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Scottish Prov. C. L's

The history of the Scottish Provincial Grand Lodge constituted in Boston with Joseph Warren as first Grand Masterand of his jurisdiction over certain Lodges in and around Boston for 100 miles, has been written many times, and has made the names of Boston's St. Andrews Lodge and of Joseph Warren and Paul Revere famous throughout Freemasonry. Warren was installed Provincial Grand Master in it in 1769.

(NOTE.--on page 322, Vol. 5, of Gould's History of Freemasonry, it is stated that when Jeremy Gridley, Grand Master of St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, died in 1767, he "was Grand Master of Masons in North America." He had no jurisdiction over Antient or Scottish Lodges in Boston. There were at the same time other Grand Masters in America; also Gridley was only a Provincial Grand Master. Antient, Irish, and Seottish Warrants had as much validity in America as did Warrantc from the Modern Grand Lodge of EnRland. There was no exclusive territorial jurisdiction in America until after the Revolution.)

For a reason difficult to explain a second Provincial Grand Lodge of Scotland, set up at about the same time, has been to an opposite extent almost wholly forgotten. Florida had been a Spanish Colony since 1512 (Ponce de Leon) and set up its capital at St. Augustine in 1565. In 1763 it was ceded to England. Then it was ceded back to Spain. It was won by the United States in 1822, and became a Territory in 1822, a State in 1845. On March 15, 1768, during British control, James Grant, Governor of East Florida, and Henry Cunningham, Past Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, "craved a Charter" from that Grand Lodge for a Lodge and for a Provincial Grand Lodge. Scotland granted the Charter and commissioned Grant as Provincial Grand Master.

In this wise came into existence Grant's East Florida Lodge, No. 143, "on the Scottish register," at St. Augustine. Grant's title was: "Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge over the Lodges of the Southern District of North America." The wording sounds as if the Grand Lodge of Scotland planned at that date to have two Provincial Grand Lodges in America; a Northern District, with its center at Boston; a southern one with its center temporarily in Florida. Scottish Lodges were regular and legitimate, were so recognized by both Grand Lodges in England, and there is nothing in any of the original documents or in the practices of Scottish American Lodges to indicate that they owed any allegiance to the St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts (see note above) or to any other Masonic authority.

This new Provincial Grand Lodge issued Warrants; how many, is not known, but records exist to show that it constituted a regimental Lodge, St. Andrews, No. 1, at Pensacola, in 1771; and another regimental Lodge, Mt. Moriah, at St. Lucia, in 1779.

In 1783 Britain gave Florida back to Spain, and the Dominican priests immediately drove Masonry out of it. St. .indrew's No. 1 moved up to Charleston, S. C., worked under a temporary dispensation, and was rechartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania as Lodge No. 40 in 1783. In 1787 it helped to form the Grand Lodge of South Carolina.

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