My Grandpa, a Freemason

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
you have to pay money to attain a higher degree the higher the degree the more you have to pay so i seriously doubt a poor college student would be a 32nd degree unless he had a wealthy benefactor most likely his father who would also be at least 32nd degree ;-) 32nd degree im sure your talking 10s of thousands you have to pay.

You're confusing Freemasonry with Scientology. I believe I paid $175 total for degrees 4-32 inclusive, Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction. Annual dues after that are something like $60, I think.

My grandad was part of the masonic masonry here in the UK, unfortunalty i didn't really know what they were until after he died so unable to have had an indepth convo with him about it which i really do regret, I remember about 10 years ago he was showing me his masonic clothing and sort of accesories he'd wear at the meetings, which i have come to inherit luckily, also found a few bopoks on masonry in his study but havn't really found out much about them other than "charity" causes they ran..

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Actually it didn't cost that much to go through the Scottish Rite were i am. then you pay dues each year which aren't that bad. so yea i am able to afford it that's what so great about masonry. anyone of any social class poor or rich are able to become a mason. if you really want to be in masonry and enjoy it, paying the yearly dues are worth it.

All I can say is that being Canadian it is as prevalent up here as South of the Border. The one guy I do know of who I have talked to quite often is a catholic
who goes to a protestant church .I have often wondered why that was but didn't ask him.

reply to post by goldbomb444


if your grandfather was fabulously wealthy, why was he still working as an engineer on the railroad? it was honest work to be sure but also hot, dirty, demanding and dangerous. not something it's easy to picture someone doing if their other alternative was a life of leisure.

the accident sounds like an accident. everyone knows when the freemasons kill you they prefer to use some kind of exotic poison or else trained ferrets.

the thing with offering your grandmother money to leave is weird, especially if they were already married. in small towns it wouldn't have been that unusual 50 years ago or so for friends of a man to try to convince a woman with a bad reputation or whom they felt was "gold digging" to leave town before the man married her. or definitely if she was pregnant out of wedlock that would have been a real possibility. it has nothing to do with masons, though. it's just the way small towns used to run and, in many ways, it worked.

my guess would be:

your grandfather didn't actually have as much money as people have told you he did. maybe he was a hard worker who was able to provide for his family and god bless him for that, but a very wealthy man wouldn't still be working that hard for someone else at such a dangerous job, nor would a family fortune just vanish without any trace at all in less than a generation.

sounds like he was probably a good man and it isn't surprising he was a mason and that he was very well liked by the other men in the lodge.

if someone really did offer your grandmother money to leave town i don't blame her for being embarrassed about it to this day. i probably wouldn't mention it to her again unless you don't mind digging up whatever shameful secrets made her seem so unsuitable to your grandfather's friends. really i'd say the juiciest secrets in this story aren't about the masons, they're about your grandmother.