By Brete Murphy · November 10, 2026
Anchor’s history remembers three Cornucopia brothers who traveled from Flushing on Tuesday nights to help a struggling lodge in College Point. In September 2024, Cornucopia began meeting in Anchor-Astoria’s temple. The relationship had changed direction, but the need for a helping hand remained.
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In September 2024, Cornucopia Lodge No. 563 began meeting in the Anchor-Astoria Masonic Temple on College Point Boulevard.
Its previous meeting arrangement at the Whitestone Masonic Temple had ended in June. Cornucopia and Harmony Lodge No. 241 moved to College Point for the new Masonic year, according to the chronology supplied by the author.
The building was another lodge’s home.
The relationship was older than the move.
Anchor’s history remembers a period when its members feared the young lodge would not survive. Three brothers from Cornucopia came from Flushing on Tuesday evenings to assist with the work.
Their names were recorded as Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry.
The account does not yet give us their full names or the precise years of their visits. It does preserve the direction of the help.
Cornucopia’s men went to College Point when Anchor needed them.
A century and a half later, Cornucopia’s members went there to keep meeting.[1][2]
Flushing Needed Help First
Cornucopia’s own beginnings were not self-sufficient.
Its 1940 anniversary history recalls borrowed collars, jewels and aprons from Keystone Lodge No. 235. The new lodge also used Keystone’s bylaws as a starting point.
Many of the founding members came from Morton Lodge No. 63 in Hempstead. Morton and Jamaica Lodge No. 546 recommended the application to the Grand Lodge.
The anniversary account thanked those lodges for assistance at a time “when Dispensations were hard to get.”
Cornucopia received its dispensation on September 12, 1864.
It was constituted on June 21, 1865, with officers installed publicly at Flushing’s Town Hall.
The distinction matters: Cornucopia was the first lodge established in the village of Flushing, not the first in Queens County.
Its early record begins with resources supplied by other lodges and support for its application.
Before Cornucopia could help another institution, it had needed help itself.[3]
Read Cornucopia Lodge No. 563: Borrowed Aprons and the Making of Flushing →
A Young Lodge in College Point
Anchor’s first meeting under dispensation took place on November 26, 1872.
Its charter followed in May 1873. The lodge history places its formal institution on June 11, with twenty-three members.
The setting was College Point, the community closely associated with Conrad Poppenhusen’s industrial and civic work.
Anchor’s tradition places its earliest meetings in the Poppenhusen Institute and remembers Poppenhusen’s encouragement.
The modern history itself treats parts of that founding account as oral tradition. The distinction should remain.
A remembered meeting place and a remembered benefactor are useful leads, but they are not the same kind of evidence as a warrant or dated minute.
The membership figure gives the new lodge a scale.
Twenty-three men had an institution to sustain, officers to provide and meetings to conduct.
The later anniversary account remembers that the first years were difficult.[2]
Read Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Lodge History →
Three Brothers on Tuesday Nights
The Tuesday-night story comes through two layers.
Anchor’s modern history quotes its Golden Jubilee booklet, published around 1923. The original booklet has not been examined for this article.
That quoted account credits Cornucopia with helping Anchor through a period when its survival was in doubt.
It names Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry as the brothers who came to College Point.
The exact wording matters because the phrase “help with the work” can invite a more detailed scene than the evidence supplies.
It may refer to ritual assistance, but the quoted summary does not establish which offices the visitors filled, which degrees they helped confer or how they instructed Anchor’s members.
Those tasks should not be invented.
The account already establishes a meaningful commitment: experienced members of another lodge came repeatedly to assist a younger institution.
The story is strongest when it stays with that action.[2]
Names Still Waiting for First Names
Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry are central to the article, but their identities remain incomplete.
Cornucopia’s 1940 history names William Rasquin Jr. among members prominent in legal and judicial work.
That is a research lead, not an identification of the Tuesday-night visitor.
Neither the shared surname nor the suffix establishes which Rasquin traveled to Anchor.
The appropriate next step is to compare Cornucopia’s membership register and returns with Anchor’s minutes and the original jubilee account.
The same work is needed for Kirkman and Lewry.
Until then, the surnames should remain as the account gives them.
The uncertainty does not erase the visits. It sets the limit of what can presently be said about the men who made them.[2][3]
Founders Beyond Flushing
Cornucopia’s 1940 history looked beyond its own membership roll.
It counted former members among the founders or leaders of Anchor Lodge No. 729, Whitestone Lodge No. 973, Bayside Lodge No. 999 and Paumanok Lodge No. 855.
That statement should not be compressed into “Cornucopia founded them all.”
A former member helping organize a new lodge is a personal and institutional connection. Formal sponsorship is a more specific relationship that requires its own record.
The anniversary list nevertheless shows how Cornucopia understood its reach.
Its members had carried experience into other lodges, and some had become part of their leadership.
The later institutional lines lead in different directions.
Anchor continues within Anchor-Astoria. Whitestone and Bayside entered the line that became Francis Lewis Lodge No. 273.
Cornucopia remained a separate lodge.
The connection was not a merger. It was people moving between institutions and helping new ones take shape.[3]
Read Whitestone Lodge No. 973 →
Cornucopia Opens Its Own Rooms
Cornucopia also made space for other lodges in Flushing.
Service Lodge No. 1009, chartered in 1923, met in Cornucopia’s temple on Northern Boulevard.
Service’s later institutional history belongs to Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586.
That connection differs from the Tuesday-night visits.
In one case, Cornucopia members traveled to assist another lodge. In the other, another lodge used Cornucopia’s building.
Both depended on something being made available: experience in the first case, rooms in the second.[4]
Read Service Lodge No. 1009: Flushing and Masonic Charity →
Cornucopia’s Own House
The Flushing temple was a substantial undertaking in Cornucopia’s history.
After decades in rented quarters, the lodge laid its cornerstone on June 13, 1908, according to the anniversary history used by the author.
The building stood on Broadway, later Northern Boulevard, at Union Street.
By its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1940, Cornucopia reported 570 current members.
That figure should be distinguished from the anniversary book’s cumulative admissions total.
The building offered a permanent setting for the lodge and space used by others. Keeping it was another responsibility.
Cornucopia’s own later history states that high real-estate taxes forced a sale in 1990.
That explanation remains attributed to the lodge. It has not been independently reconstructed here from its accounts or property records.
The former temple later passed into church use and was demolished in 2018, according to the sources identified in the author’s Cornucopia research.[3]
The building ended. The lodge did not.
A Room in Whitestone
At a date not yet established, Cornucopia began meeting in the Whitestone Masonic Temple at 149-39 11th Avenue.
The research does not yet supply a complete itinerary between the 1990 sale and the Whitestone arrangement.
It would therefore be misleading to imply an immediate move or continuous occupancy beginning in 1990.
The connection to the building is still significant.
Whitestone Lodge had begun using its new room in January 1922. Cornucopia’s 1940 history counted former members among Whitestone’s founders or leaders.
A lodge that had contributed people to that institutional history later used its temple.
The family metaphor is tempting, but the precise relationship is more useful than calling it a mother lodge living in a daughter’s house.
Former members helped establish another institution. That institution built a hall. Cornucopia later found a meeting place there.
Each step needs its own record.[3][5]
Read Thirty-Four by Sixty-Two: The Whitestone Masonic Temple →
June to September 2024
The author’s supplied chronology fixes the end of Cornucopia’s Whitestone period more clearly than its beginning.
Cornucopia and Harmony left at the close of the Masonic year in June 2024.
The author reports that the temple was then reserved for the German Masonic District’s use.
That describes a change in use. It should not be presented as a deed transfer or a finding about legal ownership.
In September, both lodges began meeting at 18-14 College Point Boulevard.
Anchor-Astoria, Cornucopia and Harmony were now sharing an address.[1]
The move brought separate institutional histories under one roof without consolidating them.
Cornucopia retained its name, number and identity.
A Favor Returned
The later arrangement does not prove that anyone in 2024 was consciously repaying the Tuesday-night visitors.
No resolution supplied here says that.
The connection is historical rather than contractual.
Anchor’s account remembers Cornucopia members helping a young lodge continue its work. The author’s present-day account places Cornucopia in Anchor-Astoria’s temple.
The roles had changed.
What had once required visitors traveling from Flushing now required a room made available in College Point.
Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry remain surnames awaiting fuller biographies. The precise years and duties of their visits remain open.
But the two ends of the story are recognizable.
A lodge needed help keeping its work going.
Another lodge helped make that possible.
Endnotes
1. The 2024 Move
Brete Murphy, confirmation supplied in November 2026.
Establishes:
- Cornucopia and Harmony ended their Whitestone meeting arrangement in June 2024.
- The author describes the temple as subsequently reserved for the German Masonic District’s use.
- Both lodges began meeting in College Point in September 2024.
These statements concern meeting arrangements and use, not verified ownership transfers.
The author’s confirmation also identifies the College Point address as 18-14 College Point Boulevard.
2. Anchor’s Early History and the Tuesday-Night Visitors
Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729, “History,” a lodge webpage dating to approximately 1998, as transcribed in the author’s research packet.
The modern account quotes Anchor’s Golden Jubilee booklet, published around 1923.
The original booklet has not been examined for this article.
The account supplies:
- November 26, 1872 meeting under dispensation.
- May 1873 charter.
- June 11, 1873 institution.
- Twenty-three members.
- Traditions concerning the Poppenhusen Institute.
- Assistance from Cornucopia.
- The surnames Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry.
- The Tuesday-night visits.
The exact dates and duties of the visitors remain unresolved.
A direct history-page URL was not supplied.
See Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729.
3. Cornucopia’s Beginnings, Connections and Temple
Cornucopia Lodge No. 563, seventy-fifth-anniversary program, 1940, pp. 3–19.
The author’s research identifies this as the principal source for:
- Borrowed regalia and bylaws.
- Morton and Jamaica’s support.
- The September 12, 1864 dispensation.
- The June 1865 constitution.
- The June 13, 1908 cornerstone.
- The 1940 current membership of 570.
- William Rasquin Jr.
- Former members among the founders or leaders of neighboring lodges.
Cornucopia Lodge’s website gives June 21, 1865, as its constitution date.
Cornucopia’s history page supplies the lodge’s explanation of the 1990 sale.
The author’s research also identifies Flushing.com, March 18, 2019, “Requiem…” as a source concerning demolition in 2018. A direct article URL was not supplied.
The lodge’s explanation of the sale is attributed to it rather than presented as an independently audited financial conclusion.
4. Service Lodge’s Flushing Meeting Place
The author’s Service Lodge No. 1009 research and article.
Identifies Service’s use of Cornucopia’s temple at 137-70 Northern Boulevard and its later institutional connection to Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586.
The underlying newspaper and lodge references should remain with that article’s source apparatus.
5. The Whitestone Temple
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 11, February 27 and March 1, 1922, as identified in the Whitestone building research.
Supports the new lodge room’s January use and February dedication.
Identification of the temple with 149-39 11th Avenue follows the author’s confirmation.
See The Whitestone Masonic Temple.
These sources do not establish Cornucopia’s arrival date.
A Note on Interpretation
“A favor returned” describes the relationship between the early assistance and the later meeting arrangement.
It is not presented as the participants’ stated motive in 2024.
The article does not claim that Cornucopia formally founded every lodge named in its anniversary history.
It does not identify the three visitors from surname matches alone.
It does not reconstruct their travel route, conversations or precise ritual assignments without supporting evidence.
Questions for Further Research
- Who were Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry?
- Does Anchor’s original Golden Jubilee booklet survive?
- What years does it assign to their visits?
- What assistance did they provide?
- Did Cornucopia members enter Anchor as charter members?
- When did Cornucopia begin meeting in Whitestone?
- Where did it meet between the 1990 sale and that arrival?
- Which former Cornucopia members helped organize Whitestone, Bayside and Paumanok?
- Do the lodges’ minutes record additional exchanges of rooms, regalia or assistance?
Continue Reading
The Two Lodges
- Cornucopia Lodge No. 563: Borrowed Aprons and the Making of Flushing
- Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Lodge History
The Wider Connections
- Whitestone Lodge No. 973
- Bayside Lodge No. 999
- Francis Lewis Lodge No. 273: The 273 Line
- Service Lodge No. 1009
- Harmony Lodge No. 241
Follow the Connecting Stories
- The Engineer’s Room
- The Thirteen Who Left Advance
- The Tuesday Night Visitors — You are here.
- Mr. Mason of Queens: Edward J. Smith
- From Tadmor’s East to the Grand East: Charles W. Froessel
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