THE BUILDER NOVEMBER 1929

The Almonte Stone

Communicated by BRO. N.W.J. HAYDON, Associate Editor

THIRTY-SEVEN years ago an alleged discovery was made of an
inscription, apparently of Masonic significance, near Almonte, a
town about forty miles southwest of Ottawa. It is necessary to make
the statement guardedly, because, as has so often happened in like
cases, no adequate steps were taken at the time to authenticate the
find. In spite of having followed up every line of inquiry that
seemed likely to promise further information on the subject, one
must confess that the results have been very meagre and very
unsatisfying.

The first, and most obvious approach was to the local lodge,
Mississippi No. 147. The secretary wrote me saying that he had no
information on the subject, but would pass my letter on to the-
Master of the lodge, W. Bro. R.A. Jamieson, who as it happened was
also Town Clerk, and very much interested in the history of the
locality. Not hearing anything further, after an interval of some
months I wrote to him direct. He replied that it was the first he
had heard of my inquiry. He said that he had heard vague rumors of
the discovery of the inscription, but had no definite information
on the subject whatever. He added that he had no means of
prosecuting an inquiry along the most natural lines, as the files
of the local newspaper had been removed.

The following July I met him at the meeting of the Grand Lodge of
Canada (for Ontario), and obtained some further information. The
files of the local newspaper, the Almonte Gazette, were in the
hands of the Hon. Andrew Haydon (no relative of mine, by the way,
so far as I know) and through him I obtained the first real light
on the subject. He was preparing a history of Lanark County, in
which Pakenham Township is situated, and very kindly looked up the
original account that appeared in the Almonte Gazette. I might add
that I had previously written to the Department of National
Archives at Ottawa, in the hope that they might have a file of the
Gazette there, but was informed that if there had ever been one it
had been destroyed with many other documents in the destruction of
the Parliament Buildings by fire some years ago.

As soon as the date of the discovery was fixed I made a search
through the files of the Canadian Freemason and the Canadian
Craftsman, but found no more than a single paragraph in the former
journal. This quoted a dispatch from London, Ontario, which without
giving any details, scoffed at the "discovery" as a hoax.

Since then I have had some further correspondence with Bro.
Jamieson, whose inquiries have resulted in very little further
information. He, however, did elicit from a son of Bro. Forsythe,
the first Mason to examine the stone, that he remembered a man
coming to the farm when he was a boy, to cut out the portion
bearing the inscription. All those who were mentioned as having
examined the stone in the account in the gazette, are now dead with
the exception of R. Wor. Bro. Dr. McIntosh. To this brother I also
wrote and was informed by him that, so far as he knew, the proposal
to cut out the inscribed portion of the stone was carried out,
though he had no knowledge of what became of it.

Bro. Jamieson wrote to me more recently to say that he was going to
have the minutes of the lodge searched in order to see if any
mention was made of the discovery, or of the proposal to cut out
the inscription, and if this was one, how the relic was disposed
of. However, nothing rather has come to hand, and though I have
written Bro. Jamieson twice since, no further word from him has
reached me. 

The date of the issue of the Almonte Gazette containing original
report was May 27, 1892. This account is here reproduced, with the
heading and sub-heading under which appeared, and a reproduction of
the cut which accompanied it.

A MASONIC MYSTERY

An alleged relic of 1604 discovered in Pakenham Township - How it
was found - What it looks like - Speculation as to its author

Considerable interest has been created in Masonic circles in this
district by the discovery of a peculiar inscription on a rock
situated on a mound in an out-of-the-way place on Mrs. Joseph
Dickson's farm in Upper Pakenham. The discovery was accidentally
made by Mrs. Dickson's son over a year ago. He told Mr. John
Forsythe, his neighbor, of what he had seen. The latter thought
there was nothing of importance in the affair, and paid little
attention to it until a few weeks ago, when, during a search for
his cattle, his attention was drawn to a polished rock with Masonic
emblems carved on its surface. Mr. Forsythe, being an enthusiastic
member of the Craft, made a careful examination of the stone, and,
finding it to possess unusual interest for members of the
fraternity, he communicated the result of his investigations to his
brethren in Almonte and Pakenham and invited them out to inspect it
for themselves. The invitation was accepted, and a short time ago
Messrs. R. Pollock, J. M. Munro, A. J. McAdam and W. P. McEwen, of
Almonte, and Dr. McIntosh, Major O'Neil and R. Moore, of Pakenham,
enjoyed the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Forsythe, and during the
afternoon paid a visit to the spot containing the mysterious
inscription. They found a rock with a polished surface six or seven
feet in length, and a couple of feet in depth, bearing an
inscription that, judged by its appearance, had been placed there
by an unknown hand at a very early period, as the action of the
elements in the intervening period, clearly demonstrated. The
writer, believing that Gazette readers would be interested, took an
impression of the inscription, of which the following is a copy,
but greatly reduced in size:

How such an inscription came to be carved in such a place is a
mystery. If it was cut in the stone in the year 1604 - nearly three
centuries ago - as the figures would seem to indicate, it looks as
if some follower of Champlain (who passed through this section
about the year 1603) had done the work; but of course is mere
speculation. We understand that Mr. Forsythe intends sawing out the
interesting relic, and it will form the nucleus of a museum in
connection with his lodge - Mississippi No. 147, A. F. and A. M.,
G.R.C., Almonte. Some Almonte craftsmen have submitted specimens of
the polished stone to a prominent geologist, with the object of
gaining information as to the effects of the elements on it through
the lapse of time, and every effort will be made to unravel the
mystery surrounding the affair.

The description leaves much to be desired. The writer says he "took
an impression of the inscription," by which is probably to be
understood a rubbing. The description of the stone as "polished" is
very vague, and while the dimensions given probably refer to the
stone itself, grammatically they refer to the polished surface. It
remains doubtful whether this surface was natural, or artificial.
This makes a good deal or difference, for inscriptions cut on
natural surfaces, unless very deep and on a very large scale, very
rapidly become indistinct. The photograph of the Nova Scotia Stone
reproduced in THE BUILDER, vol. x, p. 295, shows such
indistinctness very conclusively.

The crux of the inscription is naturally the date. The square and
compass, in unusual position it is true, the hand, the trowel and
perhaps even the eye, may probably be accepted as having been quite
clear. The design below the trowel looks as if intended to
represent a wall of rubble Masonry, either in course of erection,
or else an unfinished part of the "inscription." Perhaps both. But
the date is naturally very difficult to accept; and if the cutting
was done on a natural surface, it is well within possibility that
the second figure was 8, of which part had been less deeply cut
owing to irregularity of the surface, and had thus been obliterated
by weathering. The date 1804 might not be too early for a pioneer
settlement in the vicinity; the ostensible date, however, seems to
present such grave difficulties as to be incredible.

The whole history of this "discovery" is a striking instance of the
ignorance and carelessness with which possible evidences of Masonic
antiquity are treated. The project of cutting out the stone was
unfortunate to say the least. Better to have left it to the weather
than to have removed and lost it. On the other hand those who
condemned it off hand as a hoax or imposition were equally to
blame; for that was only to be decided by examination. If only such
things could be carefully described and impartially judged at the
time of discovery, so that if genuine they might be preserved, and
if not that the fact might be authentically established!
Unfortunately most of the Craft "care for none of these things,"
and it is much easier to come to a snap decision without
information than it is to investigate. So some will believe and
some will reject, according to their individual disposition, while
the student can only regret that opportunities for examination were
so carelessly neglected and ignored.

NOTE

Other difficulties to be solved lie in the fact that the first
known white man to travel the Mississippi River, which is joined by
the Indian River quite near the Dickson farm, was Etienne Brule in
1610, not 1603 as stated above. There is, too, the opinion of the
Department of Archives at Ottawa, who wrote me after receiving a
copy of the photostat of the Inscription, that the form of the
figures and letters is different from that in use at the date they
present.

As to the suggestion that the figure 6 was really an 8, I find on
examining Robertson's "History of Freemasonry in Canada", that
there was no record of any lodge in the vicinity of Almonte during
the era of our Provincial Grand Lodges of Upper Canada. He gives,
however, details of a lodge that met at Richmond, in Carleton
County, under a warrant dated 1821, which place was a village on
the Goodwood River, some twenty miles southwest of Ottawa. in the
Rideau Military Settlement

