November 7, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
A young Astoria blacksmith raised in Island City Lodge in 1866 stood among the founders of Advance Lodge No. 635, then carried the same steady hand into the Odd Fellows' hall and the Long Island City Board of Aldermen.
Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History · Meet the Charter Members · The Lodges That Built Queens: Series Overview
In the spring of 1866, John L. Morris was a twenty-four-year-old blacksmith in Astoria, and on the evening of April 9 he became a Master Mason in Island City Lodge No. 586 at Hunters Point. Within months his name stood among the founders of a lodge much closer to his own shop: Advance Lodge No. 635, which worked under dispensation that year and received its charter from the Grand Lodge of New York on July 2, 1867. A charter roll is a short document, and it would be easy to leave Morris there, one name in a column of names. Yet his turns up again and again over the next thirty years, in the Odd Fellows' minutes, in the council chamber of a new city, and in the political columns of the New York papers.
Spring at the Anvil
Astoria in 1866 was still a village of carriage roads and stables, and a blacksmith there was no marginal figure. Every horse, wagon and plow in the neighborhood passed through a forge sooner or later. Morris appears to have known horses beyond the shoeing of them. On May 24, 1866, a notice in the New York Herald offered for sale, “for want of use,” a splendid matched pair of Morgan mares, very fast, with inquiries to John Morris of Astoria, Long Island. The typesetter rendered his middle initial as an I, a slip that would follow him through print for years.
That same year he was serving as Noble Grand of Astoria Lodge No. 155 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, sharing the honors for 1866 with E. A. Cadwell. The pairing deserves a second glance. Edwin A. Cadwell would later sit in the East of Advance Lodge as its Master in 1877. The men who built Advance did not arrive as strangers to one another; many of them had already learned to run a lodge together in the Odd Fellows' rooms.
Company at the Founding
The Advance charter roll reads like a directory of working Astoria. Charles Risdale, an English-born blacksmith of the village, had been raised in Island City Lodge on the very same night as Morris, April 9, 1866. Cornelius R. Morris, another Astoria blacksmith, chief of the local fire department and a past Noble Grand of the Odd Fellows, signed on as well. Whether the two Morrises were kin, the surviving records do not say, and the shared surname and shared trade raise the question without settling it. William M. Berger, a young merchant raised at Island City that June, joined them too.
For these men, Island City Lodge had meant a trip down to Hunters Point. Advance gave Astoria a lodge of its own, meeting in its hall at Main Street and Fulton Avenue, the corner where Main Street now meets Astoria Boulevard. Morris was there at the start, when the lodge was still a petition and a dispensation rather than a fixed institution.
Three Links and a Ledger
The emblem of the Odd Fellows is three links of chain, a fitting badge for a man whose trade was the working of iron, and Morris's ties to that order lasted. When W. W. Munsell's history of Queens County recorded the officers of Astoria Lodge No. 155 in July 1881, John L. Morris was its permanent secretary. Fifteen years after his term as Noble Grand, he had moved from the chair to the ledger, the post that holds a lodge's memory and keeps its accounts in order. It is the office given to the member others trust to still be there next year.
From the Fourth Ward
By then Astoria was no longer a village in its own right. In 1870 it had been folded into the newly incorporated Long Island City, with Abram D. Ditmars as first mayor, and a Board of Aldermen that changed its shape more than once. After an 1879 act, the board settled at seven: one alderman from each of the five wards and two elected at large. In 1881 the alderman for the fourth ward was John L. Morris. Munsell's printer garbled him again, this time into “John I. Torris,” the same misreading that turned him into “Torris” in the Odd Fellows' list a few pages later.
He returned to the board for a two-year term beginning January 1, 1884. On the last day of 1883, the Herald and the Times both introduced the incoming aldermen by trade, and the list is a portrait of the city itself: a lager beer saloon keeper of Hunters Point, a cabinetmaker of Bowery Bay, a milkman of Blissville, a wood turner of Dutch Kills, a house mover, a plumber, and John L. Morris, a blacksmith, of Astoria. All seven, the Herald noted, were candidates for the presidency of the board.
An Independent Turn
Long Island City politics in the 1880s were famously tangled, and Morris did not stay clear of the knot. In October 1888, the city convention of the independent Democrats met at Schwalenberg's Jackson Avenue Hall in Dutch Kills and nominated ex-Alderman John L. Morris for Supervisor, by acclamation according to the Tribune. The Herald, reporting the same meeting, described a field crowded with rival tickets: a second independent faction preparing its own slate, the regular Democrats with a convention of their own, and Mayor Patrick Gleason's party readying a full ticket. The surviving clippings carry the nomination but not the result.
Hallett Street
The last glimpse comes in early August 1898, in a brief notice in the Daily Star. The funeral of Mrs. Emma A. Morris, wife of ex-Alderman John L. Morris, was held on a Friday evening from the family residence on Hallett Street. The Rev. Mr. Belden of St. George's Church officiated, and she was laid in the family plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery. A decade after his last campaign, the title the neighborhood still gave him was the one he had earned at the council table.
The Iron and the Record
Morris never appears in the surviving lists of Advance's Masters, and his story is not one of ceremonial high office. His place in the lodge's history is older and plainer than that. He was among the men who were present when Advance Lodge No. 635 was only an idea in an Astoria hall, a working blacksmith who would go on to keep an order's books and cast a vote for his ward. The forge, the secretary's ledger and the council chamber asked the same thing of him: to join things that hold. In the founding of Advance, he helped do exactly that.
Endnotes
Lodge and Organizational Records
- Advance Lodge No. 635, F. & A.M., charter member records: John L. Morris, age 24, Astoria, blacksmith, raised in Island City Lodge No. 586, Hunters Point. Lodge records as seen by Brete Murphy.
- Grand Lodge of New York records: Advance Lodge No. 635 dispensation, 1866; charter, July 2, 1867. Island City Lodge No. 586 dispensation, June 18, 1865; charter, June 18, 1866.
- Astoria Lodge No. 155, I.O.O.F., succession of Noble Grands and officers of July 1881, as published in W. W. Munsell & Co., History of Queens County, New York, with Illustrations, Portraits, and Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W. W. Munsell & Co., 1882).
Published Histories
- W. W. Munsell & Co., History of Queens County (1882): Long Island City government, Board of Aldermen of 1881, and lodges.
- Brooklyn Genealogy Information Page, “Long Island City” (Queens history transcription), bklyn-genealogy-info.stevemorse.org.
Newspapers
- The New York Herald, May 24, 1866, p. 2: advertisement, Morgan mares for sale, John Morris, Astoria.
- The New York Herald, December 31, 1883, p. 6: “All of Them Candidates,” incoming Long Island City aldermen.
- The New York Times, December 31, 1883, p. 8: Long Island City Board of Aldermen.
- New-York Tribune, October 24, 1888, p. 2: “Long Island,” independent Democrats' city convention.
- The New York Herald, October 24, 1888, p. 4: “Somewhat Mixed: Many Aspirants for Few Places in Long Island City.”
- Brooklyn Daily Star, August 6, 1898: death notice of Mrs. Emma A. Morris, transcribed on the Brooklyn Genealogy Information Page, “1898 Daily Star Brooklyn Area Deaths.”
Continue Reading
- Advance Lodge No. 635: The Charter Members
- Charles Risdale of Advance Lodge No. 635
- Cornelius R. Morris of Advance Lodge No. 635
- Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Temple That Served the City
- How Long Island City Was Created in 1870
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