De Grasse-Tilly and the Early Supreme Council : 1786 – 1802
The reference to Long is in passing and the purpose of his mention is to invite the brethren to look at the Constitution so that they might be convinced its regularity . The final mention of Long occurs 12 days later .
The Master of Ceremonies asked the lodge to consider a request of brother Long , Grand Inspector , that we send to the Mother French Lodge in the Orient of Portsmouth a copy of our constitution and installation . It was decided that the committee for correspondence will write the Worshipful Lodge and will read what they have written at the next lodge meeting . 16
The final mention of Long is related to the regularity and expansion of their new Sublime Grand Council . At his suggestion , the lodge will send a copy of their new Constitution to the Provincial Lodge of the Grand Orient of France , La Sagesse in Portsmouth , Virginia . This demonstrates that the lodge had already begun to consider expanding its sphere of influence amongst French speaking brethren in America , and at the same time was still operating within the sphere of the Grand Orient of France as well .
16 January 29 , 1797 . Ibid . 17 Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg . Ms . 0.371 .
18 Saint-Victor , Louis Guillemain de . Recueil précieux De La maçonnerie Adonhiramite : Contenant Les Trois Points De La Maçonnerie Ecossoise ... A Philadelphie : Chez Philarète , 1786 .
23
The Ritual Book of La Candeur . 1797
The ritual book of La Candeur
had heretofore gone undiscovered and during the preparation of this paper , the author accidently stumbled across this important text amongst the papers of the Bibliothèque nationale de France at the University of Strasbourg . 17 The manuscript is composed of 72 leaves , and is divided into four sections , and gives us a full insight into the ritual worked by La Candeur . The interesting part is that the lodge possessed both Ancients and Moderns masonic rituals .
In the first section , we see the Adonhiramite craft rituals . When one does a close examination of these rituals it becomes evident that the degrees in this section are actually a slightly augmented version of the first three degrees of volume one of Recueil précieux de la Maçonnerie Adonhiramite . 18 It is difficult to say with certainty which edition was used as a template , as the many editions differ only slightly . Overall the text is a word for word transcription of the printed book , with the exception that the knocks have been added in , along with a few other details not included in the printed version . The reason that this text was used is obvious . All of the Masons composing this lodge were French speaking brethren forced to flee the violence in the slave revolt of Saint Domingue , and many did not