Raised in Glen Cove in 1889, he went on to Congress, the bench, and the Grand Master’s chair. His name kept turning up at the cornerstones and installations of the Queens lodges that became Advance Service Mizpah No. 586.
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Townsend Scudder was raised a Master Mason in Glen Cove Lodge No. 580 on April 10, 1889, in a lodge room far from the Queens halls that would later claim so many of his evenings. 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 public career took him to Congress and the Supreme Court bench. His Masonic career brought him again and again to Queens when a lodge put up a building or seated its officers. 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, though the 1904 account dates his election to 1890. 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, and 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, laid under the auspices of Matinecock Lodge. The audience listened with what the Times called “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 of Masons 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.
And 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 No. 635 in its rooms on Fulton Avenue in Astoria, where 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.
The programme gave the laying of the stone to the Grand Master, while Island City’s own later history credits Grand Secretary Edward M. L. Ehlers acting in his place. The sources do not settle who performed that part of the ceremony.
The temple was dedicated by Scudder 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 laid 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 whose histories converge in Advance Service Mizpah. The number on today’s charter, 586, is Island City’s.
The Guest Whose Name Kept Returning
Townsend Scudder never needed a Queens lodge to be Townsend Scudder. The lodges needed him, and they asked.
Someone in Astoria wanted a District Deputy to seat the officers. Someone in Long Island City wanted a Grand Master at the stone. Someone in Elmhurst wanted a judge at the corner. A Glen Cove man was repeatedly called upon to lend the occasion his weight.
The newspapers kept the list of who was asked. His name stands in it often, and almost always as the guest whose presence made the evening count.
Endnotes
Lodge Records and Published Lodge Histories
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.
Raising dates and offices are taken from the Brooklyn Daily Times account of May 26, 1904, the lodge’s list of past masters 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 (candidate sketch, text not legible); 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 Organizational 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 of 1922.
- Ancestry and Find a Grave listings.
- Wikipedia was used only to cross-check dates.
Note on the Record
The sources disagree in places.
His birth date is given as July 25 on Ancestry and July 26 elsewhere. The Historical Society of the New York Courts gives his age at death as ninety-five, where the dates make it ninety-four.
His year as Master is given as 1890 in the 1904 newspaper article and 1891–1892 in the lodge’s list of past masters.
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 programme for Island City Lodge’s 1906 cornerstone ceremony assigns the laying of the stone to Grand Master Scudder, while the lodge’s later history credits Grand Secretary Edward M. L. Ehlers acting in his place. This article does not resolve that difference.
The 1919 Elmhurst article names no first Master of Mizpah legibly and is not used to identify who held that office.
The 1908 Advance Lodge item that refers to Grand Master Scudder is not used because he left that office in 1907.
Continue Reading
- Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586: A Living Inheritance of Six New York Lodges — Follow the histories that came together in today’s lodge.
- Island City Lodge No. 586 and Its Long Island City Temple — Explore the lodge whose temple Scudder dedicated in 1907.
- Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History — The Astoria lodge where Scudder conducted an installation in 1894.
- Mizpah Lodge No. 738 — Continue into the Masonic history of Newtown and Elmhurst.
- Geba Lodge No. 954 — Another of the Queens lodges represented at the 1929 ball.
- Service Lodge No. 1009 — Explore the Flushing lodge and its work of relief.
- The Lodges That Built Queens: Start Here — Return to the full series.
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