Published by The History Press
Charleston, SC
www.historypress.com
Copyright 2021 by William Loomis
All rights reserved
First published 2021
e-book edition 2021
ISBN 978.1.43967.192.4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944167
print edition ISBN 978.1.46714.652.4
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INTRODUCTION
In years past, being alone meant something different than today. If you lived alone on the Detroit River in 1850, at night, you sat in your small house with no sounds except those made by nature: the water sounds of the river, the cow in the cow cabin, ducks crossing the night sky, the wind in the trees. A little light from a fireplace, a candle or a kerosene lamp barely held back the darkness. Night after night after nighta lifetime spent against the great silence. This was not in some remote corner of the state but even as close as a few miles down the road from Detroit. The daily experience of being alone.
We have nothing like that today. I doubt one could find a spot in the United States that doesnt have the sound of automobile tires lashing pavement, let alone aircraft thousands of feet above. With phones and the internet, we live in constant noise. But its not hard to imagine a driving need of people in the nineteenth century to be around others. People were lonely. They literally got cabin fever. They joined with people to escape silence.
A column that ran twice weekly in the Detroit Free Press in 1919 was titled Are Men Lonelier Than Women? Women and men would write in to the editor of the lonely column complaining of how hard it was to meet people or providing tips on how to lose loneliness, which were not very good. These included: Have a smile for everyone you meet, and they will have a smile for you or I can honestly assure anyone that they need never have a reason to regret having known me. But there was one suggestion I thought was good. On May 3, 1919, a woman wrote: One way to remedy this condition would be the formation of clubs, to which both men and women could belong.
People loved belonging to clubs for reasons that ranged from fun and laughs to saving America from something evil. They stood shoulder to shoulder to work for a shared moral good. They belonged to a gang to commit horrible crimes with childhood friends. Many times, it was something mundane, such as pooling resources to provide life insurance or retirement income. Sometimes it was for self-improvement.
There was (and is) a common xenophobic response by some Americans whenever there is a significant increase in immigration by a specific group to the United States or a population shift from one area to another, such as in Detroit. Some believed these masses of immigrants were an existential threat to my country, my church, my heritage and my life, so these threatened people mocked and battled the immigrants relentlessly and viciously. A dark side of taking care of your own seems to mean taking the law into your own hands by some.
In 1992, American historian Robert V. Remini wrote in the New York Times, An ugly frightening streak runs through the entire course of this nations history, and Americans need to remind themselves regularly of its lurking presence lest they forget that organized bigotry is not a foreign contagion. It is as American as violence, capitalism and democracy.
Clubs and cults reflected the nineteenth centurys confidence in the power of group activity to accomplish goals and change the world. In the 1840s, French philosopher Charles Fourier became popular across the United States. Fourier declared that concern and cooperation were the secrets of social success. He believed that a society that cooperated would see an immense improvement in its productivity levels. The word association was Fourieristic terminology that began to be used in the 1840s. In the ritual of the secret society called the Union League during the Civil War, the leagues president was instructed to increase the membership, for it is only by association we can expect to succeed.
Likewise, the word organization is a term made popular in the pseudomedical practice of phrenology. To the phrenologist, the brain was composed of organs, and their arrangement was called organ-ization which could in part determine your character. This was popularly applied in the nineteenth century to the optimal arrangement of people in groups.
Many, if not most, of the clubs were secret, requiring passwords, secret handshakes, symbols and guarded meetings closed to the public because people, men mostly, loved belonging to a secret, exclusive group. Sometimes secrecy was much more serious. Secret clubs were formed during wartimes, like the Civil War or World War II, out of real fear and distrust of strangers and even neighbors. Just belonging to the club could be considered treason. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could get you hanged.
Part of the interest in researching and writing about clubs and cults is the creators of many of these groups or secret societies, like George Bickley, Justus Henry Rathbone or even Detroits own Donald Lobsinger. For these men, new clubs were a way to make a fortune, to build friendships or to hold back a rising tide of evil against a nave public.
Not all of the groups in this book began in Detroit. Several were national movements that also found a home in Detroit and made an impact. Some causes were noble, but too many were despicable. Courage and virtuous behavior for noble causes lasted much longer than great acts for low causes. Followers were seldom as committed or willing to make sacrifices as leaders believed; in most cases, the followers either didnt exist or were no-shows.
In any case, these groups were a way many people dealt with the world in the past and are an aspect of human nature worthy of revisiting.
We are and should be interested in how any man solves his problems and acquits himself in his battles.
F.L. Mott
MASONS FROM THE START
The Order of Free and Accepted Masons is very old. No one is sure of its beginning, but documents in Europe connected to the group have been dated to 1390. It began as an ancient guild of stonemasons who built medieval churches, chapels, cathedrals, monasteries and more. It was and always has been a secret society. Many of its mysterious symbols, hand grips and signs are claimed to be rooted in the medieval masons values: the symbols of a compass, level and arch, for instance. Because the masons worked independently of the church and moved about from one job to another, they were referred to as the free masons. While considered sinister by some, their stated mission has always been benign: Make good men better.
And todays Masonic lodges in the United States have a largely harmless image, seen as a place for small-town businessmen (the order is limited to men; women belong to the Eastern Stars) to engage in social gatherings, networking and opportunities for charity. But the group was not always so harmless.
