History of Mann Page Lodge

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Mann Page Lodge No. 157 held its first meeting under dispensation on March 8, 1904 at Waddill’s Store in Charles City Co.. George T. Darracott of Brandon Lodge No. 192 (whose picture is on the wall of the lodge room) was elected Worshipful Master. Most Worshipful Mann Page, who was Grand Master of Masons in Virginia in 1893 and also a member of Brandon Lodge No. 192,  gave the jewels for the new Lodge. 

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The charter was granted on February 16, 1905. Dues were twenty-five cents per month and since the Lodge didn’t have its own building yet it met in a room over Waddills Store in Charles City County. They paid rent of two dollars per month to use the room. Since the meetings were held at midday it was said that during a Lodge meeting they could look through the cracks in the floor and see customers being waited on below.
 
Many of the brethren lived in Surry County and would cross the James River by boat and travel about seven miles to get to the Lodge.
 
The fee for a Petition for degrees was $5.00. Degree fees were $10.00 for the Entered Apprentice and $5.00 for the Fellowcraft and Master Masons degrees, which was serious money –easily a week’s wages – back then.
 
In December of 1908 the Lodge began planning for a new building and the first meeting in the new building was held on Wednesday, November 10, 1909. Brother H. C. Rowan, was the first Worshipful Master in the new Lodge building.

 

Brother Rowan (who also has a picture on the wall) was said to be the best-informed man in the Lodge as to the various rules and regulations regarding the running of a Lodge and Masonry, and he was said to be a stickler as to the rules and protocol of Masonry and to know the Methodical Digest backwards and forward. He was so committed to Masonry that on many occasions he was said to have worked all day at a local sawmill, sunrise to sunset, then walked six miles, hired a horse and rode eight miles more to get to Lodge.

 

Mann Page Lodge has been blessed with many members who worked hard for the Lodge and whose lives brought credit to the Lodge and Masonry in general. First and foremost among these has to be MW Mann Page.

 

Mann Page was born April 21, 1835 at Shelly Plantation in Gloucester Co., VA to father Thomas Nelson Page and mother Juliana Randolph. The Page family had long been one of the most prominent in VA, going back to the earliest days of the colony. 

 

The Page lineage in Virginia began with the arrival of Colonel John Page at Jamestown in 1650. Col. Page was a prominent founder of Middle Plantation, which was later renamed Williamsburg. His grandson, Mann Page I, was educated at Eton in England and became prominent in VA politics. His plantation, called Rosewell, was built in 1725 in Gloucester Co. and when it was completed it was said to be the grandest home in all of VA, including the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg. It burned in 1916, but the ruins of Rosewell are still very impressive and can be visited in Gloucester Co. today. Shelly Plantation, where Mann Page was born, was next door to Rosewell and burned in 1883.

 

The grandson of Mann Page I was John Page (1744-1808), who also lived at Rosewell and became Governor of VA.  John Page graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1763, where he became a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, and the two exchanged a great deal of correspondence through the years. Jefferson courted (unsuccessfully) John Page’s sister, and it is said that Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence while he was visiting his friend John Page at Rosewell.

 

Page served under George Washington in an expedition during the French and Indian War and was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1776. He also served during the Revolutionary War as a Colonel in the Virginia state militia, raising a regiment from Gloucester County and supplementing it with personal funds. 

 

Page was also involved in politics and became the Governor of Virginia in 1802 and served until 1805. 

 

Governor Page was quoted by George W. Bush in his inaugural address in 2001. Writing to his friend Jefferson shortly after the Declaration of Independence was published, Page said of the Declaration and the Revolution: "We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?"

 

The Mann Page who our lodge is named after was his great-great grandson and was born April 21, 1835. According to the Librarian for the Grand Lodge of VA, Mann Page “…was educated for a business career, and worked for the commission house with the firm of Randolph and Page until the Civil War.”

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On April 21, 1861, four days after Virginia seceded from the Union, Mann Page joined Co. F of the 21st Virginia Infantry. He would’ve fit right in to this unit, since the 21st was widely known as an elite regiment, composed mainly of men from the ‘First Families of VA’. This regiment was a part of the famous “Stonewall Brigade” serving under General Stonewall Jackson. On Feb. 15, 1862 he was promoted to Full Sgt. Major, and on March 15th to Captain. 

 

One civil war battle that we know Mann Page was in was the battle of Cedar Mountain, which was fought August 9, 1862, near Gordonsville, VA in Culpeper Co.. One of the best books on that battle was written by historian Bob Krick, called “Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain”, and Krick mentions Mann Page by name:

 

“Another survivor from the regiment was Adjutant Mann Page of Company F. Page had a close call. A Federal soldier gathered him in as a prisoner and was threatening "to blow the damned rebel's brains out" at the moment that a nearby Confederate managed to finish capping his musket and shoot the Federal dead. Page was captured again almost at once and again escaped.”

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He was badly wounded in the war and found after the surrender that his wound did not permit him to do office work. 

A relative of Mann Page owned an old and historic plantation named Lower Brandon, which still stands in Prince George Co. In 1867, Mann Page moved to Lower Brandon and became the plantation manager, and he was to stay there for the rest of his life.  Robert E. Lee was a close relative of the Harrisons, the family that built Lower Brandon  in 1712, and also a distant relative of Mann Page himself, and Lee stayed at Lower Brandon for a few days in 1870, and I’m sure Mann Page must have showed him around the farm while he was there.  

 

In 1894 he became the President of the National Farmers Alliance, and there was talk that he would run for Governor of VA for the Populist party, but in the end he refused to be a candidate.

 

He was a member of Brandon Lodge No. 192, located at Brandon Church, in Disputanta in Prince George Co.. This Lodge was chartered in December 1875 but surrendered its charter February 1945. We don’t know his degree dates because their records were not turned over to Grand Lodge when the Lodge went dark.

 

He was installed as Grand Master of Masons of Virginia in December, 1893 and served until December, 1894.  He was asked to serve a second term, but declined. 

 

MW Page died May 28, 1904 and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond. For many years the members of Mann Page Lodge made a pilgrimage to his grave on Memorial Day to place flowers, and this might be a good tradition to begin again.

 

Bro. Percy Deverell (who also has a picture on the wall) was born 1852 in Dublin, Ireland and died in 1930 in Claremont, VA. He was in the insurance business, and was a justice of the peace and a surveyor also. He was the first Senior Warden of this Lodge and gave the Lodge its first Holy Bible.  Bro. E. Tyree Mountcastle (pictured on the wall) was said to have a brilliant mind, and he supposedly learned the entire EA catechism basically the first time he heard it. The 57th District School is named after him. 

 

Many of us here knew Bro. Clarence Talley. Bro. Talley was one of the mainstays of this Lodge for over 50 years, and he told me not long before he passed away that in his 55 or so years of membership he had missed no more than a half dozen meetings, and all of these were caused by being called away to perform his duties as magistrate and sheriff.

 

There was another member of the Lodge that many of you may never have heard of, but he was one of the most interesting and important members we’ve had. His name was George Potts, and he was a veterinarian who was born in Canterbury England in 1836. He came to the US in 1867 and traveled throughout the western states, back when it was truly the Wild West. He eventually settled in New Kent County and owned a home called “Providence Hall”, which stood where modern day Rt. 60 crosses Rt. 155.  In 1947 when Rt. 60 was being built, the house was bought by Colonial Williamsburg, who moved the house to the Historic District in Williamsburg, where it still stands. He was said to have had a long white beard and a pronounced British accent. He joined Mann Page Lodge around 1915 and served as our Lodge Secretary throughout the 1920’s. 

 

Bro. Potts was one of the main founders of the Masonic Home of VA. The Masonic Home website says this:

 

“Dr. George Potts, born in Canterbury, England, made several eloquent appeals to the committees and to Grand Lodge, encouraging the establishment of a home for orphans, but without success.  In December 1889, Dr. Potts made a particularly eloquent plea to Masons assembled in Grand Lodge.  Moved by the reasoning and passion of Dr. Potts’ speech, Captain A. G. Babcock offered a gift of $5,000 in cash and a conditional pledge of further assistance if the home were established.  This pledge motivated the Grand Lodge Committee to amend its previous action and favorably report on the need and feasibility of a home for orphans.”

 

There are many other members of this Lodge that I could name but this talk would run on all night. There have been many worthy and prominent Brothers who have loved Mann Page Lodge and who worked hard and sacrificed to make it successful and well respected. Many of them have passed on to “that House not made with Hands”, but they’ve passed the torch to us, and it’s now up to us to carry on their heritage and make the Lodge even better as we move on into the 21st century. 

 

(From a talk given by Wor. Steve Avent)