Queens History and Freemasonry / Notable Freemasons of Queens / Henry C. Buncke
By Brete Murphy
A Past Master of College Point’s Anchor Lodge, Henry C. Buncke spent nearly three decades associated with New York’s Board of Water Supply, interrupted by a turbulent appointment as Commissioner of Accounts. In Whitestone, where he lived, he also participated in banking, transportation debates and the early work of a neighboring Masonic lodge.
Notable Members · Related: Anchor-Astoria Lodge · Related: Whitestone Lodge · Sources
A Brother From the Next Village Over
Henry C. Buncke lived in Whitestone, but his Masonic affiliation connected him with College Point.
The research notes assembled for this article identify him as a Past Master of Anchor Lodge No. 729 and as a brother who assisted Whitestone Lodge during its early development in 1922.1
Those references place him between two neighboring institutions.
They do not yet establish the year in which he served as Anchor’s Master or provide a complete account of the work he performed for Whitestone.
Even with those limits, the connection is useful.
Buncke’s public career is comparatively well represented in appointment notices, administrative publications and newspaper reports. His Masonic role adds a local relationship that those official records do not explain.
He was not simply a city employee who happened to live in Queens.
He also belonged to institutions through which residents organized their neighborhood lives.
Anchor Before Buncke
Anchor’s history reached back to the nineteenth-century growth of College Point.
The lodge history cited in the author’s research places its first meeting under dispensation on November 26, 1872, its charter in May 1873 and its formal institution on June 11, 1873.
District Deputy Grand Master Ellwood E. Thoren conducted the institution, with twenty-three members reported on the rolls.2
The same tradition associates early meetings with the Poppenhusen Institute and places Conrad Poppenhusen close to the lodge’s beginnings.
It also remembers Cornucopia Lodge’s assistance during Anchor’s difficult early years.2
Those founding relationships deserve a separate institutional history.
For Buncke’s biography, they establish the setting: he became a Past Master of a lodge with several decades of local experience behind it.
The 1922 Whitestone references suggest that such experience could be shared across lodge boundaries.
Read Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Lodge History.
Reformers, Trustees and the Pig’s Head Club
One of the earliest public references located for Buncke comes from village politics.
In December 1894, Whitestone’s charter election featured three competing tickets.
The administration’s slate ran under the banner of the Pig’s Head Club. A Citizens Union ticket opposed it, while the Good Government Club put forward Joseph H. Titus, C. Louis Yorston and Henry C. Buncke for trustee.3
The New York Herald described unusually busy streets on election day.
The Pig’s Head ticket won, returning Dr. Edward Bleecker and Israel J. Merritt and adding Gerhard Assenmacher.3
Buncke’s candidacy was unsuccessful.
It nevertheless establishes his participation in Whitestone’s public affairs before his better-documented city appointments.
The name “Good Government Club” identifies the ticket under which he ran. It does not, on its own, establish his complete political philosophy or the policies he advocated.
The surviving report supplies an election and a result—not yet a full account of the campaign.
The Auditor of the Water Project
On August 1, 1905, New York’s Board of Water Supply appointed Buncke as auditor.
The appointment came as the board organized the administrative and engineering leadership of the Catskill water project.
J. Waldo Smith became chief engineer. Charles N. Chadwick served as secretary.
The newspaper accounts identified Buncke with Whitestone and described the auditor’s position among the board’s exempt appointments.4
The board subsequently occupied offices at 299 Broadway.4
Administrative publications continued to identify Buncke with the auditor’s office.
A later Board of Water Supply account gives his service span as August 1, 1905, to July 31, 1934.5
Those dates cover twenty-nine years, but the newspaper record documents an interruption in 1909.
The span should therefore not be described as twenty-nine years of uninterrupted service.
The Administrative Side of Construction
The Catskill project required more than engineering.
Buncke’s appointment placed him on the administrative side of a major public undertaking.
The title “auditor” identifies his responsibility for financial oversight, but the sources cited here do not provide a complete job description or establish his personal role in every contract and payment.
That distinction matters.
He belonged to the organization that managed the project. He should not be credited with its engineering achievements or with particular financial decisions without supporting records.
Seven Months in the Commissioners’ Office
In May 1909, Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. removed Ernest Gallaher as one of New York’s Commissioners of Accounts.
Buncke was appointed to the vacancy.6
A later Herald report stated that he had left the water-board position at the mayor’s request.9
He served alongside John Purroy Mitchel.
Their office examined the conduct and accounts of city departments, placing Buncke in a more publicly contentious role than the water-board appointment.
An October report described the commissioners’ argument for higher compensation for their successors. Each commissioner was then receiving $5,000 annually.7
More consequentially, the office brought twenty-four charges against Brooklyn Borough President Bird S. Coler.
The reported allegations included incompetence, neglect, waste and violations of law.8
They were allegations, not findings established by a completed hearing.
Hughes Declines to Proceed
On December 2, 1909, Governor Charles Evans Hughes declined to take up the Coler case.
The following day’s New York Times report explained his reasoning: a fair proceeding could not be completed before Coler’s term ended, and beginning a case that could not be finished would waste public money.8
That decision did not adjudicate the charges.
It ended the prospect of the proposed removal proceeding within the remaining term.
A week later, Buncke resigned as Commissioner of Accounts and returned to the Board of Water Supply.
The contemporary reports stated that McClellan would leave the position vacant for the few weeks remaining in his administration.9
The timing is clear.
The sources cited here do not establish that the governor’s decision was the reason for Buncke’s resignation.
A Former Commissioner at the Dinner Table
The association with the commissioners’ office did not end entirely when Buncke returned to the water board.
In February 1910, employees held a dinner at the Hotel Manhattan for the new commissioner, Raymond B. Fosdick.
Buncke was among the former commissioners invited to speak, alongside Mitchel and Gallaher.10
The event supplies a quieter aftermath to the dispute-filled months of 1909.
It places Buncke within a continuing professional network even after his return to a different city agency.
Eleven Hundred Feet Below the Hudson
The water-board years produced at least one unusually dramatic newspaper appearance.
On January 30, 1912, Mayor William J. Gaynor descended at Storm King for the final blast connecting the Catskill aqueduct’s Hudson River crossing.
The Evening World described the mayor in rubber coat and boots and placed the work approximately 1,100 feet below the river’s surface.
After the blast, workers from the opposite side came through the opening.11
The newspaper’s roster of the party included the auditor, with Buncke’s surname rendered as “Bancke.”11
His presence did not make him an engineer or a tunnel builder.
It does place the administrative officer at a public celebration of a project with which his working life was closely connected.
A Colleague’s Funeral
In October 1920, Buncke appeared in a different water-board gathering.
The New York Herald listed him, identified as auditor, among the honorary bearers at Charles N. Chadwick’s funeral in Old Lyme, Connecticut.
J. Waldo Smith and the board’s president were also named.12
Chadwick had been part of the board’s organization when Buncke was appointed in 1905.
The funeral notice records an association extending across fifteen years of the project’s institutional life.
Banker and Whitestone Resident
Buncke’s local affiliations were not limited to village politics and Masonry.
The bank-history records supplied for this article identify him as an original director of the First National Bank of Whitestone, which opened in December 1907.
They list him as vice president in 1910 and again in 1914.13
Those entries establish particular offices in particular years.
They should not be expanded into an uninterrupted term without checking the intervening records.
The bank role nevertheless adds another institution to the biography.
Buncke’s working life connected him with a citywide water project. His banking affiliation placed him within Whitestone’s financial organization.
Family References—and Their Limits
An August 1924 New York Times announcement reported the engagement of Grace Buncke to Dr. E. R. Perry of Greenfield, Massachusetts.14
Compiled family trees identify Henry Christian Buncke with the dates 1866–1943, name his wife as Josephine Harriet Spark and identify a son, Harry Jacob Buncke, born in Whitestone in 1892.15
Those genealogical details have not been checked against vital records.
They remain research leads rather than independently established dates and relationships.
The contemporary engagement announcement and the compiled trees should therefore be kept distinct.
One is a dated newspaper report. The others are later family compilations requiring confirmation.
A Proposal for the Whitestone Trains
In March 1926, a transportation dispute brought Buncke into the newspaper again.
Whitestone residents were divided over a proposal for the city to buy the rail line serving their community.
Buncke advocated retaining through service to Pennsylvania Station during the morning and evening rush periods.16
The proposal demonstrates his participation in a practical local debate.
The cited account does not establish that his plan was the cheapest option or explain his full financial reasoning.
Nor should his intervention be treated as the cause of a later outcome.
The Whitestone branch was abandoned in 1932, according to the railroad histories identified in the research.17
The 1926 proposal belongs to the earlier debate over what service the community should retain.
The College Point–Whitestone Connection
The Masonic notes return the biography to the relationship with which it began.
They identify Buncke as an Anchor Past Master who assisted Whitestone Lodge in 1922.1
That statement deserves preservation, but also further documentation.
The next questions are specific:
- What office did he hold in the Whitestone organizing work?
- Did he help with petitions, ceremonies, finances or instruction?
- Which contemporary notices name him?
- In what year had he served as Master of Anchor?
Until those records are assembled, his assistance should not be expanded into an invented account of the tasks he performed.
The documented relationship is already meaningful.
A Whitestone resident affiliated with a College Point lodge participated in the development of another local Masonic institution.
The two communities were connected not only by proximity, but by individuals whose affiliations crossed between them.
The Balance Carried Forward
Buncke’s record includes an unsuccessful village candidacy, a long association with the water board, a brief commissionership, bank offices and a proposal concerning local trains.
The Masonic research adds a Past Master’s service and assistance to a neighboring lodge.
Those are different kinds of activity.
They should not be forced into proof of a single, unchanging personality or political creed.
What they do establish is a career moving between public administration and local institutions.
The ledger-keeper in the title is therefore more than an occupational image, but it remains an interpretation.
The underlying history belongs to the appointments, notices and records: a Whitestone resident whose work reached City Hall and the Catskills, and whose Masonic home connected him with College Point.
Sources and Research Notes
References follow the author’s supplied manuscript and research notes. Article links lead to the numbered citations below because direct newspaper-clipping and archival-document URLs were not supplied.
Lodge Records and Masonic History
- Research notes of the Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586 historian. Identify Henry C. Buncke as a Past Master of Anchor Lodge No. 729 and as a College Point brother who assisted Whitestone Lodge in 1922. His Master’s year, the underlying contemporary citations and the precise nature of his assistance remain to be added.
2. Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729, “History,” Grand Lodge of New York lodge page, as identified in the author’s research. November 26, 1872 meeting under dispensation; May 1873 charter; June 11, 1873 institution by Ellwood E. Thoren; twenty-three members; Poppenhusen Institute tradition; early assistance from Cornucopia; and the later Anchor–Astoria consolidation. A direct history-page URL remains to be added.
Village Politics and Public Employment
3. “The Pig’s Head Club Won,” New York Herald, December 4, 1894, p. 5. Whitestone charter election, competing tickets, Buncke’s candidacy and the result.
4. “Water Supply Board Appointments,” New-York Tribune, August 2, 1905, p. 8; “Board of Water Supply,” Kingston Daily Freeman, August 3, 1905. Buncke’s appointment, the board’s organization and office arrangements.
5. Board of Water Supply of the City of New York, General Description, digitized at Internet Archive, as identified in the author’s research. Gives Buncke’s auditor service span as August 1, 1905, to July 31, 1934. Edward Wegmann and others, The Catskill Water Supply of New York City, also identifies him in the administrative organization. Exact editions, pages and digital-item links remain to be added. The 1909 interruption is documented separately.
6. “Gallaher Dismissed Assails the Mayor,” New York Times, May 15, 1909. Change in the Commissioners of Accounts and Buncke’s appointment.
7. “Cuts His Budget Down $400,000,” New York Times, October 9, 1909. Commissioners’ compensation and the argument concerning successors’ pay.
8. “Hughes Won’t Act on Coler Charges,” New York Times, December 3, 1909, p. 6. Charges against Bird S. Coler and the governor’s decision not to begin a proceeding that could not be completed within the remaining term.
9. “Commissioner Buncke Quits,” New-York Tribune, December 10, 1909, p. 8; “Vacancy in Commission of Accounts,” New York Herald, December 10, 1909, p. 7. Resignation, return to the water board and the remaining vacancy. The reports do not, by timing alone, establish the motive for his departure.
10. “Gaynor Names Six; Tiger Not Favored,” New York Times, January 3, 1910; “Dinner for R. B. Fosdick,” New-York Tribune, February 9, 1910, p. 7. Administrative succession and the dinner for Fosdick.
Water-Board Associations
11. “Gaynor Sets Off Blast 1,100 Feet Below the River,” The Evening World, January 30, 1912, p. 8. Hudson crossing event and the party roster. The auditor’s surname appears as “Bancke” in the supplied account.
12. “C. N. Chadwick Is Buried,” New York Herald, October 27, 1920, p. 11. Buncke among the honorary bearers at Old Lyme, Connecticut.
Banking, Family and Transportation
13. Society of Paper Money Collectors, Bank Note History Project, “First National Bank, Whitestone, NY,” Charter 8957. Bank opening, original directors and Buncke’s vice-presidential listings in 1910 and 1914. Direct bank-record URL remains to be added.
14. New York Times, August 21, 1924. Engagement announcement of Grace Buncke and Dr. E. R. Perry of Greenfield, Massachusetts.
15. Ancestry compiled family-tree records for Henry Christian Buncke, Josephine Harriet Spark and Harry Jacob Buncke, as identified in the author’s research. The dates and relationships have not been checked against vital records and are presented as provisional leads.
16. “Split on Buying Rail Line,” New York Times, March 11, 1926. Whitestone rail debate and Buncke’s proposal for rush-period through service to Pennsylvania Station.
17. Standard histories of the Long Island Rail Road’s Whitestone branch, as identified in the author’s research. Abandonment in 1932. A specific publication, page or archival record should be supplied for the final reference.
Additional Research Leads
The supplied research also identifies:
- A Journal of Accountancy “News of the States” committee listing naming Buncke.
- An Online Books Page or HathiTrust catalog entry for a Commissioners of Accounts report bearing the names Henry C. Buncke and John Purroy Mitchel.
These are useful leads for documenting professional activity and official reports. Exact titles, dates, pages and item links remain to be added.
A Note on the Evidence
Buncke’s identification as an Anchor Past Master and his assistance to Whitestone follow the historian’s research notes; underlying lodge citations should be added.
The water-board service span includes a documented interruption in 1909.
The Coler charges were allegations, not findings established through a completed hearing.
The sequence of the governor’s decision and Buncke’s resignation does not prove causation.
The possible relationship between his administrative duties and particular engineering or financial decisions requires additional records.
Bank offices are established for the years cited, not necessarily an uninterrupted term.
Compiled family trees are not treated as verified vital records.
Descriptions of Buncke’s reliability, prudence or “auditor’s instinct” are interpretations, not independently documented facts.
The exact details of his 1922 Whitestone assistance remain open for further research.
Questions for Further Research
- In what year did Buncke serve as Master of Anchor Lodge?
- Which lodge minutes or newspaper notices describe his assistance to Whitestone in 1922?
- What duties did he perform in that organizing work?
- What do Board of Water Supply records say about his responsibilities and 1909 leave or resignation?
- Do the Commissioners of Accounts reports contain material bearing his signature or a statement of his work?
- What records explain his departure from the commissioners’ office?
- How long did he serve as a director and vice president of the Whitestone bank?
- Can vital records confirm his birth, marriage and death details?
- Where was he buried, and do funeral notices identify Masonic services?
Continue Reading
His Masonic Home
Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Lodge History
Explore the College Point institution in which Buncke served as Master.
The Neighboring Lodge
Whitestone Lodge: Lodge History
Follow the institution he is credited with assisting in 1922.
Another Queens Public Servant
Garret J. Garretson: First Master of Mizpah Lodge No. 738 and the Judge Queens Would Not Let Go
Compare another career connecting Masonic office with public service.
College Point as a Continuing Meeting Place
Harmony Lodge No. 241: One Number, Six Lodge Histories
Explore a different institutional line whose present meeting place is in College Point.
More Member Histories
Find other biographies connecting lodge membership with the borough’s working, civic and cultural life.
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