Raised in Glen Cove Lodge in 1889, he went on to Congress, the bench, and the Grand Master’s chair, and his name kept turning up at the cornerstones and installations of the Queens lodges that became Advance Service Mizpah No. 586.
Townsend Scudder was raised a Master Mason in Glen Cove Lodge No. 580 on April 10, 1889. He was twenty-three, a recent graduate of Columbia Law School, and seventeen years later he would be Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York.
His connection to the Queens lodges went beyond an occasional appearance. He installed officers, dedicated a temple, and was called on to speak when another lodge began building its own.
His name runs through the history of the lodges that became Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586 like a recurring signature, though he was never a member of any of them.
A Northport Boy with a European Schooling
He was born in Northport, on the north shore of Long Island, on July 26, 1865, a nephew of Henry Joel Scudder, who also served in Congress.
The Historical Society of the New York Courts says his education took in England, Germany, France, and Italy before Columbia Law School, where he graduated in 1888.
He was admitted to the bar the next year and began practice in New York City. In the same spring of 1889 he joined a lodge in Glen Cove.
The Hoodoo Thirteen
When the Brooklyn Daily Times reported a reception for him in May 1904, it noted that his Masonic record sat oddly with superstition.
He was initiated in Glen Cove Lodge on March 13, 1889, passed on March 21, and raised on April 10. By December he was Senior Warden.
The lodge’s list of past masters gives him the East for 1891 and 1892.
Two years as District Deputy Grand Master of the First Masonic District came next, then an appointment to the Grand Lodge’s Commissioners of Appeals, where he rose to Chief Commissioner.
In May 1904 he was elected Deputy Grand Master.
The home lodge turned out in force, and its resolutions spoke of “rapid strides” without precedent in the state. Scudder told the brethren that his advancement owed everything to the encouragement of his home lodge.
Two years later, in 1906, he became Grand Master, the first of four Supreme Court justices to lead the Grand Lodge, as the Eagle counted them in 1944.
A Career Spent in the Chair
The public side ran alongside.
He was corporation counsel for Queens County from 1893 to 1899 and won a seat in Congress as a Democrat from the First District, serving from 1899 to 1901.
He declined renomination, went back to the law, and won the seat again for 1903 to 1905.
Campaigns could turn sharp. In the last days of the 1898 race, the Brooklyn Citizen printed his denial of an opposing lawyer’s account of a visit about a nominating certificate.
“Absolutely false,” he told a reporter.
From 1907 to 1920 he sat on the Supreme Court for the Second Judicial District.
On November 2, 1911, he presided as a committing magistrate in the Long Island City courthouse over the inquiry into how William Willett had won a judicial nomination. Surrogate Daniel Noble was the first witness.
Scudder said he considered the case of such a nature that it should be held in public.
A run for the Court of Appeals failed in 1921.
He served as State Park Commissioner and vice president of the Long Island State Park Commission from 1924 to 1927, then returned to the bench on Governor Alfred E. Smith’s appointment.
He presided at the Snyder-Gray murder trial, which ended in death sentences for both defendants, though he was personally opposed to capital punishment.
He retired at the mandatory age of seventy.
Spaniels, Strawberries, and a Road to Jones Beach
The rest of him was harder to file.
He ran a 950-acre strawberry and asparagus farm in Glen Head. He bred cocker spaniels that won more than a thousand prizes.
When neighbors complained about the noise in 1939, he went to the Connecticut Supreme Court for an injunction that let him keep twenty-seven of them.
The Gold Coast Public Library credits his radio defense of the road to Jones Beach with winning over Nassau County voters on the land purchase.
A plaque at the Jones Beach amphitheater calls him an eminent jurist, conservationist, and promoter of international good will.
He married Mary Dannat Thayer, with whom he had three children. After her death in 1924, he married Alice McCutcheon Scudder.
He died in Greenwich, Connecticut, on February 22, 1960, at the age of ninety-four, and is buried in Putnam Cemetery.
Stones, Organs, and a Vice President
His Masonic work was public in a way few lodge careers are, and it ran from the weighty to the slight.
In October 1893, as District Deputy acting for the Grand Master, he delivered the oration at the cornerstone of a new bank building in Oyster Bay.
The ceremony was held under the auspices of Matinecock Lodge. The Times said his address was heard with “rapt attention.”
In April 1901 he was among the visitors, listed as ex-congressman, when Matinecock Lodge raised Vice President Theodore Roosevelt to Master Mason before a crowd the Eagle put at more than three hundred.
On June 4, 1917, as Past Grand Master, he constituted Forest Hills Lodge.
In 1923 the Eagle announced that, at a Glen Cove meeting where every living past master took part, the former justice would preside at the pipe organ.
In 1944, at seventy-eight, he installed the new officers of the Grand Lodge.
Five Lodges and One Number
The Queens lodges are where his name gathers most thickly.
In January 1894, as District Deputy, he conducted the installation of officers at Advance Lodge in its rooms on Fulton Avenue in Astoria. The new Junior Warden was B. N. Dodson.
On September 8, 1906, Island City Lodge No. 586 laid the cornerstone of its new temple on Jackson Avenue in Long Island City.
The Eagle and the Times reported that, at Grand Master Scudder’s suggestion, all display was dropped and the ceremonies were kept simple.
Advance Lodge was the only visiting lodge invited to attend in a body.
Scudder dedicated the completed Island City Masonic Temple on May 10, 1907.
On the last day of 1919, the Times announced the cornerstone ceremony for the new Masonic temple in Elmhurst, to be held the next afternoon.
Delegations from Mizpah, Geba, Advance, and Island City were among those expected. Judge Townsend Scudder, Past Grand Master, was named as one of the principal speakers.
Ten years later, at the sixth annual Masonic ball of the Queens lodges at the Hotel Pennsylvania in November 1929, Island City No. 586, Advance No. 635, Mizpah No. 738, Geba No. 954, and Service No. 1009 each had a box among the tiers.
Justice Townsend Scudder was among the guests.
It is the one night in the clippings that puts him in the same room with five of the six lodges at once. The number on today’s lodge, 586, is Island City’s.
The Merger History follows the later consolidations. Scudder’s place in that story belongs to the years before them, when the lodges still had separate officers, separate rooms, and separate occasions for inviting a Grand Lodge officer.
He remained a Glen Cove Mason.
In Astoria, he seated officers. In Long Island City, he dedicated a temple. In Elmhurst, his name appeared among the speakers announced for a cornerstone.
The newspaper columns preserve those appearances among lists of officers, guests, and committees. Across the separate histories, the same visitor keeps arriving.
Endnotes
Lodge Records
The records of Glen Cove Lodge No. 580 and of the Queens lodges were not consulted directly.
Townsend Scudder was never a member of City, Island City, Advance, Mizpah, Geba, or Service Lodge. His place in their history is as an officiating and visiting Grand Lodge officer.
His degree dates and Masonic offices are taken from the Brooklyn Daily Times account of May 26, 1904, the lodge’s list of past masters reproduced in the Hazelton history, and the Island City anniversary history.
Newspapers
Brooklyn Daily Times: October 9, 1893; January 11, 1894; July 21, 1894; November 1, 1898; February 20, 1903; May 26, 1904; September 8, 1906; January 22, 1907; November 2, 1911; March 7, 1913; December 31, 1919; May 27, 1920.
Brooklyn Eagle: April 25, 1901; May 25, 1904; September 8, 1906; February 6, 1915; May 19, 1916; December 18, 1916; May 29, 1923; November 23, 1929; May 3, 1944.
Brooklyn Citizen: October 31, 1898.
Mount Vernon Argus: May 4, 1944.
Public and Genealogical Records
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Historical Society of the New York Courts.
Gold Coast Public Library local history page.
Hazelton, The Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, Counties of Nassau and Suffolk, 1609–1924, as reproduced on RootsWeb.
Forest Hills lodge history, 1922.
Ancestry and Find a Grave listings.
Wikipedia was used only to cross-check dates.
Note on the Record
The sources disagree on Scudder’s birth date. Ancestry gives July 25; other sources give July 26. This article follows July 26, 1865.
The Historical Society of the New York Courts gives his age at death as ninety-five. The birth and death dates used here make it ninety-four.
The 1904 newspaper account dates his election as Master to 1890, while the lodge’s list gives his years in office as 1891 and 1892. The body follows the lodge’s list.
Glen Cove is described in the opening by its lodge name rather than as a Nassau County location in 1889, avoiding the use of a later county designation for the event.
The Snyder-Gray trial is placed in 1927 by the Historical Society of the New York Courts and in 1928 by the Gold Coast Public Library. The body does not assign a year pending resolution.
The sources do not settle who laid Island City’s cornerstone in 1906. The newspaper program assigns the act to Grand Master Scudder. Island City’s 1941 history credits Grand Secretary Edward M. L. Ehlers acting in his place. The body identifies Scudder’s reported influence on the ceremony and his dedication of the temple without asserting that he personally laid the stone.
The December 31, 1919 announcement names Scudder as a principal speaker for the Elmhurst cornerstone ceremony. It does not establish that he delivered the planned address.
The 1919 Elmhurst article does not name Mizpah’s first Master legibly and is not used to identify him.
The November 1, 1898 candidate sketch is not legible and is not relied on for biographical claims.
The 1908 Advance Lodge item referring to Grand Master Scudder is not used because he had left that office in 1907.
The description of Scudder as the first of four Supreme Court justices to lead the Grand Lodge follows the Eagle’s retrospective count in 1944.
[Before publication: complete article titles and page references, add verified source links where available, and review the Connecticut court description against the underlying account.]
Related Reading
Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
The Island City Masonic Temple: A Building That Served a Growing Borough
Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Temple That Served the City
Advance Lodge No. 635: Astoria’s First Masonic Lodge
Mizpah Lodge No. 738 and the Laying of the Elmhurst Cornerstone
The Merger History of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
How This Series Is Researched: Sources for Queens Lodge History
