A New York printer of circus posters and Civil War histories helped found a lodge in Astoria, and then took charge of its money.
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When twenty-two Masons crowded into Odd Fellows’ Hall in Astoria in 1866 to talk about starting a lodge of their own, one of them was a printer from Manhattan’s Spruce Street district. James D. Torrey was a charter member of Advance Lodge No. 635 and, when the dispensation arrived, its first Treasurer. He was the man trusted with the lodge’s money at the moment it had almost none to count. His place in the founding was more than a signature on a petition. A man who lived by ink, type, and the accounts that followed them was handed the books of a lodge that did not yet exist.
A Petition Written in Astoria
The men who met in 1866 had a practical complaint. They had been raised in lodges scattered across the region, and the trip to those lodges was long enough that attending was a rare event. They drew up a petition to Grand Master Robert D. Holmes asking for permission to form a lodge in the village itself.
The petitioners were a mixed lot. John R. Clark, a native of Castle Douglas, Scotland, would serve as the first Master. John E. Oloff, born in Sweden, was a ship carpenter. Edwin A. Cadwell was a painter. In that company, the lodge register lists Torrey fourth: forty-five years old, a native of the United States, and, by trade, a printer.
He had been a Mason for a dozen years by then. He was raised on May 29, 1854, in Eastern Star Lodge No. 227 in New York City, which means he arrived at Astoria with considerable experience of how a lodge ran.
The Man Who Held the Purse
The dispensation, dated January 22, 1867, named the principal officers: Clark as Master, Oloff as Senior Warden, Cadwell as Junior Warden, Caleb G. Francis as Secretary, and James D. Torrey as Treasurer. When Henry Martin delivered his history of the lodge at the cornerstone ceremony in 1915, Torrey’s name appeared again, among the charter members and among the staff of the first officers.
A new lodge’s treasury is a small thing with a large job. It has to cover rent, regalia, and the costs of getting started, all out of dues from a membership that was still taking shape. The surviving records do not say how Torrey kept the accounts, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. What they do show is the choice the brethren made. A printer whose daily work involved commercial accounts was entrusted with the lodge’s money.
Spruce Street, After Dark
His working life was spent in one of the loudest and most unusual corners of the New York printing trade. By the early 1870s the firm of Torrey Brothers operated at 13 Spruce Street, across from other major show printers. This was the world of circus and theatrical posters, printed in colors from carved pine blocks and shipped by the bundle to towns where a billing crew was waiting.
Torrey’s name was on the business well before the Civil War, though the historian Richard Flint notes that by the war’s start he had passed much of the shop to John and Christopher Torrey, whose relationship to him is unknown.
From Spruce Street he also published. In the autumn of 1861 he was issuing The Southern Rebellion and the War for the Union from 81 Nassau Street, the early serial form of Orville J. Victor’s history of the war. Later books by Victor carried his imprint, including Incidents and Anecdotes of the War in 1862 and History of American Conspiracies in 1863, the latter copyrighted in his name at 13 Spruce Street.
So the man who became the lodge’s Treasurer was also a man who made things in quantity, to order, on a deadline, for customers who did not always pay promptly. It is a useful background for anyone asked to watch a lodge’s money.
Fire, Partnerships, and a Name in the Papers
Torrey’s career had its share of upheaval. In March 1854, two months before he was raised a Mason, The New York Times reported a fire that burned five buildings and destroyed an estimated $20,000 in printing materials. The report names James D. Torrey, printer, among those who lost shops. He was raised in Eastern Star Lodge before that spring was over, and the record does not say whether the two events were connected.
Partnerships came and went. The firm of Torrey, Barden & Co. was dissolved in 1858, and a partnership with a Mr. Greene ended in March 1870. By May 1871 his name appeared in the Times again, this time in politics, among the Democrats associated with the aldermanic contest in Long Island City, the new municipality that now included Astoria. He was by then a neighbor in more than a Masonic sense.
When the Circuses Failed
The hardest chapter came late. Flint’s study of show printing describes how Torrey Brothers extended long credit to circuses, which paid when the season ended and sometimes not at all. After John Torrey died in 1872, James took firmer control of the firm, because his personal credit was stronger than the shop’s. Then the show business turned against him. Several large circuses collapsed after the Panic of 1873, and credit reporters recorded unpaid printing bills in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Torrey went to court against the showman Andrew Haight, and the contents of Haight’s Great Eastern and Great Southern shows were put up at auction in Lebanon, Ohio, in February 1875. The sale did not recover what he was owed.
By Flint’s account he tried running a circus or two himself to salvage his money, lost heavily, and saw his firm sold by a sheriff in the late 1870s. His wife was afterward a partner in a smaller successor, Torrey & Clark. A lawsuit over a bill of sale made in bad faith, noted in the research file under the Torrey Brothers name, belongs to the same troubled stretch, though the notes do not establish that James was personally its subject.
He died on February 21, 1884.
The Lodge He Left Standing
Advance Lodge outlasted its first Treasurer by a long way. When Henry Martin stood at the cornerstone of the lodge’s temple on Grand Avenue in 1915, he read out the founders’ names as the first chapter of a story that had grown far past what the men in Odd Fellows’ Hall could have pictured. Torrey’s name was in it twice.
That is the shape of his place in the lodge’s history. He was not a long-serving presence of the decades to come, and his later years were consumed by a business collapsing around him. He belongs to the beginning, to the stretch when a handful of men in a village had a petition, a dispensation, and very little else. In that moment they needed someone who knew what things cost and how long credit lasts, and they chose a printer.
Endnotes
Lodge Records
- Advance Lodge No. 635 historical narrative, “The Lodge” and “Getting Underway,” including the charter petitioners’ register and the dispensation officers of January 22, 1867.
- Henry Martin, “Historical Data of Advance Lodge No. 635 F&AM,” delivered at the laying of the cornerstone of the Temple, Grand Avenue east of Van Alst Avenue, Queens, November 20, 1915 (original and modernized transcriptions).
Newspapers
- The New York Times, March 6, 1854, p. 8: fire loss of printing shops.
- The New York Times, May 19, 1858, p. 7: dissolution of Torrey, Barden & Co.
- The New York Times, October 22, 1861, p. 1: advertisement for The Southern Rebellion and the War for the Union.
- The New York Times, March 4, 1870, p. 6: announcement of the Torrey & Greene partnership dissolution.
- The New York Times, May 1, 1871, p. 5: Long Island City Democratic aldermanic notice.
Printing History and Publications
- Richard W. Flint, “‘A Great Industrial Art’: Circus Posters, Business Risks, and the Origins of Color Letterpress Printing in America,” Printing History 25, no. 2, including R. G. Dun & Company credit ledger entries and New York Clipper reports cited there.
- Orville J. Victor, The History, Civil, Political and Military, of the Southern Rebellion (New York: J. D. Torrey, 1861–68).
- Orville J. Victor, Incidents and Anecdotes of the War (New York: James D. Torrey, 1862).
- Orville J. Victor, History of American Conspiracies (New York: James D. Torrey, 1863).
- Northern Illinois University Libraries, Beadle and Adams bibliographical biography of Orville J. Victor.
- Library of Congress, Victor letter to Joseph Holt, January 24, 1863, with prospectus for the Torrey history.
Research Note
- Genealogical and burial listings for several men named James D. Torrey were reviewed and set aside as unconfirmed matches for the publisher.
Continue Reading
- Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History — Follow the lodge’s story beyond its founding petition and first officers.
- John I. Lovell of Advance Lodge No. 635 — Explore another life connected to the lodge.
- A Cornerstone, a Dinner, and a Borough in a Hurry — Continue into the lodge’s later building era.
- The Lodges That Built Queens: Start Here — Explore the full series.
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