An English-born blacksmith, a lodge number that outlived its lodge, and the circle of Odd Fellows, firemen, and founders around him.
On April 9, 1866, Charles Risdale was raised a Master Mason in Island City Lodge No. 586 at Hunters Point, a lodge barely a year old. It would soon help charter Advance Lodge No. 635, and within a year Risdale's name was on Advance's charter roll. His membership never stayed inside one lodge. It passed from the Hunters Point lodge that raised him to the Astoria lodge he helped found, among men he knew from the village's Odd Fellows rooms, and the number he was raised under is the one the surviving lodge carries today. (1, 2, 4, 5)
A Trade Brought Over the Water
Advance Lodge's records give him in a single line: forty-one years old, a native of England, a blacksmith. The sources do not agree on his age. The lodge's figure points to about 1825, the 1880 census to 1824, and the 1892 census and 1893 death record both say sixty-seven, which would mean 1825 or 1826. The death record names his father as John, born in England, and leaves his mother's name blank. Nothing says when he crossed the Atlantic, only that by the 1860s he was working iron in Astoria. (1, 17, 18, 19)
The Lodge with a Number
Island City Lodge was young when it received him. It had been chartered in Long Island City in 1865 and met at Hunters Point, and it was among the lodges that stood behind the new one at Astoria when Advance began work under dispensation later in 1866. In the late 1970s it merged with Mizpah Lodge of Elmhurst, and in the 1990s the combined lodge merged with Advance. They survive together as Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586, so the number on the lodge door today is the one on Risdale's raising. (1, 2, 4)
Ninth on the Roll
Munsell prints the charter roll of Advance Lodge, of Astoria, and Risdale is ninth of twenty-one. Two places ahead of him is James M. Whitcomb, and two behind is Cornelius R. Morris. Farther down are Martin Willis, an Irish-born captain of the 74th New York Infantry who was taken prisoner at Williamsburg, and Benjamin Maillefert, the underwater blaster of Hell Gate. Morris, like Risdale, is listed in the lodge's records as a blacksmith, which put two founders at the anvil in a village whose roads still ran on horses. A firemen's foreman, a soldier, a blaster, and two smiths: the roll reads like a cross-section of Astoria. (1, 2, 6, 7)
The Odd Fellows' Rooms
Risdale belonged to the Odd Fellows of Astoria, as did many of the men beside him on that roll. Munsell records that Astoria Lodge No. 155 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was instituted on October 10, 1850, and lists the noble grands who served before 1863. Two of the names on that list, C. R. Morris and James M. Whitcomb, are the same two men found on the Advance roll, which means both had led an Odd Fellows lodge before helping to found a Masonic one. Seen from Risdale's side of it, the Odd Fellows' rooms and the new lodge drew on one group of Astoria men, and he had a place in both. (2, 3, 5)
The Autumn of 1874
In September 1874 his household became a subject for the newspapers. Several papers reported that an adopted daughter of Risdale's had left the family home in Astoria. Early accounts said she had been keeping company with a young man her parents disapproved of, and that she waited until her mother, an invalid, was resting before gathering some clothes and leaving. The Brooklyn Daily Times reported a different account from the girl herself: she was found at the home of a man named Patrick Rodgers, and she said she had gone there for protection because she feared for her safety. She was released into the care of her brothers. (8, 9, 10)
Risdale did not take it quietly. According to the papers, he went to Rodgers's house with an officer, had the girl taken to the station house, and struck Rodgers in the courtroom. The Sunday Mercury reported that he gave bonds of three hundred dollars, and that some of the neighborhood called the incident a brutal outrage. In early October, the New-York Tribune reported that he had been convicted of assault and battery and fined fifty dollars. The record gives only outlines, and each paper told it a little differently. It is an episode to set down plainly and leave there. (11, 12)
Three Notices in the Herald
Between 1871 and 1877 the New York Herald printed funeral notices for three of these founding households. Ann O. Morris died at Astoria on December 7, 1871, and her funeral was held from her residence on Academy Street. Martin Willis died at Astoria on January 9, 1876, with the funeral from his late residence and no mention of regiment or rank. Mary Ann Risdale died on the evening of August 23, 1877, and friends were invited to her funeral from the family's residence on Main Street. If she was the invalid wife of 1874, as seems likely, the house had been a sickroom for some time. By the 1880 census Risdale was a widower, still working as a blacksmith in Long Island City, with both of his parents recorded as English-born. (13, 14, 15, 17)
The Volunteers on Main Street
On the morning of July 8, 1887, a fire broke out in the roof of his two-story frame house on Main Street. The Brooklyn Daily Times reported that the volunteer companies answered quickly. Tiger Hose reached the building first, then the Mohawks, then the truck, and the house was saved in under half an hour. A medical student named Roby, who lived upstairs, lost books and instruments to fire and water. (16)
The paper does not say who commanded those companies that morning, and it names neither Morris nor Whitcomb. But the service that answered was Astoria's volunteer fire service, the one Cornelius Morris had headed as chief in 1860, the year Whitcomb, as foreman of Hook and Ladder Company No. 1, presented him with a silver trumpet and pledged his company's obedience. Both men later stood on the charter roll beside Risdale. A blacksmith who lived by fire as a working material was now being served by a fire service in which two of his lodge brothers had held office. The report does not say whether the truck was Whitcomb's old company. (2, 7, 16)
The Last Entries
The 1892 state census found him in Long Island City, aged sixty-seven. He died the following spring, on May 17, 1893, and was buried at Mt. Olivet. The death record again gives his occupation as blacksmith, the trade the lodge had written beside his name twenty-seven years earlier. (1, 18, 19)
The lodge that raised him no longer meets under its own name, and neither does the one he helped to found. Both sit inside a single lodge that carries the number on his raising, in the borough where he worked and lived. What the records show around him is a cluster of Astoria men who turned up in the same Odd Fellows rooms, the same funeral notices, and the same fire reports for most of three decades. Risdale is the thread that runs from Island City Lodge into that cluster, and from there to the lodge that exists now. (4)
Endnotes
Lodge and Organizational Records
- Advance Lodge No. 635, F. & A.M., membership records: Charles Risdale, forty-one, native of England, blacksmith; raised April 9, 1866, Island City Lodge No. 586, Hunters Point. Return to text
- Advance Lodge No. 635, F. & A.M. (Astoria): charter member roll, as printed in Munsell's history of Long Island City, Queens. Dispensation 1866; charter 1867. Return to text
- Astoria Lodge No. 155, I.O.O.F.: institution date and list of noble grands before 1863, as printed in Munsell's history. Return to text
- Lodge lineage: Island City Lodge No. 586, chartered 1865; merger with Mizpah Lodge of Elmhurst (late 1970s); merger with Advance Lodge No. 635 (1990s); present Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586. Return to text
- Researcher's note: Charles Risdale's membership among the Astoria Odd Fellows. Return to text
- Companion features on this site: Cornelius R. Morris and Martin Willis of Advance Lodge No. 635. Return to text
Newspapers
- Brooklyn Daily Times, September 7, 1860, p. 2: “Country Items,” presentation to the Chief of the Astoria Fire Department. Return to text
- Rochester Journal and Post Express, September 10, 1874, p. 3. Return to text
- Brooklyn Daily Times, September 10, 1874, p. 3: “A Lost Child Found.” Return to text
- Kings County Rural Gazette, September 19, 1874, p. 7. Return to text
- Sunday Mercury (New York), September 20, 1874, p. 5: “Risdale-Rodgers Case,” Recorder Parsons's Court, Astoria. Return to text
- New-York Tribune, October 8, 1874, p. 12: Long Island City, City Court term. Return to text
- New York Herald, December 8, 1871, p. 9: death notice of Ann O. Morris. Return to text
- New York Herald, January 11, 1876: death notice of Martin Willis. Return to text
- New York Daily Herald, August 25, 1877, p. 6: death notice of Mary Ann, wife of Charles Risdale. Return to text
- Brooklyn Daily Times, July 8, 1887, p. 1: “Fire in Astoria.” Return to text
Census and Vital Records
- “United States, Census, 1880,” FamilySearch: Chas. Risdale, Long Island City, Queens, ED 284 (NARA T9). Return to text
- “New York, State Census, 1892,” FamilySearch: Charles Risdale, Long Island City, Queens. Return to text
- “New York, Deaths and Burials, 1795–1952,” FamilySearch: Charles Risdale, died May 17, 1893, Long Island City; Mt. Olivet cemetery. Return to text
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