Raised a Mason in Williamsburgh in 1863, Caleb G. Francis became Advance Lodge’s first Secretary, and the records of his life reach from Brooklyn toward the Connecticut shore.
← Queens History Blog · The Lodges That Built Queens: Series Overview · Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History
Advance Lodge No. 635 had a founding roll before it had a temple, a long list of Masters, or a history worth telling, and Caleb G. Francis is on that roll. He was a charter member and its first Secretary, one of the men who helped the lodge take shape in Astoria under its 1866 dispensation and its 1867 charter. He arrived having been raised three years earlier in Marsh Lodge No. 188 in Williamsburgh.
The surviving record of his life is scattered rather than abundant. It still describes a merchant who carried a founder’s share in a new Masonic community. His name belongs not only among the men who proposed the lodge, but among those entrusted with its work at the beginning.
Raised Across the River
The Masonic record is brief and exact. Francis was listed as 32, a native of Connecticut, and a merchant, with a raising date of May 21, 1863, in Marsh Lodge No. 188. If that age was recorded at the time of his raising, he was born around 1830 or 1831.
The country was in the middle of the Civil War, and Williamsburgh had long since been folded into the city of Brooklyn. Marsh Lodge was a working lodge in that community, and its own history, which runs from 1847 to 1900, was later published. Nothing in these lines reveals why a Connecticut-born merchant came to the lodge, only that he did.
Sewing Machines and a Broken Lock
A newspaper item from the winter of 1865 provides the first look at his trade. The New York Herald reported on December 12 that a man had pleaded guilty to burglary for breaking into the premises of Caleb G. Francis, on Broadway, on the night of November 9. About twelve hundred dollars’ worth of sewing machine materials had been taken, and part of it was found on the thief when a detective caught up with him.
The report does not say which city’s Broadway is meant. It does show that Francis dealt in a product then finding its way into households and workshops across the country, and that he carried real stock.
By 1866 he is recorded as a merchant in the Astoria area, which is where his story meets that of Advance Lodge No. 635. The lodge emerged from a community assembling its own Masonic life from the trades and businesses around it. Francis belonged to that first company, not only as a charter member but as the lodge’s first Secretary.
The First Secretary
Advance Lodge received its dispensation in 1866 and its charter in 1867. Francis served as its first Secretary, placing him among the officers responsible for turning the founders’ petition into a working lodge.
His place in the founding was therefore more than a name on the roll. He held an office at the beginning, when the lodge was establishing the records through which its early history would later be traced.
The material consulted for this article does not establish the length of his service or identify particular documents in his hand. It does establish the choice the brethren made. When the new lodge needed its first Secretary, they entrusted the office to Francis.
Wagon on the Parkway
The next possible glimpse is thirty years on and has a lighter touch. In June 1896, the Brooklyn Citizen ran a roundup of arrests by the park police, who were busy that season with bicycle scorchers, riders without lamps, and speed on the Eastern Parkway.
In the middle of the list stood Caleb G. Francis, listed as of “Brannon,” Connecticut—apparently a reference to Branford. He had been driving a business wagon on the main drive. Told to use the side drive, he declined, and the justice fined him three dollars.
If this was the same Caleb G. Francis, the item places him back in Brooklyn on business, still coming to it by road.
The Parish and the Plot
A Caleb G. Francis was elected a warden of a Trinity parish in the spring of 1898, according to the New Haven Register. The report does not name the town, though Branford’s Trinity Church is the likely one. A second listing, “Caleb Francis,” names a member of a committee to engage an organist; it may refer to a relative or repeat the same man’s name.
These records suggest the life of one man, but the connection rests on the name and the Connecticut and Brooklyn ties. It should be read as a possible identification rather than a settled one.
The last notice is a death. On October 30, 1906, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed the passing of Charlotte A., wife of Caleb G. Francis, at Branford. The funeral was held that day, with burial to follow the next day at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn.
The notice connects a Connecticut household with a Brooklyn burial ground. Whether its Caleb G. Francis was Advance Lodge’s charter member remains a question for further documentation.
What the Roll Keeps
Francis cannot yet be followed through the surviving material as fully as some of the lodge’s later men can. What emerges is a founder’s outline: a lodge in Williamsburgh, a stock of sewing machine goods on a city street, and a place among Advance Lodge’s charter members and first officers.
He was the lodge’s first Secretary, not simply a merchant whose name appeared on its founding roll. That office gives his place in the story a clearer shape, even where the details of his service remain thin.
The later Connecticut notices may extend that outline to the shore at Branford, with ties still reaching to Brooklyn. They offer a possible continuation, not a fully documented one.
Lodges like Advance began with merchants and tradesmen who came from elsewhere and put their names to something new. Francis was one of them. He helped give the lodge its beginning, and its records still hold his name.
Endnotes
Lodge Records
- Advance Lodge No. 635, Astoria / Long Island City: membership, founding, and officer records identifying Caleb G. Francis as a charter member and the lodge’s first Secretary; dispensation 1866, charter 1867.
- Marsh Lodge No. 188, Williamsburgh: raising of Caleb G. Francis, May 21, 1863, as transcribed in the Masonic roster (age 32, native of Connecticut, merchant).
Newspapers
- The New York Herald, December 12, 1865, p. 4, Court of General Sessions report.
- The Brooklyn Citizen, June 14, 1896, p. 3, “Four Park Police Arrests.”
- The New Haven Register, April 30, 1898, p. 8, Trinity parish meeting.
- The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 30, 1906, p. 22, death notice of Charlotte A. Francis.
Directories and Public Records
- Astoria and Long Island City directory listing for 1866 (merchant, Astoria area), as noted in the author’s research.
Organizational and Published Sources
- History of Marsh Lodge, No. 188, of Free and Accepted Masons (New York Public Library catalog record).
Continue Reading
- Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History — Explore the lodge’s founding, early membership, and later history.
- John I. Lovell of Advance Lodge No. 635 — Follow another life connected to the lodge.
- A Cornerstone, a Dinner, and a Borough in a Hurry — Continue into Advance Lodge’s later building era.
- The Lodges That Built Queens: Start Here — Explore the full series.
← Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History · Series Overview · Queens History Blog →
