Advance Lodge History · Related Biography: John Allen · Related Biography: John I. Lovell
Postmaster, Assemblyman, and the Voice at the Cornerstone
For thirty-eight years, an Astoria postmaster and public officeholder was also a brother of Advance Lodge. When the lodge laid the cornerstone of its new temple, Henry Clay Johnson was chosen to deliver the oration.
On April 6, 1880, a forty-year-old Astoria real estate man named Henry C. Johnson was raised a Master Mason in Advance Lodge No. 635. The membership record identifies him as the 124th member.[1]
He was already known in the neighborhood. He had been Astoria’s postmaster for eleven years.
Johnson remained associated with Advance Lodge until his death in 1918. His obituary identified him as a past master, and a report of the lodge’s November 1915 cornerstone ceremony placed him before a gathering of eight hundred Masons as the occasion’s orator.[2][3]
His public career took him through the post office, real estate business, local boards, the State Assembly, and a state arbitration appointment. His lodge career belonged alongside those activities, though the surviving records do not establish his private reasons for joining.
They do show a public man who accepted responsibilities within more than one institution.
The Postmaster’s Beginnings
Johnson was born on September 15, 1839.
His birthplace is less certain. An 1897 Brooklyn Eagle account places it at Greenville, in Washington County, while his obituaries identify Glens Falls. The sources cited here do not resolve the discrepancy.[4][5]
The accounts place his arrival in the area later known as Long Island City in 1852. He attended Astoria schools and subsequently read law in a New York office, but did not seek admission to the bar.[4][5]
In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him postmaster of Astoria. He held the position for seventeen years.
That same year, he joined the real estate firm of Roe H. Smith & Co. Smith was his father-in-law. After Smith’s death, reported as occurring about 1891, Johnson continued the business with his eldest son as a partner. The New York Herald later described him as the firm’s controlling member.[4][5]
The post office and the real estate business gave him two enduring places in Astoria’s everyday affairs before his election to state office.
A Man of Several Rooms
Johnson’s institutional affiliations extended beyond business and politics.
He belonged to the Astoria Methodist Episcopal Church and Volunteer Hook and Ladder Company No. 1. Newspaper accounts credited him with helping establish a paid fire department in Long Island City.
He also served as a police commissioner for eighteen months and, according to several accounts, spent eight years as president of the city’s Board of Education.[4][5]
The Brooklyn Eagle obituary instead names the Board of Agriculture. That conflicts with the Board of Education identification in other accounts and should not be silently harmonized.[2]
Johnson’s fraternal responsibilities were similarly varied.
His obituary identifies him as a past master of John Allen Lodge No. 330, A.O.U.W., and a district deputy for Queens and Suffolk in the Ancient Order of United Workmen.[2]
The Workmen were a separate benefit society, not a branch of Freemasonry. Johnson’s service in both organizations documents an individual connection between them, not shared government.
A Henry C. Johnson appears as past master workman in the notice for John Allen Lodge’s first annual picnic in June 1887. A report of the A.O.U.W. grand lodge session in Rochester that February also names a Henry C. Johnson of John Allen Lodge among the Kings and Queens delegation.[6]
The lodge bore the name of John Allen, a fellow member of Advance Lodge. Its Astoria activities provide the subject of “The Workmen of Astoria”.
Twenty-Three Bills
Johnson’s legislative career was brief but active.
He was elected to the Assembly from Queens’ Second District in the fall of 1889 and served in the 1890 session. His obituary’s reference to an election in 1890 conflicts with that chronology.[7][2]
A Brooklyn Daily Times account that January described him as a close student of the Assembly’s rules, wearing a skullcap against the chamber’s draughts. It also reported that he had received a telegram announcing that he had become a grandfather — an honor the paper remarked “usually comes when men are gray.”[7]
His legislative work quickly acquired a local emphasis.
He carried Dr. Thomas Rainey’s, another member of Advance Lodge no.635, Blackwell’s Island bridge bill. On March 27, 1890, the Daily Times reported that the measure passed the Assembly, 80 to 11, after Johnson called it up.[7]
Passage in one legislative chamber should not be confused with construction of a bridge. The report establishes a step in a legislative campaign, not the completion of the project.
Johnson also acted as spokesman when Mayor Patrick Gleason and Long Island City aldermen went to Albany seeking legislation concerning water, schools, police, and other municipal services.
Other measures concerned Newtown burial permits and the improvement of Grand Avenue and Main Street in Long Island City, including authority to proceed over property-owner objections.[7]
By late April, the Times judged his record favorably against that of other Assembly members. His later obituary credited him with securing passage of twenty-three of thirty-one bills introduced.[7][2]
That count is the obituary’s retrospective assessment. The Herald reported that he served one term.[5]
The Commissioner of Arbitration
State office brought Johnson back into the news in 1897.
In March, Governor Frank S. Black appointed him to the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, replacing Henry L. Phipps. Reports place Senate confirmation on March 3.[8]
The position carried a reported salary of $3,000 and expenses. One account explained the speed of the confirmation by the desire to have him assist with a cloakmakers’ strike in New York.
The appointment generated favorable assessments of his character and working relationships.
The Brooklyn Eagle reported praise from workingmen who said he had not asked anyone to work for less than the prevailing wage. Justice Garretson, a charter member of Mizpah Lodge no.738, described as having known him for twenty-five years, spoke approvingly of his character.[4]
These were attributed endorsements published in connection with an appointment. They should not be treated as an independent assessment of his entire business record.
The same coverage recalled that Johnson had missed the Republican congressional nomination in 1896 by two votes and then campaigned for the successful candidate.[4]
His service on the arbitration board ended in 1899, when Governor Theodore Roosevelt appointed James W. Gilbert to the seat.[9]
The Orator and the Stone
Johnson’s most visible recorded role in Advance Lodge came on Saturday, November 20, 1915.
The following day, the Brooklyn Eagle described a procession of eight hundred Masons, led by a band from Mecca Temple and accompanied by delegations of Knights Templar. They marched from the lodge rooms at Main Street and Fulton Avenue to the new temple site on Grand Avenue near Crescent Street.[3]
The reported route followed Main Street, Newtown Avenue, Crescent Street, and Grand Avenue.
Grand Master George Freifeld, accompanied by Grand Lodge officers, laid the cornerstone. The proposed brick-and-stone temple was expected to cost about $18,000 and was described as intended for Masonic purposes.[3]
Henry Martin read the history of the lodge, chartered in 1867.
Johnson delivered the oration.
No text of that address appears in the newspaper material cited here. Its themes, language, and reception cannot be reconstructed from the fact that he spoke.
The assignment itself is meaningful. At an occasion bringing together the lodge, visiting Masons, Grand Lodge officers, and a substantial public procession, Johnson was entrusted with the formal address.
He was seventy-six. Thirty-five years had passed since his raising in Advance Lodge.
His earlier legislative work had included measures concerning Main Street and Grand Avenue, streets named again in the cornerstone account. That overlap places both activities within the same local geography. It does not establish that his legislation produced the entire procession route.[7][3]
The building project also involved men whose contributions differed from his. John I. Lovell’s biography follows another part of the temple story, while the broader history of Advance Lodge places the ceremony within the lodge’s long search for a permanent home.
Johnson’s documented responsibility that afternoon was to speak.
The Last Notices
Johnson died on the evening of June 11, 1918, at his home at 147 Franklin Street, Long Island City, after a long illness.[2][5]
The reported birth date of September 15, 1839, would make him seventy-eight. The obituary’s stated age of seventy-nine does not agree with those dates.
The Eagle placed his offices in Advance Lodge and the Ancient Order of United Workmen alongside his political career.[2]
His survivors included three children: Henry Clay Johnson Jr., Roe S. Johnson, and Mrs. Marguerite Gottgetreu of Rockville Centre. The accounts also listed eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
One grandson, Henry Clay Johnson 3d, was identified as a sergeant in an ambulance corps who had recently returned from France.[2][5]
The obituary notices announced funeral services at the house for Friday evening, with burial in Flushing Cemetery. As notices published before the services, they establish the arrangements rather than independently confirming that every part occurred as planned.
Johnson’s newspaper record contains appointments, election results, bills, business affiliations, and accounts of local service. His lodge record adds another chronology: raised in 1880, remembered as a past master, and chosen to deliver the cornerstone oration in 1915.
Those strands intersect without becoming interchangeable. His public offices did not belong to the lodge, and the lodge’s decisions were not acts of municipal government.
At the cornerstone, however, the connection was visible. A man who had represented the neighborhood in public office stood before his brethren to give words to their new building.
The speech itself is missing. The responsibility entrusted to him remains on record.
Source Notes
These notes identify the sources supplied for this article. Newspaper archive URLs were not provided and have not been reconstructed. Damaged OCR, conflicting details, and uncertain identifications are noted where relevant.
- Advance Lodge No. 635, F. and A.M., Astoria and Long Island City: membership record of Henry C. Johnson, raised April 6, 1880, identified as the 124th member, age forty, Astoria, real estate; compiled by Brete Murphy. No archive identifier supplied. ↩
2. Brooklyn Eagle, “Henry Clay Johnson Politician, Dies,” June 12, 1918, 9. OCR damaged near the John Allen Lodge reference. This obituary names the Board of Agriculture, while other accounts identify the Board of Education. Its reported age and election year also require comparison with the other dates supplied. ↩
3. Brooklyn Eagle, “Lay Cornerstone for Masonic Temple,” November 21, 1915, 81. OCR damaged in places. Reports the previous day’s procession and cornerstone ceremony. The exact 1867 charter date requires reconciliation with other lodge-history accounts; this article therefore uses only the year. ↩
4. Brooklyn Eagle, “Henry Clay Johnson Named,” March 2, 1897, 1; “H. C. Johnson Sworn In,” March 3, 1897, 5; and “To Hear Charter Objectors,” March 3, 1897, 14. Sources for the appointment-era biography and attributed assessments. The birthplace reported in this coverage conflicts with the obituaries. ↩
5. New-York Tribune, “Henry Clay Johnson,” June 13, 1918, 9; New York Herald, “Henry Clay Johnson,” June 13, 1918, 7. Obituary accounts used alongside the Brooklyn Eagle. ↩
6. Brooklyn Daily Times, “Picnic of John Allen Lodge No. 330 A.O.U.W.,” June 25, 1887, 1; Rochester Journal and the Post Express, “The Ancient Order,” February 4, 1887, 4. OCR damaged, including a lodge-number reference. The identification of Henry C. Johnson with Henry Clay Johnson is probable rather than established by a full-name reference in these notices. ↩
7. Brooklyn Daily Times: January 18, 1890, 1; January 29, 1890, 2; March 12, 1890, 1; March 27, 1890, 1; April 25, 1890, 2; April 29, 1890, 2; June 7, 1890, 1; September 12, 1890, 2; October 13, 21, and 22, 1890, 2. Supplied reporting on Johnson’s Assembly service, legislative measures, and political activity. The retrospective total of twenty-three successful bills comes from the obituary cited in note 2. ↩
8. Brooklyn Daily Times, March 3, 1897, 2; Brooklyn Citizen, “Johnson Confirmed,” March 3, 1897, 1; New-York Tribune, March 2, 1897, 1; and March 2, 1897, reports in the Rochester Journal and the Post Express, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, New York Herald, Elmira Star-Gazette, and Rome Daily Sentinel. Full page details were not supplied for every report. Wire versions of the same report should not be counted as independent corroboration. ↩
9. New-York Tribune, April 4, 1899, 1; Brooklyn Times Union, April 4, 1899, 5; Buffalo News, March 3, 1899, 6. Supplied reporting concerning the change in the arbitration-board appointment. ↩
Continue Exploring Advance Lodge
Advance Lodge No. 635: The Lodge and Its History
Return to the lodge’s broader history, its Astoria setting, and the journey toward a permanent temple.
John Allen: A Mason and the Lodge That Bore His Name
Follow another Advance Lodge member whose biography connects Freemasonry, public service, and John Allen Lodge No. 330 of the Ancient Order of United Workmen.
John I. Lovell and Advance Lodge No. 635
Explore another member’s contribution to the temple project for which Johnson delivered the cornerstone oration.
The Workmen of Astoria
Examine John Allen Lodge’s local activities and distinguish personal connections with Freemasonry from institutional affiliation.
