From the 1867 charter roll to a crowded courtroom in the Martin Thorn trial, an Astoria painter turns up wherever the village kept its records.
Charles Cranfield was born in England, made his living as a painter in Astoria, and belonged to Advance Lodge No. 635 from its beginning. His name is on the charter roll, he was elected Senior Warden within a few years, and Munsell's history lists a C. Cranfield among the lodge's masters. That is a lodge career. The newspapers, which also caught him in a courtroom, on a jury list, and at a lodge party that ended with a goat, add something the minute book could not: a sense of how a founding member lived out the decades that followed. (1, 2, 3, 4, 6)
A Painter on the Roll
Advance Lodge worked under dispensation in 1866 and received its charter in 1867. Munsell dates its organization to February 22, 1867, and counts twenty-one charter members, among them Charles Cranfield. The company around him was a cross-section of Astoria: a Civil War captain, a future supervisor, a blacksmith and fire chief, and the blaster who cleared Hell Gate. (1, 2)
His trade is given in several places. The New York Times, describing him in 1897, called him a painter and an Englishman by birth. His death notice a decade later says he was engaged in the painting business. In a village of frame houses, shopfronts, and wagons, that work needed no explanation, and it put him in front of his neighbors' doors. (6, 10)
Senior Warden, Then Supper
By late 1869 he held office. The Brooklyn Eagle's report of Advance Lodge's election named Charles Cranfield Senior Warden, an office that in Masonic practice stands next to the master's chair. J. M. Whitcomb was chosen treasurer, and Martin Willis secretary, which put two more founders in the line of officers beside him. (2, 3)
The Eagle added a detail that more formal records leave out. After the officers were installed, the company sat down to a bountiful repast at Wm. Wilson's Hotel. A lodge in its third year was building its habits as well as its roll, and one of them was ending the work of the evening with a meal. (3)
His Place Among the Masters
Munsell's history, published in 1882, lists the lodge's masters up to that time as John R. Clark, R. M. C. Graham, F. Rutsler, W. M. Berger, C. Cranfield, and C. W. Hallett. The account gives no dates for their terms, so the order should not be pressed too hard. The more reliable point is that the Senior Warden of 1869 appears on a list of the men who held the lodge's highest chair. (2, 3)
The Evening of the Little Goat
His next appearance is the liveliest. On the night of December 13, 1887, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported, the wives of Advance Lodge's members walked into the lodge rooms on Fulton Street just as the regular weekly meeting was about to adjourn. The men understood the call, the room was cleared, and dancing went on until late. Then the whole party rode in cars chartered for the occasion to Steinway Village, to the home of Supervisor-elect George H. Smith, where a supper had been prepared under the direction of caterer David Edsall. (4)
The occasion was a tribute to John Henshaw, who was about to leave the master's chair. Mrs. Smith spoke for the wives, thanking him for his patience with their husbands and for protecting them, as the men told it night after night, from the “assaults of the Masonic goat.” She then presented him with a small goat of his own. The Times noted that Henshaw was overcome and accepted the gift graciously, and that the ladies had arranged the entire evening and paid for all of it, which the paper said reversed the usual order of things and made the gentlemen their guests. (4)
Among those present, the Times named Charles Cranfield, along with a Miss Alice Cranfield. The paper does not say how the two were related. Twenty years after the charter, he was still among the faces at Advance Lodge's gatherings, in a room full of people who had known each other for years. (4)
Dizzy in the Jury Box
The courtroom came ten years later. In November 1897, Martin Thorn went on trial at Long Island City for the murder of William Guldensuppe, a case that filled the courthouse and drew crowds of reporters. Charles Cranfield, a painter of Long Island City, was one of the first men called as a talesman. (5, 6, 7)
The Buffalo News said he was the first to prove acceptable to both the prosecution and the defense. The Times described him as elderly, evidently intelligent, and prompt in answering the statutory questions. Defense counsel William F. Howe put a long and solemn question to him about a juror's duties, accepted him, and remarked to reporters that he would be very much mistaken if he had not got that juror. Then Cranfield mentioned that he was subject to a nervous affection that made him dizzy. Howe assured him, “I won't make you dizzy,” but Cranfield said he did not believe he could get through the ordeal. He was excused. (5, 6)
His name came up in other lists as well. When the county clerk drew grand jurors for the Queens Supreme Court term of October 1898, Long Island City's contribution included Charles Cranfield, and the same name appeared on the county court jury list in April 1901. Being drawn was not being seated, but the pattern speaks for itself. When the county needed responsible men from Long Island City, his was a name the clerk's wheel kept finding. (8, 9)
Second Avenue, and St. George's
The end is recorded in a short notice. The Brooklyn Daily Times of August 23, 1907, reported that Charles Cranfield, an old resident of the Astoria section, had died at his home at 479 Second Avenue on Tuesday, in his seventieth year. It named two sisters as survivors. Services were set for Sunday at St. George's Episcopal Church, at Franklin and Woolsey Streets. (10)
The notice does not mention the lodge. It does not need to, since the lodge's own records were already written, going back forty years to a charter roll with his name on it.
What a Founder Looks Like
Cranfield was not a politician or a captain or a famous engineer, and no one wrote his biography. What survives is a trail of small, ordinary appearances: a name on a charter, an office in a lodge's third year, a place in a list of masters, a seat at a surprise party, a summons to a courthouse, and a death notice. Together they describe the sort of member a lodge cannot do without. He showed up, held his office, and was there at the supper, and the village that watched him do it was Astoria, where he stayed.
Endnotes
Lodge Records
- Advance Lodge No. 635, F. & A.M., charter member records listing Charles Cranfield. Dispensation 1866; charter 1867. Return to text
- Advance Lodge No. 635, F. & A.M. (Astoria): charter member roll, organization date of February 22, 1867, and list of masters, as printed in Munsell's history of Long Island City, Queens. Return to text
Newspapers
- Brooklyn Eagle, December 28, 1869, p. 3: “Masonic Election,” Advance Lodge No. 635, officers elected and installed. Return to text
- Brooklyn Daily Times, December 14, 1887, p. 1: “Present of a Little Goat,” Advance Lodge members and their wives. Return to text
- Buffalo News, November 8, 1897, p. 1: “Thorn Looked Calm,” opening of the Thorn trial. Return to text
- The New York Times, November 9, 1897, p. 2: report on juror selection in the Thorn trial. Return to text
- Brooklyn Daily Times, November 1897, p. 1: “Jury for Martin Thorn.” Return to text
- Brooklyn Eagle, September 19, 1898, p. 13: “Grand and Trial Jurors,” Queens County Supreme Court list. Return to text
- The Brooklyn Citizen, April 23, 1901, p. 9: “County Court Jurors.” Return to text
- The Brooklyn Daily Times, August 23, 1907, p. 7: death notice of Charles Cranfield. Return to text
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