The Lodges That Built Queens
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John Allen Lodge No. 330, Fraternal Insurance, and the Masonic Connection
On May 10, 1901, the Brooklyn Daily Times announced that John Allen Lodge No. 330, A.O.U.W., would mark its fifteenth anniversary that evening with a smoker at Strack’s Casino in Astoria. The notice promised “first-class talent” and hinted at pleasant surprises for those who attended.[1]
It was a small announcement, but it brought together several parts of the lodge’s identity: an anniversary, an evening’s entertainment, and the name of a benefit order whose purpose extended beyond a social gathering.
The notice does not establish that the evening unfolded as planned. Nor does it give a charter date. Its fifteenth-anniversary claim points back to 1886 as the year the lodge understood itself to have begun.
Other newspaper notices fill out that picture. They place John Allen Lodge at picnics, a crowded invitation ball, and headquarters on Fulton Street. Obituaries connect its organizers and officers with a wider fraternal world, including Advance Lodge No. 635 of Freemasons.
Those connections matter precisely because the institutions were separate. The same man could take part in more than one fraternity without making one organization a branch of another.
A Different Kind of Fraternal Promise
The initials A.O.U.W. stood for the Ancient Order of United Workmen.
Founded in Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 1868 by John Jordan Upchurch, a railroad mechanic and Freemason, the order began with ambitions to reconcile the interests of labor and management. Its development toward fraternal death-benefit protection gave it a more particular place in the growing world of voluntary association.[2]
Fellowship and financial obligation belonged within the same organization. Members joined a lodge, held offices, and participated in its social life, while the parent order developed arrangements intended to provide protection for members’ beneficiaries.
That does not tell us what any particular Astoria member was promised.
The surviving local notices examined here do not establish John Allen Lodge’s benefit amounts, assessment rates, claim procedures, or payment history. They show its social activities and personnel more clearly than its financial administration.
The distinction is important. A death benefit, discretionary assistance, sick relief, and an evening’s entertainment were not interchangeable things. Each requires its own evidence.
As the broader discussion in “The Other Brotherhoods” explains, fraternal organizations offered different combinations of ceremony, sociability, assistance, and financial protection. The Workmen belonged to that varied landscape.
Upchurch’s Masonic affiliation helps explain part of the culture from which the order emerged. It does not make the A.O.U.W. a Masonic insurance department.
An Astoria Lodge by 1886
An early local reference appears in the Brooklyn Union of June 6, 1886.
The column, chiefly concerned with a visit to another lodge, identifies John Allen Lodge with Astoria. It mentions a past master of the lodge and describes Richard H. Newton, its treasurer, as “one of its most active workers.” Newton had been elected to a Select Knights legion in Brooklyn.
The item also reports plans for a Fourth of July entertainment, incoming applications, and hopes of assisting in the formation of a German-language lodge.[3]
The surviving OCR is damaged, including a lodge-number reference and portions of the personal identifications. Those defects limit how confidently every name and title can be reconstructed.
The broader picture is nevertheless one of an existing lodge recruiting members and planning activities by the middle of 1886.
A district report in the Brooklyn Daily Times of February 3, 1887, offers further, qualified support.
It lists lodges within the Kings and Queens jurisdiction at the beginning of the preceding year. John Allen Lodge does not appear among the names legible in that portion of the text. Later, in a passage apparently identifying lodges instituted during the year, the OCR reads “John Allen Lodge no, 330.”[4]
The heading and surrounding text are damaged, so this cannot carry the argument by itself. Read alongside the June 1886 notice and the fifteenth-anniversary announcement of 1901, it supports 1886 as the reported founding year.
It does not establish an exact charter date.
Picnics, Balls, and Smokers
By the following summer, John Allen Lodge was advertising its place in Astoria’s social calendar.
On June 25, 1887, the Brooklyn Daily Times announced the lodge’s first annual picnic at Bowery Bay Beach. Its officer list included Henry C. Johnson as past master workman and a John Allen as master workman.[5]
The suffix following Allen’s name is garbled in the OCR. Without a clear reading, the office cannot safely be assigned to the elder John Allen or to John Allen Jr.
The January 17, 1888, report is more revealing about an event that had actually taken place.
Under a headline describing the John Allen Lodge ball at Astoria the previous evening, the Daily Times reported a crowded gathering at the Astoria Assembly Rooms. The room held “the members of the lodge and their friends,” and the paper named numerous attendees, including local officials and visiting fraternal figures.[6]
John Allen Jr. appeared as general manager of the event.
That is evidence of a particular responsibility. It should not be confused with the uncertain identification in the earlier officer list.
The attendance list requires similar care. Members, spouses, visitors, and other guests appear together. Their presence documents participation in the ball, not automatic membership in the lodge or eligibility for its benefits.
The paper described the lodge as “very prosperous.” In this setting, that was a newspaper’s favorable characterization, not a financial audit.
A later announcement gives a different kind of detail. On May 12, 1899, the Daily Times advertised a smoker at the members’ “headquarters, 165 Fulton street, Astoria.”[7]
The historical address deserves to be preserved as printed. It establishes reported headquarters at that moment, not ownership of the property.
Nor should those headquarters be confused with the Astoria Assembly Rooms or Strack’s Casino. A lodge could hold an event somewhere other than its regular meeting place. As “Second Floor, Near the Station” emphasizes, addresses become useful historical evidence only when the relationship between an organization and a place remains clear.
The Man Behind the Name
John Allen’s relationship to the lodge bearing his name appears in a much later source.
The New York Times obituary published September 15, 1936, carried the headline “John Allen Dead; A Mason 65 Years.” It reported that, “besides being a member of Advance Lodge of Masons, he organized the John Allen Lodge of United Workers, a benevolent organization.”[8]
The wording establishes the obituary’s account of two separate affiliations: membership in a Masonic lodge and an organizing role in a benevolent lodge.
“Organized” should remain the operative word. It does not establish that Allen acted alone, supplied the money, or personally administered the organization’s benefits.
“United Workers” also belongs to the obituary’s wording. The organization’s correct name was the Ancient Order of United Workmen. The identification of the local body as John Allen Lodge No. 330, A.O.U.W., rests on the earlier lodge notices, rather than on the obituary’s abbreviated description.[3][5][6]
September 15, 1936, is the obituary’s publication date, not necessarily Allen’s date of death.
The obituary’s subject must also remain distinct from John Allen Jr., whom the 1888 ball report identifies as an event manager.[6]
Together, the sources give the lodge a namesake and an organizing connection. They do not establish an institutional union with Freemasonry.
Henry Clay Johnson and the Overlapping Circles
The clearest reported example of leadership in both fraternities is Henry Clay Johnson.
His obituary in the Brooklyn Eagle of June 12, 1918, describes a Queens real estate auctioneer and Republican politician. It also identifies him as a past master of Advance Lodge No. 635, F. and A.M., a past master of John Allen Lodge No. 330, A.O.U.W., and an A.O.U.W. district deputy for Queens and Suffolk.[9]
The OCR is imperfect around the lodge names, but the report places him in leadership within both bodies.
That connection belongs to Johnson’s biography. It does not show that one lodge directed the other.
The “Henry C. Johnson” named as past master workman in the 1887 picnic notice may be the same man. The combination of name, office, and locality makes the identification plausible, but the notice does not supply his full middle name.[5]
Another report, published after the A.O.U.W. grand lodge session in Rochester in February 1887, names a “Henry C. Johnson, of John Allen lodge” of Long Island City among the Kings and Queens delegation.[10]
Its OCR is also damaged. It is consistent with the identification, rather than conclusive proof of it.
The distinction between these records is worth preserving. The 1918 obituary explicitly reports Johnson’s dual leadership. The earlier notices potentially extend his A.O.U.W. activity back into the lodge’s first years, but the identity match remains qualified.
Shared Men, Separate Institutions
Three different relationships emerge from these sources.
- A founder’s Masonic affiliation. Upchurch was a Freemason, and John Allen’s obituary reports his membership in Advance Lodge. Those are facts about individuals, not evidence that Freemasonry controlled the A.O.U.W.[2][8]
- Overlapping local leadership. Johnson’s obituary places him in office in both Advance Lodge and John Allen Lodge. That is a documented personal connection between separate organizations.[9]
- Institutional affiliation. The sources cited here do not establish that Advance Lodge governed, financed, or administered John Allen Lodge.
William G. Barson’s career supplies another perspective: movement within the A.O.U.W. itself.
The Brooklyn Eagle of September 14, 1905, reported that he entered the order through John Allen Lodge No. 330 “of Flushing” and became its master workman.[11]
The Brooklyn Daily Times of September 16 described the lodge as “of Astoria.” It reported that Barson withdrew in 1894 to become a charter member of Amicus Lodge No. 440, where he served as financier until his death. He had also been appointed a district deputy in 1899.[12]
The location discrepancy remains unresolved. One inconsistent description does not establish that John Allen Lodge relocated.
Barson’s reported progression is more secure: membership and office in one lodge, followed by a role in organizing and administering another. His career shows how a local lodge could form part of a wider organizational network without requiring a Masonic connection to explain it.
What Belonging Looked Like
Return to the anniversary notice at Strack’s Casino.
In 1901, John Allen Lodge presented itself as an organization with fifteen years behind it and an evening’s entertainment ahead. The announcement joined institutional memory to sociability: the lodge would mark its continuity by bringing people together.[1]
The other notices give that continuity substance. A picnic announcement names officers. A ball report places members beside spouses, friends, and visitors. A headquarters notice locates the organization on an Astoria street. Obituaries connect its officers with the larger A.O.U.W. and, in particular cases, with Freemasonry.
These records do not provide a membership roll, a verified charter date, or an account of benefits paid. They do not settle the lodge’s later institutional history.
What they reveal is a local social world attached to an order built around mutual protection. Its participants organized events, held office, represented the lodge beyond Astoria, and sometimes belonged to other fraternities as well.
John Allen Lodge’s contribution was not that it erased the distinctions among those forms of belonging. It gave Astoria another institution through which people could gather and assume obligations—and through which particular men could connect neighborhood fellowship with a wider fraternal life.
Endnotes
- “John Allen Lodge Entertainment,” Brooklyn Daily Times, May 10, 1901, 9. ↩
2. “Many Fraternal Groups Grew from Masonic Seed, Part 2,” Phoenixmasonry. Secondary background on Upchurch and the development of the A.O.U.W. ↩
3. “Order of United Workmen,” Brooklyn Union, June 6, 1886, 6. OCR damaged in places; personal identifications and lodge-number readings require caution. ↩
4. Brooklyn Daily Times, February 3, 1887, 1. OCR-damaged district report; cited cautiously concerning the lodge’s institution during 1886. ↩
5. “Picnic of John Allen Lodge No. 330 A.O.U.W.,” Brooklyn Daily Times, June 25, 1887, 1. OCR garbles the suffix after “John Allen” in the officer list. ↩
6. “The Ball of the John Allen Lodge at Astoria Last Evening,” Brooklyn Daily Times, January 17, 1888, 1. ↩
7. “A Chance to Smoke,” Brooklyn Daily Times, May 12, 1899, 9. ↩
8. “John Allen Dead; A Mason 65 Years; An Aide of Patrick Gleason, Who Served as Long Island City’s Last Mayor,” New York Times, September 15, 1936. “United Workers” is the obituary’s wording, not the parent order’s correct name. ↩
9. “Henry Clay Johnson Politician, Dies,” Brooklyn Eagle, June 12, 1918, 9. OCR damaged near the lodge names. ↩
10. “The Ancient Order,” Rochester Journal and the Post Express, February 4, 1887, 4. OCR damaged; the lodge number appears garbled. ↩
11. “William G. Barson,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 14, 1905, 3. Describes John Allen Lodge as “of Flushing,” conflicting with the Astoria identification in other notices. ↩
12. “A.O.U.W.,” Brooklyn Daily Times, September 16, 1905, 18. Identifies John Allen Lodge with Astoria and reports Barson’s subsequent roles in Amicus Lodge and the larger order. ↩
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