<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Patrick Henry Reason<br>Grand Master, 1861-1867<br>By Ludwick S. Hall</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Patrick H. Reason who was elected Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of New York in 1861 (now the MWPH,GL-<br>NY), was born in New York City, on March 17, 1810. His father, Michel Rison, was a native of St. Anne Island, a part of<br>the Caribbean nation of Guadeloupe in the French West Indies, and his mother, Elizabeth Melville, was native of the<br>island of Saint-Domingue (Haiti). His parents immigrated to the United States as refugees in 1893, during the early years<br>of the Haitian Revolution. Patrick was one of four children born to his parents, three boys, Patrick, Charles and Eliver, and<br>one girl, Policarpe. His sister Policarpe died in 1818 at four years of age. The Reason family were members of St. Phillips<br>Episcopal Church, at the time located on Mulberry St., on the lower Eastside of Manhattan. In April of 1816 Patrick was<br>baptized Patrice Rison. Living on the lower East side of Manhattan, he and his two brothers Eliver and Charles, attended<br>the segregated African Free School No. 2, which was run by the St. Phillips Episcopal Church, and located at 135<br>Mulberry St. in Manhattan. Up to the 1850’s it was common place by the use of both de-Facto and de-Jure methods of<br>discrimination by State and local governments to refuse to provide public education for African American children. To fill<br>this vacuum, the established churches and private citizens were in the forefront in the struggle to provide the facilities and<br>personnel necessary for the education that was being denied black children.<br>The School’s headmaster/Principal was John Peterson, a Prince Hall Mason, and member of Boyer Lodge No. 1.<br>Some of Reasons schoolmates were; George Allen, Thomas Sidney, Isaac and George Moore, Isaiah Degrasse, James<br>McCune Smith, Henry Highland Garnett and George T. Dowling. 1 They were eventually to become some of the most<br>prominent and influential African Americans in the Nineteenth Century. On June 22, 1862 Reason married Esther<br>(Cunningham), a white woman who was born in Leeds, England. They had one son, Charles Lewis Reason. Patrick<br>Reason in addition to being an artist was one of the earliest African American engravers and lithographers in the United<br>States. Concerned about the plight of their enslaved African brethren, he and his brother Charles were actively involved in<br>the abolitionist movement in the period before the Civil War. Masonically, Reason was a member of Boyer Lodge No. 1.<br>He was entered on December 24, 1855, passed on February 18, 1856 and raised on April 7, 1856. He served as<br>Worshipful Master of Boyer Lodge in 1859 and 1860. 2 Reason was elected and served as Grand Master of the United</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>Grand Lodge of New York from 1861 to 1867. Notable during PGM Reason’s administration was the Chartering of<br>Adelphic Union Lodge in New York City. When it was originally chartered, Adelphic Union Lodge was listed as No. 7 on<br>the roll of the Grand Lodge. The number was subsequently changed to No. 14 on December 27, 1877, when the United<br>Grand Lodge of New York and the National Grand Lodge’s New York subordinate Grand Lodge, the “M.W. Grand<br>Lodge of New York, F.A.A.Y.M. merged to become what is now the M.W. Prince Hall Grand Lodge of New York. Other<br>Lodges chartered during the administration of PGM Reason were: Wethington Lodge No. 8 in San Francisco, California<br>on December 6, 1865, St. John’s Lodge No. 9, in Chatham, Canada, on September 21, 1866 and Eureka Lodge No.10 in<br>Brooklyn, N.Y. on September 25, 1867. Notable during his administration was the establishment of fraternal relations<br>with the Grand Orient of Haiti in 1864. At the Grand Session held on June 6, in that year our Grand Lodge voted to<br>appoint Mons. Finelon Duplessis to be the accredited Representative of the United Grand Lodge of New York to the<br>Grand Orient of Haiti. It was also at that Grand Session that the United Grand Lodge of New York elected its first<br>honorary members for distinguished service to the Grand Lodge. They were: Ill. Alexander C. Peters, M.D., Bro. &amp; Col.<br>Ernest Romaine, Charge d’ Affairs for the Republic of Haiti in Washington, D.C., and the Rev. John Stella Martin. On<br>July 22, 1864, the first Charity Fund (The Duplessis Charity fund) for indigent members of the Jurisdiction was<br>established. It was named after the Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Orient of Haiti, who as previously mentioned, was<br>also the accredited Representative of the United Grand Lodge of New York to the Grand Orient of Haiti. On March 6,<br>1867 the Grand Lodge moved to No. 2 Fourth Ave. in Manhattan. It was at this point the first Grand Lodge Trustees were<br>appointed. They were: William H. Anthony, Alfred J. Aldridge, John M. Thomas, Arnold Ricks, Dr. Peter Ray, William<br>F. Randall, William A. Mars and James Bavz.<br>P.G.M. Patrick Reason was also a Charter Member of the Supreme Council of the United States, and served as its<br>First Lieutenant Grand Commander. Established on November 30, 1864, The Supreme Council of the United States was<br>the first Scottish Rite organization established in the State of New York. Reason served as its First Lieutenant Grand<br>Commander from the organization of the Supreme Council, until 1870, and from 1870 to 1879 succeeded Baron Auguste<br>Hugo de’ Bulow, of the Grand Orient of France, as its Sovereign Grand Commander. At a Consistory held in New York<br>City in February of 1880, the five existing Supreme Councils consisting of African Americans, agreed to merge into two<br>Supreme Councils, one for the Northern Jurisdiction and one for the Southern Jurisdiction, to conform to the Constitution<br>of the Scottish Rite Supreme Grand Council of 1786. In 1881, Reason and the Supreme Council of the United States was<br>prevented from becoming a part of the original organization of the Supreme Council for the Northern Jurisdiction because<br>it was restricted by an injunction filed by the members of the Prince Hall Consistory of Chicago, Illinois, that was issued<br>by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Obtained by John G. Jones, it prohibited the<br>Supreme Council of the United States from engaging in activities of the Scottish Rite, because it had established<br>Occidental Consistory in the City of Chicago, When by October 1, 1881 the injunction had not been removed, Major<br>Richardson Poole, then the Scottish Rite Deputy for the Orient of New York, allowed those members who were not<br>restricted by the injunction of the Federal Court to form a new Consistory in New York, King David Consistory No. 3.<br>The first Commander in Chief of King David Consistory No. 3 was Ill. John Henry Brown, 33°. By 1883 the injunction<br>that had been obtained by the Prince Hall Consistory in the United States District Court for the Northern District of<br>Chicago, Illinois had been vacated. But because of the ill feelings that had been generated between Dr. Peter Ray the<br>Sovereign Grand Commander, of the Supreme Council of the United States at the time, and the new Supreme Council for<br>the Northern Jurisdiction, Reason, Ray and his officers were not allowed to become a part of the new Supreme Council<br>for the Northern Jurisdiction. Accordingly, they temporarily resuscitated the Supreme Council of the United States as a<br>separate and distinct organization. As a separate Supreme Council, on August 10, 1883, one of the first Scottish Rite<br>bodies they organized was a Chapter of the Rose Croix (Red Rose Chapter) in Cincinnati, Ohio. 3 The members of the<br>Supreme Council of the United States went on to establish other Scottish Rite organizations over the next Six (6) years.<br>Among these were: Consistories in Boston, Massachusetts also in 1883 and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1884. 4 In 1885<br>they entered into a short relationship with the Supreme Council of Louisiana, 5 which lasted for about four (4) years before<br>the Supreme Council of the United States was completely dissolved about the year 1889.<br>Reason was also one of the founders the Grand United Order of the Odd Fellows in America. Originally a<br>member of the New York Philomathean Literary Society, Reason and other African Americans members of the Society<br>submitted petitions to the white Independent Order of Odd Fellows but were denied membership. Undaunted, in 1842,<br>with the assistance of Peter Ogden, a Seaman, and a member of Victoria Odd Fellows Lodge No. 448 in Liverpool,</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph -->
<p>England, they petitioned the Grand United Order of the Odd Fellows in England and were chartered as Philomathean<br>Lodge No. 646. 6 Eventually forming a Grand Lodge of Odd Fellows in New York, Reason subsequently designed the<br>membership certificate and served as its Grand Master. Also, a member of Philomathean Lodge No. 646, was Dr. James<br>McClune Smith, the first person of African descent in the United States to graduate from a Medical School. Dr. Smith<br>served as the Grand Secretary of the Odd Fellows Grand Lodge in New York. In 1858 Reason was instrumental in<br>establishing Hamilton Lodge No. 710 of New York, the first Lodge of what was to become the Household of Ruth for<br>female members of the Odd Fellows. In that same year Reason composed the Ruth degree, the first to be conferred upon<br>female members of Hamilton Lodge No. 710, and subsequently to members of the Household of Ruth. Reason also<br>served as the Grand Registrar of the Odd Fellows Grand Lodge in New York from 1857 to 1868. 7 In 1869, he moved his<br>family to Cleveland, Ohio, and joined the firm of Sylvester Hogan, where he designed and made jewelry and plate<br>engravings until 1882 when he opened his own business. Fraternally although he maintained most of his Masonic<br>affiliations in New York including that of the Supreme Council of the United States, after the mergers of the States Rite<br>Grand Lodges with the Compact Grand Lodges in New York and Ohio, he affiliated with Red Cross Commandery No. 7<br>Knights Templar in Cleveland, Ohio. Past Grand Master Patrick Reason died in Cleveland, Ohio on August 12, 1898. He<br>is buried in Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery.<br>.<br>1 Peterson, Carla L., “Black Gotham, A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York,”, Pg. 5<br>2 “New York Age”, newspaper, October 16, 1943, Pg. 12<br>3 “Cincinnati Commercial Tribune”, newspaper, August 12, 1883<br>4 “New York Globe,”, newspaper, June 7, 1884<br>5 Walkes, Joseph, ibid, Pg.37<br>6 Skocpol, Theda; Liazos, Ariane, and Ganz, Marshall. “What a Mighty Power We Can Be”, Pg. 35<br>7 “New York Age”, newspaper, October 16, 1943, Pg. 12</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->