LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - JANUARY 16, 2022 by Lynne Belluscio This strange story began in 1826, when a man by the name of William Morgan disappeared. He was a stone mason and came from Virginia and moved to Canada and opened a brewery. The brewery burned and he moved to Rochester and resumed his occupation as a mason. He then moved to Batavia, and joined the Masonic Lodge in LeRoy. It was said that the Batavia Lodge had rejected his application for membership because of his “dishonest nature”, although he claimed he had signed a charter. When he discovered his name was not on the Batavia charter, he became enraged and threatened to expose the secrets of the Masonic Order. (As it turns out, the “secrets” had already been revealed in England many years before.) Morgan had a book printed, and according to the 1985 History of Genesee County, the book was printed with the help of D.C. Miller, editor of the Republican Advocate in Batavia, and it was printed on a press in the stone building, now part of the Stafford Fire Department. In September, 1826, Morgan was arrested for stealing a shirt and tie in Canandaigua and was tried before a justice in Batavia. He was released and again arrested for a $2 tavern bill. For some reason, he was put in jail in Canandaigua. And here is where the story takes another weird turn. A group of men – supposedly Masons – came to the jail. The jailer wasn’t there, but they told the jailor’s wife that the fee had been paid, and Morgan could be released. As soon as Morgan walked out of jail, he was thrown into a carriage, which headed west. It stopped in LeRoy at the old Ganson Inn on East Main Road, and then at the Lent Tavern on West Main. It is said, he was taken to his home (in what is now known as Morganville) and that was the last anyone saw him. The story is told that he was taken to the Niagara River, where he was drowned. Or it might have been Lake Ontario. The whole story is muddy. A body washed up on shore and his wife identified it as her husband. The problem is, her husband was bald and the body had a head of hair, and somewhere I read about a double row of teeth. Later the body was identified as a missing man from Canada. So, news of the abduction and disappearance of William Morgan became national news. And Anti- Masonic organizations were formed. Men who had been Masons, denied their participation in the organization. By 1832, there was a formal Anti-Masonic political party, and men, like De Witt Clinton, a Mason and Governor of New York failed to be elected to office. On the national level, incumbent president, Andrew Jackson won reelection over Henry Clay, but a third Anti-Masonic party had been formed, although the candidate William Wirt only won 8% of the votes. (Henry Clay, formed the Whig Party which was an Anti-Jackson party. And surprisingly, another founder was Jacob LeRoy’s brother-in-law, Daniel Webster, as well as John C. Calhoun.) The Anti-Masonic political party was short lived, and most people forgot about it. However, in LeRoy, the local Masonic Lodge had begun construction on a new building, which became known as the “Round House.” It was built on West Main Street, about where Walgreens is now. Construction immediately stopped, when the Morgan affair erupted. The building was continued, and became a school for older students. Jacob LeRoy’s boys attended the school. (The Round House was razed, and replaced by the Unitarian Church, which became the new Masonic lodge many years later.) In nearby Batavia, on September 13, 1882, a huge monument, with a statue of William Morgan was erected by the National Christian Association, a group opposed to secret societies. Many years ago, shortly after I came to the Historical Society, a professor from Brockport, completed her Phd. dissertation on the political fall out on the Masons in LeRoy. Her work is an excellent source of material about some of the men in LeRoy who were involved and what happened to them as the Anti- Masonic movement took place. (She was to deliver a talk at the LeRoy Historical Society, but started receiving threatening phone calls. Local men, threatened to come to the meeting, and protest her work. They never showed up.) The little crossroads in Stafford was named Morganville, and if you want a more curious story, you need to follow the story of Morgan’s widow, who supposedly went west with a new husband, and joined up with the Mormon’s, and may have been one of Joseph Smith’s many wives. Ahh, history. It’s never dull. The Curious Morgan Affair