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The Heritage Masonic Lodge No 730 at Black Creek Pioneer Village (20)

There are a few photos of another similar stove on this album.

www.flickr.com/photos/21728045@N08/37076416924/in/datepos...

 

This box stove is one of only four known to have been made for area Lodges by the Patterson Iron Works on what is now Major Mackenzie Drive, west of Richmond Hill. This one is dated 1866 and cast in relief is the name 'Vaughan Lodge No. 54 and various Masonic symbols. Two other stoves can be found in Brooklin, Ontario and Richmond Hill, Ontario.

 

From 'The Liberal' Communit - Tuesday Jan. 4, 2005

 

A short history of the foundry that made the stove. 'Village founder enterprising' by Andrew Hind - Blast From The Past:

 

Driving along Major Mackenzie Drive between Bathurst and Dufferin streets, I had chance to view the land and remaining buildings that once comprised the industrial village of Patterson. It occurred to me while the history of this little factory town is fairly well known, the story of its founder is not.

That is odd, to say the least, for surely there would have been no Patterson if there there had been no Peter Patterson to create it.

Mr. Patterson was born in New Hampshire in 1825. A crucial turning point came in 1840, when a still teenaged Mr. Patterson invented a fanning mill, a machine designed to screen grain.

The timing could not have been better. The mid-19th. century was a time when innovative and practical ways to improve the grain milling process were sorely needed to meet the unrelenting demand of a growing world population.

Grist mills required new ways to speed up operations and Mr. Patterson offered just that.

He and brothers Alfred and Robert came to Canada to market the product. First they operated out of Waterloo, then Dundas. Finally, they arrived in Richmond Hill.

Here, Mr. Patterson purchased an old hotel at the corner of Yonge and Richmond streets and began a profitable business. But he wasn't just dealing with fanning mills any longer. He was also manufacturing farming implements. Lots and lots of farming implements.

In fact, the business was so profitable within a few years it had outgrown its original facilities. So, in 1855, Mr. Patterson bought the east half of Lot 21, Concession 2 (much of the land along Major Mackenzie between Bathurst and Dufferin) from John Arnold and decided to build a larger factory there.

To support it, he had to build a town from scratch. In short order, the community boasted a church, store, school, mills, a huge foundry and factory, lumber yards, warehouses and company offices, workers, homes and a two-mile plank walkway linking the village to Richmond Hill.

Naturally, the community was named after its founder.

The Patterson farm Implements Co. continued its meteoric rise. Soon it was using 400 tons of steel a year, employed four teams of horses to haul implements to a rail station at Maple and was considered among the largest implement manufacturers in Canada.

Unlike most successful industrialists of the era, however, no one questioned Mr. Patterson's integrity.

He was always considered honest and ethical, 'a gracious and hospitable man' according to documents from that time.

Nevertheless, he was a tireless worker and demanded excellence from employees. The workers were rewarded in ways few were in that period. They received fair wages and worked in a safe, clean, efficient, well-lit and well-ventilated environment.

In light of his importance and wealth, it should come as no surprise Mr. Patterson was soon propelled into politics. He served as reeve of Vaughan Township for four years (1868-1871), warden of York County in 1871, and represented West York in 1871 to 1883. He also served as president of the Richmond Hill Agricultural Society in 1884.

Business problems were on the horizon, however.

No railway deemed it worthwhile to run through Patterson, nor would any agree to distant markets, the Patterson Farm Implement Co. was at a disadvantage in relation to its competitors and would likely be doomed.

Reluctantly, Mr. Patterson accepted an invitation to move the business to Woodstock in 1886, where ready rail access was available.

Nevertheless, competition was fierce and in 1891, tired and aging, Mr. Patterson decided to sell to rivals Massey-Harris. He retired to his farm in Patterson and died there in 1904.

History buff Andrew Hind welcomes comments at maelstrom@sympatico.ca.

 

Masonic Key

 

"The Key," says Doctor Oliver (Landmarks I, page 180), "is one of the most important symbols of Freemasonry. It bears the appearance of a common metal instrument, confined to the performance of one simple act. But the well-instructed brother beholds in it the symbol which teaches him to keep a tongue of good report, and to abstain from the debasing vices of slander and defamation." Among the ancients the key was a symbol of silence and circumspection; and thus Sophocles alludes to it in the Oedipus Coloneus (line 105), where he makes the chorus speak of "the golden key which had come upon the tongue of the ministering Hierophant in the mysteries of Eleusis-Callimachus says that the Priestess of Ceres bore a key as the ensign of her mystic office. The key was in the Mysteries of Isis a hieroglyphic of the opening or disclosing of the heart and conscience, in the kingdom of death, for trial and Judgment.

 

In the old instructions of Freemasonry the key was an important symbol, and Doctor Oliver regrets that it has been abandoned in the modern system. In the ceremonies of the First Degree, in the eighteenth century allusion is made to a key by whose help the secrets of Freemasonry are to be obtained, which key "is said to hang and not to lie, because it is always to hang in a brother's defense and not to lie to his prejudge." It was said, too, to hang "by the thread of life at the entrance, " and was closely connected with the heart, because the tongue "ought to utter nothing but what the heart dictates." And, finally, this key is described as being "composed of no metal, but a tongue of good report." In the ceremonies of the Masters Degree in the Adonhiramite Rite, we find this catechism (in the Recueil Précieu:, page 87):

 

What do you conceal?

All the secrets which have been intrusted to me.

Where do you conceal them?

In the heart.

Have you a key to gain entrance there?

Yes, Right Worshipful.

Where do you keep it?

In a box of coral which opens and shuts only with ivory teeth.

Of what metal is it composed?

Of none. It is a tongue obedient to reason, which knows only how to speak well of those of whom it speaks in their absence as in their presence.

 

All of this shows that the key as a symbol was formerly equivalent to the modern symbol of the "instructive tongue," which, however, with almost the same interpretation, has now been transferred to the Second or Fellow-Craft's Degree. The key, however, is still preserved as a symbol of secrecy in the Royal Arch Degree; and it is also presented to us in the same sense in the ivory key of the Secret Master, or Fourth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. In many of the German Lodges an ivory key is made a part of the Masonic clothing of each Brother, to remind him that he should lock up or conceal the secrets of Freemasonry in his heart. But among the ancients the key was also a symbol of power; and thus among the Greeks the title of Kxeiaouxos or key-bearer, was bestowed upon one holding high office; and with the Romans, the keys are given to the bride on the day of marriage, as a token that the authority of the house was bestowed upon her; and if afterward divorced, they were taken from her, as a symbol of the deprivation of her office, Among the Hebrews the key was used in the same sense. "As the robe and the baldric," says Lowth (Israel, part ii, section 4), "were the ensigns of power and authority, so likewise was the key the mark of office, either sacred or civil." Thus in Isaiah (xxii, 22), it is said: "The key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulders; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open" Our Savior expressed a similar idea when he said to Saint Peter, "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." It is in reference to this interpretation of the symbol, and not that of secrecy, that the key has been adopted as the official jewel of the Treasurer of a Lodge, because he has the purse, the source of power, under his command.

Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry

 

 

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Uploaded on April 20, 2010
Taken on April 19, 2010