing the expulsion or suspension of certain members — warnings to Orwell Freemasons not to allow the outcast to simply rejoin the fraternity in a different lodge. Most members were expelled for not paying their dues, which in the early 1800s were 50 cents a year. Others were kicked out for drinking distilled beverages in excess or committing adultery.

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