Joseph Warren Lodge No. 92 A.F. & A.M.

10/22/2025

On October 22, 1755, Joseph Warren’s father, Joseph, Sr. fell from a ladder and plummeted to his death while he was harvesting apples on the family farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Joseph was fourteen. He had just started his first term at Harvard College. Now, Joseph, as the oldest of four sons ages 14 through 2, was the head of the household, and he had his freshman studies at school. His father’s obituary read:

“Roxbury, Oct. 25, 1755. On Wednesday last, a sorrowful accident happened here. As Mr. Joseph Warren, of this town, was gathering apples from a tree, standing upon a ladder a considerable distance from the ground he fell thence, broke his neck, and expired in a few minutes. He was esteemed a man of good understanding, industrious, upright, honest, and faithful; a serious exemplary Christian; a useful member of society. He was generally respected among us, and his death is universally lamented.”

Joseph, Sr. was laid to rest in the Eliot Burying-Ground. The probate record referred to the deceased Warren as a gentleman, indicating his elevated social standing in the community. The family had to pay not only the costs associated with a burial—a coffin, coach, and horses—but also for mourning apparel, including white gloves for all the pallbearers, and likely for mourning rings as “presents.” The cost of burying the elder Warren was an exorbitant forty pounds.

Young Joseph’s’ mother sent him back to Harvard despite the cost of his father’s funeral. If she had not done so, her son may have never become a doctor, moved to Boston or rose to the fiery patriot and hero he became.

10/21/2025

A 1722 law prohibited New Hampshire settlers from cutting down any white pine trees more than one foot in diameter. Those trees, the law declared, belonged to the king for potential use in naval construction. For decades the law was honored in the breach and rarely enforced. But after John Wentworth was appointed royal governor of the colony he decided to crack down on violations. In April 1772 royal authorities arrested sawmill owner Ebenezer Mudgett of Weare, New Hampshire, and charged him with breaking the law.

New Englanders had long resented the so-called “pine mast laws” as infringements on their livelihoods and their liberties. The night of his arrest, after being released on bail, Mudgett and about 20 other townsmen disguised themselves and broke into room in the local inn where the sheriff and his deputy were staying. Mudgett and his colleagues seized the two men, beat them, then ran them out of town before a jeering crowd of onlookers. Mudgett and eight others were later arrested and charged with rioting and assault. A sympathetic judge gave them nominal fines as their punishment.

In the aftermath of the affair the pine tree became a symbol of the resistance to royal authority and the so-called Pine Tree Riot may have helped inspire the Boston Tea Party. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, New England Continental troops flew “pine tree flags”—red battle flags with a pine tree on the upper left.

In October 1775 George Washington commissioned a pine tree flag for the American navy. Washington’s design was a pine tree on a white field, above which appeared the words “An Appeal to Heaven.” The phrase, frequently used by the revolutionaries, appeared in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. “For whenever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice,” Locke wrote, “war is made upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.” The scripture cited by Locke in support of his argument made clear his meaning: an appeal to heaven for victory in war. In other words, when there is no just temporal authority to whom the oppressed can appeal, their final option is to take up arms and appeal to heaven.

The images are the Flag of New England(a red flag featuring the pine tree) and Washington’s naval Pine Tree Flag. Also, the Bunker Hill Flag… A dark blue field with a red St. George's Cross (the English flag) in the top left corner (canton). Inside the canton, there is a green pine tree, a symbol of New England.

10/07/2025

On October 7, 1765, Dr. Joseph Warren published his first political piece in the "Boston Gazette" under the pseudonym B.W attacking the Stamp Act. It was one of his first public steps toward evolving into the fiery patriot and politician he would become.

"To the Inhabitants of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
My dear Countrymen,
Had not His Excellency the Governor seen fit to adjourn the House of Representatives would doubtless in a few Days, have desired a recess, in order to consult with and take Directions of the Constituents, respecting the Necessity of a Compliance with the grievous and unconstitutional Tax laid upon the Colonies by the Stamp-Act…

The Provincial Debt, incurred by the late War, and which is daily increasing by the Interest which grows due thereon, is also very great.—Add to this, that will drain the Province of the little Cash left among us, which at present barely serves for a Medium of Trade... Awake! –Awake my Countrymen and by a regular and legal opposition defeat the Designs of those who enslave us and our Posterity. Nothing is wanting but your own Resolution—for great is the Authority, exalted the Dignity and powerful the Majesty of the People…

Happy thrice happy should I be to have it in my Power to congratulate my Countrymen, on so memorable a Deliverance; whilst I left the Enemies of Truth and Liberty to humble themselves in Sackcloth and Ashes."

(re-posted from the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation)

09/27/2025

Happy Saturday! The statue of Dr. Joseph Warren in the Lodge at the Bunker Hill Monument.

09/18/2025

On this date, September 18, in 1793, W:. George Washington laid the cornerstone of the United State Capitol Building.

The Capitol Building would take nearly a century to complete, as architects came and went, the British set fire to it and it was called into use during the Civil War. Today, the Capitol Building, with its famous cast-iron dome and important collection of American art, is part of the Capitol Complex, which includes six Congressional office buildings and three Library of Congress buildings, all developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

09/10/2025

09 September 1774. The Suffolk Resolves, a declaration of colonial grievances and resistance against the British Parliament's Coercive Acts was adopted by the delegates of Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Dr. Joseph Warren wrote the preamble and was the principle author of the resolves. Key aspects included declaring the Acts void, urging a boycott of British goods, establishing a Massachusetts militia, and retaining public funds. They also declared that Suffolk Country would pay all due respect and submission to such measures as may be recommended by the Continental Congress.

Paul Revere carried the resolves to the First Continental Congress then convened in Philadelphia. He arrived on September 16 and Congress adopted the resolves on September 17. The resolves marked a significant step toward organized, widespread resistance and served as a blueprint for later revolutionary documents like the Declaration of Independence.

09/06/2025

On September 6, 1764, twenty-three-year old Dr. Joseph Warren married seventeen-year-old orphaned, heiress Elizabeth Hooten at the Brattle Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston newspapers announced:

"Last Thursday Evening was married Doct. Joseph Warren, one of the Physicians of this Town, to Miss Betsy Hooton only daughter of the late Mr. Richard Hooton of this Town, Merchant, deceas'd, an accomlish’d young Lady with a handsome Fortune."

Joseph and Elizabeth "Betsy" had four children and were married nine years before her death in 1773 at age twenty-six.

08/26/2025

Brother Walston was always supportive of our work in Stantonsburg and faithful in attendance. He quietly served and was generous not only with his time but; also, through his monetary contributions. He was elected to plural membership with us the same month he suffered a debilitating stroke. We have missed our Brother and trust that he has received his “Welcome” into that house not made with hands.

Please leep his family in your thoughts and prayers.

Godspeed, my Brother.

View Gerald Walston's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

08/08/2025

Our M:.W:. Brother reached his fourth and final resting place on this date, August 8, in 1856.

08 August 1856. Dr. Joseph Warren was buried for the 4th and last time at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. His three previous burials were: Breed’s Hill, Granary Burying Ground and St. Paul’s Church in Boston. The statue of Joseph Warren was erected at his grave site in Forest Hills by the 6th Masonic District Massachusetts Freemasons for the namesake of their Distinguished Service Medal, Most Worshipful Joseph Warren, October 22, 2016. The Warren family plot is on Mount Warren near the bell tower.

07/18/2025

Our M:.W:. Brother Warren graduated from Harvard of this date, July 18, in 1759.

On July 18, 1759, Joseph Warren graduated from Harvard College at the age of 18. Class rank was determined by social status. Because his father was a farmer, he ranked thirty-first in his class of forty-five entering freshmen. His dormitory, Massachusetts Hall, is the oldest surviving building on campus and was Joseph’s dorm from 1755–1759. During the Siege of Boston, some of George Washington’s Continental Army quartered there commemorated by the green plaque on the lower right by the tree.

During the 18th century, Harvard graduation ceremonies were similar to today beginning with prayers and a valedictorian oration delivered in Latin. Afterward there was much celebration that included a dinner feast with alcohol and dancing for the students. Family and friends were treated to food, drinks and entertainment that lasted all day and kept the town of Cambridge quite lively.

07/03/2025

Today, July 3rd, we commemorate the birth of John Singleton Copley. In my opinion, Copley painted the most wonderful depiction of our M:.W:. Major General and Dr. Joseph Warren. He; also, painted “The Death of Warren” which depicts the fall of Warren at the Breed’s Hill redoubt.

The painter John Singleton Copley was born in Boston, Massachusetts on July 3, 1738. Boston’s Copley Square is named after him. What is little known about him was that he was involved with the Boston Tea Crisis in December 1773. His father-in-law, Richard Clarke and his sons were appointed tea agents for the East India Company. Copley tried to calmly intervene between the angry citizens of Boston who demanded that Clarke resign his commission as a tea agent, and his family but the intervention failed as Clarke refused to resign.

Copley painted some of the most famous portraits of the latter 18th century—Dr. Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Mercy Otis Warren whose portraits hang in the Copley Gallery at Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He also painted people such as General Thomas Gage and his wife, Margaret, Dorothy Quincy, John Quincy Adams, British engineer Captain John Montresor, Henry Laurens and “A Boy with a Flying Squirrel,” which depicted his half-brother, Henry Pelham, seated at a table and playing with a pet squirrel. Henry Pelham painted Elizabeth Hooton Warren, Dr. Joseph Warren’s wife.

Copley moved to England before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He spent the remainder of his life there. While in Europe, he gained fame and prestige, frequently being commissioned by royal courts.

07/02/2025