PREFACE.





   THE History of a Grand Lodge should be a general history of
Masonry. This is the idea with which I set about the preparation of
this volume, gathered the materials, worked them up. To exhibit the
Grand Lodge of Kentucky, the venerable mother of the Craft in the
Mississippi Valley, in its various relations to Lodges, Grand and Sub-
ordinate, in other jurisdictions. has been the design, just now after many
years, erased from my trestle-board, upon which I have steadily labored.
With this view, I have faithfully drawn its merits and demerits, and
arrayed its venerable names, that in the judgment of posterity we may
have our due share of honor for maintaining and carrying forward the
Institution for nearly threescore years.
  The labor expended upon this volume, will best be estimated when it
is known that I have had no predecessor in an American Masonic His-
tory. This is the first History of Masonry ever published in this country
whose statements are facts alone, and for every fact recorded here, an
amount of research has been expended amounting to real extravagance
in point of time and labor. Like the task of the pioneers in the primeval
forests of the "Dark and Bloody Ground," mine has been to enter alone
into a rich soil heretofore unworked, and draw, with great labor, the
first fruits from the virgin fields. Every detail in comparing conflicting
statements, reconciling discrepancies, etc., out of which this history has
been composed, partakes, therefore, of the nature of a discovery. So
much it was due the author to say.
  If the work appears to be overloaded with references, it must be at-
tributed to an anxiety to leave a clear path in which future historians.
may walk with certainty.
  The original prospectus of this History, published in 1856, contem-
plated, among other divisions, "the organization of the Grand Chapter,
Grand Council, and Grand Encampment of Kentucky, with their hi-
tories, their lists of officers, statistics of progress, etc., up to 1858, together
with their Constitutions, impressions of their seals, and copies of the
Charters granted to their subordinates." This I am compelled to omit;
the necessary information for that division not having been furnished
me by those to whom I repeatedly applied for it. To the same cause-
the general indifference with which Secretaries of Lodges regard all ap-
peals for information from their archives-the reader must refer the omis-
sion of various other things contemplated in the original prospectus. I
have used all the material I could procure by whatever facilities were &a