STB-OC93
The Evolution of the
Cornerstone Ceremony
By: S. Brent Morris, P.M.
S. Brent Morris is a member and Past Master
of Potmos Lodge #70, Ellicott City, Maryland
and a Fellow of the Philalethes Society. He is
the author of Masonic Philanthropies , an
excerpt from which wwas the May 1991, STB,
"And the Greatest of These is Charity."
This Short Talk Bulletin is excerpted from
Cornerstones of Freedom; A Masonic
Tradition, by Bro. S. Brent Morris and
published by the Supreme Council, 33ø, S. J.
in October 1993. The book can be ordered from
the Supreme Council 1733 16th St., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20009-3199, (202) 232-3579.
Ediior
The Masonic cornerstone ceremony, like
most complex customs, has evolved over years
of use. It is easy for the romantic to imagine
King Solomon using our current rituals to lay
the cornerstone of the Temple of the Lord in
Jerusalem, but such was not the case. The
Masonic cornerstone ceremony first appeared
in the middle 1700s and in less than a century
had finished evolving, except for minor grammatical changes. The procedure, at least as
used in America, can be traced fairly well
through its entire evolution, though Grand
Lodges differ on the exact details of their
comerstone ceremonies.
THE FIRST RECORDED MASONIC CEREMONY. "The
earliest record of a formal and official
Masonic ceremony is that of the laying of the
Foundation Stone of the New Royal Infirmary of
Edinburgh by the Earl of Cromarty, Grand
Master of Scottish Masons, on August 2, 1738."
The description of the event was written
sixty-six years later in 1804 by Alexander
Lawrie in his History of free Masonry. Lawrie
describes a simple, almost primitive ceremony.
"When the company came to the ground, the
Grand Master, and his bretren of the free and
accepted Masons, surronded the plan of the
foundation hand in hand: and the Grand MasterMason. along with the press [representatives]
of the Managers of the Royal Infirmary, having
come to the east corner of the foundation
where the stone was to be laid, placed the
same in its bed; and after the Right
Honourable the Lord Provost had laid a medal
under it each in their turns gave three
strokcs upon the stone wilh an iron mallet,
which was succecdcd by three clarions of the
trumpet, three huzzas, and three claps of the
hands."'
James Anderson reported a similarly simple
ceremony on March 19, 1721, in his 1723 The
Constitutions of the Free-Masons, though the
Grand Lodge of England apparently was not
involved.
"The Bishop of Salisbury went in an
orderly Procession , duly attended, and having
levell'd the first Stone, gave it two or three
Knocks with a Mallet, upon which the Trumpets
sounded, and a vast Multitude made loud
Acclamations of Joy; when his Lordship laid
upon the Stone a Purse of 100 Guineas, as a
Present from his Majesty for the use of the
Craftsmen."2
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF PRESTON AND WEBB. What
the two accounts above show is thht there was
little form to the procedure. The only point
in common to the two "cremoniess was the
symbolic stiking of the Stone with a mallet.
In just a few decades, though, the ritual
evolved into something more recognizable to
the modern form. In 1772 Willialn Preston
published illustriations of Masonry, which
presented an official version of the lectures,
forms, and ceremonies of the Lodge. Preston
based his book on the practices in Lodges
across England. Twenty-five years later in
1797 Thomas Smith Webb published The
Freemason's Monitor, his version of Preston
adopted for American Masonry.
The cornerstone ceremonies of Preston in
1772 and those of Webb in 1797 are quite
simple, though evolved beyond the descriptions
of Lawrie and Anderson. Preston limited
attendance to the Grand Lodge while Webb
welcomed members of private Lodges. Webb's
ritual shows the inroduction of corn, wine,and
oil, the tests of trueness of the stone,
and the now almost universai approbation from
the Grand Master that the stone is "well
formed, true, and trusty."
Both Preston and Webb follow the
generosity of King George toward the workmen
and have a voluntary collection taken for the
workers; virtually all subsequent rituals
require a similar collection. This generosity
may be based on the description in Ezra 3:7 of
the preparations for the second temple in
Jerusalem. "So they gave money to the masons
and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil
to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring
cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa,
according to the grant which they had from
Cyrus King of Persia."
THE U.S. CAPITOL CEREMONIES IN 1793.
The cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol was laid
in 1793, between the publication of the first
edition of Preston in 1772 in London and the
first edition of Webb in 1797 in Albany.
Preston's Ilustrosions of Masonry was
certainly available to the Masons who planned
the Capitol cornerstone laying. More familiar
to the planners would have been John K. Read's
New; Ahiman Rezon published in Richmond in
1791 , two years before the Capitol event.
Read's book was published for the guidance of
Virginia Lodges and dedicated to "George
Washington, Esq. President of the United Shtes
of America," but there were no instructions
for cornerstone layings.
There is circumstantial evidence that the
procedures used by George Washington were more
like those of Webb than Preston. The newspaper
account of the day specifically mentions that
corn, wine, and oil were placed on the
cornerstone after it was set in place. Also,
Alexandria-Washington Lodge #22 have a wooden
triangle and T-square from the 1793
ceremonies, which must have been used to
symbolically try the stone.
LATER DEVELOPMENTS. Succeeding
generations of Masonic lwcturers and writers
have tried their hands at producing the
"perfect" textbook for teaching Masonic
ritual. Each new monitor showed the
"improvements" of its author-perhaps expanded
explanations, or improved grammar, or
clarified directions. Sometimes the books
would reflect the peculiar development of
Masonic ritual in some particular part of the
country. The cornerstone ceremony, however,
has remained relatively consistsnt from
author to author and from region to region.
The few changcs made were usually logical
expansions of earlier ceremonies; there
have been no radical depanures. Webb's
anointing with corn. wine. and oil together
with his benediction for the stone,
Which begins"May the all-bounteous Author of
Nature...," have been universally adopted by
his American successors.
A brief summary of changes in the
cornerstone ceremony from some of the more
popular Masonic monitors will give a sense of
the evolulion. In 1819 Jeremy Ladd Cross
published The True Masonic Chart of
Hieroglyphic Monitpr, which was essentially
Webb's book with the addition of original
engravings, the first such illustrations; it
had no changes from webb. Samual Cole's 1862
Freemason's Library does not differ materally
from Webb or Cross, but Cole is one of the
only writers to omit the collection for the
workers.
The Baltimore Convcntion of 1843 was the
biggest attempt to produce a uniform American
Masonic ritual, and the effort failed. Charles
W. Moore produced The Masonic Trestleboard in
1843 foliowing the convention's ritual. His
only significant change to the cornerstone
ceremony was the recommendationn of hymns to
be sung. The rituals of the Baltimore
convention were not universally accepted,
which led John Dove to produce The Virginia
Textbook in 1846, supposedly correcting the
errors found in Moore. Dove and Moore agreed
on the essentials of the cornerstone ceremony,
though they did recommend different hymns.
THE MODERN CEREMONY. Albert G. Mackey was one
of the most productive and successful Masonic
writers of the nineteenth century (though his
theories of Masonic origins are entirely
discounted by serious historians today).
Mackey's 1862 Manual of the Lodge made three
important additions to the ceremony, which
essentially brings the evolution to modern
practices. First, there are brief speaking
parts for the Deputy Grand Master, Senior
Grand Warden, and Junior Grand Warden,
respectively explaining and presenting to the
Grand Master the corn, wine, and oil. Second,
Mackey has the now common address to the crowd
wherein the Grand Master announces, "Be it
known unto you that we be lawful Masons, true
and faithful to the laws of our country.." It
is not known why Mackey thought it necessary
to introduce this defense of Masonry. Finally,
Mackey has the stone lowered into place by
three distinct motions.
Daniel Sickels was another prolific Masonic
author and a contemporary of Mackey He edited
The Freemason's Monitor in 1864 and wrote The
General Ahiman Rezon and Freemason's Guide
in 1866. His cornerstone ceremony represents
about the greatest elaboration of Preston's
simple procedure from 1772.
Rather than the Grand Master, Sickels has
three principal subordinate grand officers, the
Deputy Grand Master, Senior Grand Warden,
and Junior Grand Warden, try the stone with
their jewels of offices, the square, level, and
plumb respectively. The Grand Master still
declares the stone "well formed, true, and
trusty." the corn, wine, and oil are not just
presented by the three grand officers but are
spread by them with a more elaborate
explination of the symbolism. Sickels follows Mackey
with the Grand Master's defensive address on
Masonry.
NOTES
1. David Flather, "The Foundation Stone,"Ars
Quatuor Coronatorum. Vol. 48, 1939, p. 221;
Lawric quoted in Flather, p. 222.
2. James Anderson, 'The Constitutions of the
Free -Masons (London: 1723; reprint.
Bloomington Ill.: The Masonic Book club,
1975), p42
(As noted earlier this STB is an excerpt from
a new book, Cornerstones of Freemasonry; a
Masonic Tradition. Please see page 3 for more
information as to its availability,)
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