Theodore Roosevelt - Master Mason

Courtesy Library of Congress

Theodore Roosevelt - Freemason

Update: 07-8-2026 

      New in 2022 - First Post for the Theodore Roosevelt Maine Heritage Trail June 16, 2022

      First Look at Logo - "My Debt To Maine" - Logo - Theodore Roosevelt Maine Heritage Trail 6-15-22

THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919)

Twenty-sixth President (1901-1909)

MASONIC RECORD

A postcard with no handwritten message -
Collection of PWM

Initiated: January 2, 1901, Matinecock Lodge No. 806, Oyster Bay, New York. Brother and President Roosevelt visited the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania on November 5, 1902, for the Celebration of the Sesquicentennial of Brother George Washington's Initiation into Freemasonry. Governor of New York, 1899-1901. Brother and President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order, dated October 17, 1901, changing the name of the "Executive Mansion" to the "White House".

I heard that it was Colonel Roosevelt's gardener at Sagamore Hill, TR's home in Oyster Bay, NY, who nominated TR to become a Mason.

I read a post on The Roosevelt Dynasty: Family, Fitness, & Faith group on Facebook that includes the photo below. The post states, As a child, Tr's social life was centered around women. His mother, older sister Bamie, younger sister Conie, Aunt Anna (his teacher all through his childhood), and even Edith, later First Lady, dominated his social group.

It wasn't until he went to Harvard, all men at the time, and then North Dakota that his social group became mostly male. His time with men out West changed him both physically and mentally.

He had a few male friends growing up. Brother Elliott was the closest friend. As a reen, TR spent the summers in Oyster Bay. He developed a friendship with William L. Swan that would persist for decades. Swan was influential in the formation of Marinecock Masonic Lodge No. 806 in 1893. Later, he would persuade his boyhood friend Theodore Roosevelt to become a Mason.

Photo (below) of TR(left) in 1907 at a Masonic function where a cornerstone is being laid.

Theodore Roosevelt and the Narcissus story in
the 2014, Vol. 40, No. 3, Fall issue of The Maine Mason
Collection of PWM


The Theodore Roosevelt story in
the 2022, Vol. 48, No. 2, Spring issue of The Maine Mason
Collection of PWM

Freemason Novelty Note - Darkened - This is
a beautifully colored and detailed note on the front and the reverse side is
equally as detailed and is titled, Steps of Freemasonry.
Go to www.noveltynotes.com 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click Here: For the list of links to Theodore Roosevelt Maine Heritage Trail Posts in Easy Order to View

We continue the restoration work on the 1912 Narcissus, the only surviving high-speed, luxury interurban coach of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. 

Click Here: Narcissus Restoration-Related Posts

More than a century old, the stately "Elegant Ride," Narcissus, is a gem.  This shimmering precious stone of Maine transportation history is brilliantly resplendent as it emanates so many elements of history, including time, places, people, and events, that it was coupled to, that when just a smattering of its seemingly innumerable stories are shared, the contents first captivate, fascinate, then generate interest to learn more 🙋. The majestic Narcissus is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Please consider joining the epic journey to complete the Narcissus Project by donating today!

Click Here: Donation Options

The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one in a series of captivating stories containing an abundance of incredible coalition narratives.

Click Here: History-Related Posts - Narcissus and Portland-Lewiston Interurban

     The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.

Click Here: Bookstores and Businesses promoting the Narcissus Project

Independent book publisher Phil Morse, holding

Gold Book Award Winner plaque for

 Middle Reader category for The Eric

Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to

award-winning Maine author,

Jean M. Flahive

Two Accomplished Writers and a National Park Service Ranger from Sagamore Hill NHS will Speak at Theodore Roosevelt Event this Summer at Trolley Museum

The Seashore Trolley Museum will present a new weekend event beginning this summer, on July 31, 2015. The weekend event titled Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist, Nature, and the Narcissus honors our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt, and his conservation efforts, while celebrating his connection to Seashore's own 1912 Portland-Lewiston Interurban No. 14, Narcissus. Proceeds benefit the Narcissus restoration project. This weekend includes engaging, enlightening, challenging, and fun activities and programs for all.  This event embraces Theodore Roosevelt's passion for observing and understanding nature, his vigor for an active outdoor life, his commitment to conservation, and his connections to Maine. More details about the event activities will be in future posts. Here are the featured speakers for the exciting weekend.

Chip Bishop

Chip Bishop will be speaking about his new book, Quentin & Flora - A Roosevelt and a Vanderbilt in Love during the Great War. 

Chip is a member of the board of directors of the Biographers International Organization, on the Advisory Board of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and on the executive committee of its New England chapter. He is the great-grandnephew of Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt’s authorized biographer, who was profiled in his first book, The Lion and the Journalist – The Unlikely Friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Bucklin Bishop. Chip has now started a biography of Elliott Roosevelt, TR's younger brother and the father of Eleanor Roosevelt. Mr. Bishop will be signing and selling his books at the event on Friday, July 31, at 3pm.

                 

TR's brother Elliott is Eleanor Roosevelt's father.

TR would become the 26th President of the United States.

Eleanor would marry Franklin D. Roosevelt, a distant cousin,

who later became the 32nd President of the United States.

Andrew Vietze

The former Managing Editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Andrew Vietze, is a bestselling author. The critically acclaimed Becoming Teddy Roosevelt (Down East, 2010) won a silver medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards in New York, was a ForeWord Book of the Year Finalist, and was the inspiration for Coastal Maine BotanicalGarden's new program for middle schoolers, the Lunder New Naturalists, which is now part of the curriculum at 20 Maine schools and involves more than 600 students. The book speaks about Theodore Roosevelt and the Maine Woods with legendary Maine guide William Sewall. He was a sickly, asthmatic city boy. When he emerged several trips later, he was a robust, confident outdoorsman—the kind of man who could be president. This book describes the lifelong friendship between the twenty-sixth president and the lumberman from Island Falls. Explores how that bond changed Roosevelt (and the nation) and why it matters today. Andrew will be signing and selling his books at the event on Saturday and Sunday, August 1st and 2nd.

William Wingate Sewall, Wilmot Dow, and Theodore Roosevelt,

with the snowshoes in Maine, c February 1879

Houghton Library, Harvard University

While an undergraduate student at Harvard University, Theodore Roosevelt visited Island Falls, Maine, on three occasions between 1878 and 1879. TR would stay at Sewall's home, and William Sewall and William's nephew, Wilmot Dow,  would be TR's guides. 

May 31, 2026, Joe Banavige released this wonderful American 250 Tribute to william W. "Bill" Sewall, TR's Maine guide (along with Wilmot Dow, Bill's nephew). Click here to see Joe's Substack post.

R.Joshua Reyes

Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, NY
Collection of PWM

Joshua Reyes  

Joshua Reyes is a National Park Service Park Ranger at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, the Theodore Roosevelt family home in Oyster Bay, NY. Josh has worked for the National Park Service for twelve years. He is the volunteer coordinator at Sagamore Hill and will speak about TR's family. Life at Sagamore Hill with insight into the three-year renovation of the site. The anticipated reopening date for Sagamore Hill is July 12, 2015. The National Park Service Centennial will be celebrated in August 2016, and to kick off the year approaching the centennial, the NPS has introduced the new

Find Your Park program.

Josh will be speaking to guests on Friday night, July 31, Saturday, August 1, and Sunday, August 2.

Theodore Roosevelt in the dining room of his beloved home,
Sagamore Hill ca 1894,  TRC R500.R67-002 

Houghton Library, Harvard University

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click Here: For the list of links to Theodore Roosevelt Maine Heritage Trail Posts in Easy Order to View

We continue the restoration work on the 1912 Narcissus, the only surviving high-speed, luxury interurban coach of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. 

Click Here: Narcissus Restoration-Related Posts

More than a century old, the stately "Elegant Ride," Narcissus, is a gem.  This shimmering precious stone of Maine transportation history is brilliantly resplendent as it emanates so many elements of history, including time, places, people, and events, that it was coupled to, that when just a smattering of its seemingly innumerable stories are shared, the contents first captivate, fascinate, then generate interest to learn more 🙋. The majestic Narcissus is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Please consider joining the epic journey to complete the Narcissus Project by donating today!

Click Here: Donation Options

The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one in a series of captivating stories containing an abundance of incredible coalition narratives.

Click Here: History-Related Posts - Narcissus and Portland-Lewiston Interurban

     The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.

Click Here: Bookstores and Businesses promoting the Narcissus Project

Independent book publisher Phil Morse, holding

Gold Book Award Winner plaque for

 Middle Reader category for The Eric

Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to

award-winning Maine author,

Jean M. Flahive

Narcissus Ornate Leaded Stained Glass Work

Tom Hughes, Jim Mackell, Lary Shaffer, Deb Caron Plourde,

Donald Curry and Phil Morse. Photo by Liyi "Tom" Liu

     During April vacation week in 2014, a handful of Seashore Trolley Museum folks and Deb Caron Plourde from Sundancer Stained Glass in Saco, ME, assembled at Stasio Hall at Thornton Academy in Saco, ME.

Photo by Liyi "Tom" Liu

     The reason for this assembly was to view and assess the condition of the assortment of restored mahogany frames, complete and partial original stained-glass windows, and newer built windows. 

     The original frames and windows were all from the 1912 Portland-Lewiston Interurban (PLI) No. 14, Narcissus, and a few clerestory frames with glass from its sister electric interurban, No. 10, Arbutus (Clerestory windows are located along the raised roofline).

From O. R. Cummings

     The Arbutus had been preserved in the yard of Mrs. Gertrude L. Anthony since the end of the PLI in 1933. Mrs. Anthony was the daughter of PLI promoter W. Scott Libbey. Sadly, the Arbutus was dismantled in the mid-1940s for the war effort. However, a few of Arbutus' clerestory windows, with their mahogany frames, found their way to the Branford Electric Railway Association in East Haven, CT. In 2001, Seashore Trolley Museum acquired the Arbutus clerestory windows and frames from Branford in a trade for parts. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Seashore member/volunteer Tom Hughes repaired and rebuilt the frames that were available from the Arbutus and the Narcissus.

Photo by Liyi "Tom" Liu

      Following the April 2014 meeting in Saco, a plan was developed, and work on the leaded stained glass windows commenced. Deb Caron Plourde began by identifying the glass manufacturers that had made the original glass in 1912. The manufacturers are still in business today, and she was able to locate the glass needed for rebuilding some windows.

Deb Caron Plourde with an original "eyebrow,

leaded stained glass, from the Narcissus. Photo by PWM

     Over the ensuing months, Deb Caron Plourde cleaned, repaired, restored, and rebuilt all forty ornate windows for the Narcissus.

One of the large, 51-inch-wide "eyebrows" above its pattern.

Each eyebrow has 51 individual pieces of glass

(Each eyebrow is placed over one pair of passenger windows)

Photo by PWM

Seashore Trolley Museum Member/volunteer Jim Mackell,

inspects the mahogany frame for the Narcissus. Holding the

leaded stained glass after he has just installed the mahogany

glazing strips in the first of 24 restored "clerestory halves."

Photo by Alban Maino. For more on Alban Maino,

read Patricia Erikson's blog at Peaks Island Press.

Building an "eyebrow" for the Narcissus -

February 2015 - vid by PWM

February 2015 - Deb at Sundancer Stained Glass

Saco, ME, applying putty to three, 

windows for the Narcissus -

vid by PWM

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click Here: For the list of links to Theodore Roosevelt Maine Heritage Trail Posts in Easy Order to View

We continue the restoration work on the 1912 Narcissus, the only surviving high-speed, luxury interurban coach of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. 

Click Here: Narcissus Restoration-Related Posts

More than a century old, the stately "Elegant Ride," Narcissus, is a gem.  This shimmering precious stone of Maine transportation history is brilliantly resplendent as it emanates so many elements of history, including time, places, people, and events, that it was coupled to, that when just a smattering of its seemingly innumerable stories are shared, the contents first captivate, fascinate, then generate interest to learn more 🙋. The majestic Narcissus is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Please consider joining the epic journey to complete the Narcissus Project by donating today!

Click Here: Donation Options

The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one in a series of captivating stories containing an abundance of incredible coalition narratives.

Click Here: History-Related Posts - Narcissus and Portland-Lewiston Interurban

     The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.

Click Here: Bookstores and Businesses promoting the Narcissus Project

Independent book publisher Phil Morse, holding

Gold Book Award Winner plaque for

 Middle Reader category for The Eric

Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to

award-winning Maine author,

Jean M. Flahive

Clyde Walker Pierce, Jr. Oral History Segment - Portland Lewiston Interurban and Maine Trolleys

Clyde Walker Pierce, Jr. (1915 - 2011)

This is an edited segment of an interview conducted by Clyde's daughter, Patricia Pierce Erikson, in August 2008 to help develop an exhibit at Seashore Trolley Museum titled History in Motion: Public Transportation Connecting Maine Communities. Portions of the original interview have been set to the background images from postcards, illustrations, and a Portland-Lewiston Interurban advertisement on white porcelain.

A print of the Narcissus W. S. Libbey with his wife, Annie,

in Libbey's 1908 Stanley Steamer. Titled "Fast Friends"

by Maine artist Wade Zahares

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click Here: For the list of links to Theodore Roosevelt Maine Heritage Trail Posts in Easy Order to View

We continue the restoration work on the 1912 Narcissus, the only surviving high-speed, luxury interurban coach of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban. 

Click Here: Narcissus Restoration-Related Posts

More than a century old, the stately "Elegant Ride," Narcissus, is a gem.  This shimmering precious stone of Maine transportation history is brilliantly resplendent as it emanates so many elements of history, including time, places, people, and events, that it was coupled to, that when just a smattering of its seemingly innumerable stories are shared, the contents first captivate, fascinate, then generate interest to learn more 🙋. The majestic Narcissus is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Please consider joining the epic journey to complete the Narcissus Project by donating today!

Click Here: Donation Options

The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one in a series of captivating stories containing an abundance of incredible coalition narratives.

Click Here: History-Related Posts - Narcissus and Portland-Lewiston Interurban

     The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.

Click Here: Bookstores and Businesses promoting the Narcissus Project

Independent book publisher Phil Morse, holding

Gold Book Award Winner plaque for

 Middle Reader category for The Eric

Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to

award-winning Maine author,

Jean M. Flahive