Huntington’s Masonic Lodge Volunteers at Old Burying Ground

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Walking through a field of stone carved skulls and faces, transports visitors to a rare and unique collection of early Huntington folk art. The cracks widen during the passage of time, slowly eroding the hand carved markings created by forgotten artisans in remembrance for our local ancestors. Many passerby’s in the Old Town Hall Historic District may not know that resting beneath the stone tablets are the remains of early Huntington residents from a wide variety of backgrounds.

On a recent hot and humid Saturday morning, fourteen members, friends, and family of Jephtha Masonic Lodge No. 494 volunteered to help trim shrubs, pull overgrown weeds, rake leaves, and remove debris from Old Burying Ground Cemetery. In coordination with Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes, the work crew assisted in a day of cleanup at the historic cemetery just short walking distance from the Jephtha Lodge building on New York Avenue. Huntington Town Supervisor Chad Lupinacci took a short walk from the nearby Town Hall and spoke to the group about the importance of preserving our local historic sites and sharing his appreciation on all the hard work accomplished.

The Jephtha volunteers with Huntington Town Supervisor and Historian
Fourteen members, family and friends of Jephtha Lodge takes a break during the cleanup

Part of the lodge’s benevolence committee to help make our community a better place, this event is one of several projects the local Masons were involved in during the recent pandemic shutdown. Although the lodge is comprised of mostly Huntington residents, members from other lodges from as far as Port Jefferson volunteered in this important preservation project of our local historic sites. Armed with work gloves, pruning shears, weed trimmers, a cooler of cold bottled water and a bit of determination, the team went right to work after a brief historical lecture by the Town Historian.

Also known as the Old Burial Hill Cemetery, the site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1981. The earliest surviving marker is over 300 years old, but many of the wooden markers and basic fieldstones were lost over the years and never replaced. Located on a hill that once had a clear view of Huntington Harbor, the site was originally chosen because of the difficulty to farm on the hilly terrain.

The cemetery took an ugly turn in 1782, the last year of the American Revolution, when occupying British troops, under the orders of Colonel Benjamin Thomson of the King’s American Dragoons, destroyed the nearby Presbyterian Church and constructed Fort Golgotha with timbers removed from the sacred building on the highest point of the hill. The fort was part a network of four British fortifications including Fort Slongo, now known as Fort Salonga, in the hamlet on the border of the Towns of Huntington and Smithtown, in British occupied Long Island during the Revolutionary War.

The British desecration of the church and cemetery is the first recorded act of vandalism in Huntington. Up to 100 tombstones were destroyed and some were used as bake ovens where according to local legend, the baked bread had reverse inscriptions of the tombstones readable on the lower crust.

Huntington Historian gives a brief lecture to the Jephtha Lodge volunteers
Huntington Town Historian Robert Hughes gives a brief history lesson to the volunteers before the clean-up begins

There are 1246 marked graves on the 4-acre site, but it is estimated that there may have been up to 5000 interments since the founding of the Town of Huntington in the mid-17th century. The first legible marker is dated 1712 and the final burial of Russell F. Sammis was in May 1957. Town Historian Robert Hughes explained to the group the variety of tombstones that can be seen in the cemetery, including local fieldstones, imported Connecticut sandstone, slate and how marble, iron, zinc and granite replaced the older varieties in the 19th and 20th century. Many of the markers included unmarked footstones, which sometimes can be confused as headstones to the unsuspecting eye.

With the opening of Huntington Rural Cemetery as the Town’s main cemetery on New York Avenue in the mid-19th century, Old Burying Ground started its long decline of neglect until the local chapters of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution started their own cleanup efforts in 1911 giving way to the Town of Huntington’s regular maintenance in the mid-1920s. Suburban expansion in the 1950’s witnessed the return of vandalism to the cemetery, which finally led to a joint effort of between the Town of Huntington and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to the restoration, conservation and preservation of the grounds in a multi-year project that started in 2004.

This project between the Town Historian is the latest of several coordinated efforts with Jephtha Masonic Lodge which has called Huntington home since 1860. Other projects include the installation of an Historic Marker in front of the lodge building on New York Avenue; a stop on the Huntington Walking Tour and Pub Crawl; archive sharing between the lodge and the Huntington Historical Society; and invaluable assistance in the newly published book “Long Island Freemasons.”

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Like Father, Like Sons

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By W:. Ronald J. Seifried, DSA

Father and son Worshipful Masters is a rare occurrence in masonic lodges. In 2020, Jephtha’s own W:. Richard Harris is the son of W:. Rod Harris, Past Master of Jamaica No. 546. But to have a father and his two only sons all elected as Worshipful Masters has only happened with one family in the long history of Jephtha Lodge, and it began one hundred years ago in 1920.

Robert K. Toaz, first superintendent of the Huntington School District.
Robert Kennedy Toaz

Robert Kennedy Toaz was master of Jephtha Lodge No. 494 starting in January 1920. Born on August 23, 1869 in Rochester, New York, Toaz spent a lifetime in public education that eventually led him to become the first Superintendent of the Huntington Union School District in 1906.

At the University of Rochester, he was a member of the Delta Psi fraternity before graduating in 1893, earning a master’s degree at Columbia University and studying at the Albany’s College and Clark University.

Toaz‘s  professional career included heading the science department in Canandaigua for one year, assistant principal in Waterloo for four years, and an additional four years as a high school principal in Marion, New York. From 1899 until early 1906, he was principal of Oxford Academy and Union School, before moving to his next and final stop in Huntington and started as high school principal and superintendent of the Huntington School District in February 1906.

Robert K. Toaz Junior High School in 1938

From his earliest days in Huntington, Toaz took on several responsibilities, including teaching English and Math and coaching the high school football team. He helped expand Huntington from a one wooden school building to a district with a modern new junior high school at Huntington Station and five grammar schools. During his tenure, new schools were constructed including School Street School (aka Station School, 1906), Halesite (aka O’Hara Street School, 1908), Huntington High School (1908-09), Woodbury Avenue School (1923-24) and the Lowndes Avenue School expansion (1927), which was renamed Roosevelt School in honor of the late President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s widow Edith and youngest son Archibald attended the dedication ceremony.

Oxford No. 175 met on the third floor of Oxford National Bank, where Robert K. Toaz was raised a master mason in the early 20th century.

Toaz retired as principal of Huntington High School in 1930 and as superintendent in 1933, a few months after he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the New York State College of Teachers. After his “retirement,” he served as vice-president of the New York State School Master’s Association. Several months before his death in 1938, ground broke on a new Huntington Junior High School on 300 Nassau Road. The school was renamed Robert K. Toaz Junior High School in honor of the former superintendent, the first Junior High School in Suffolk County and a state and national leader of education of students in grades 7-9 in the decades that followed. The 11-acre campus officially closed in 1982 and was rented and later purchased by Touro Law School. In 2007, the law school sold the building and today is the home to the School of Mahanaim.

Toaz was raised a Master Mason in Oxford No. 175 in the town of Oxford near Binghamton, New York and affiliated with Jephtha No. 494 in 1907 shortly after his relocation to Huntington. Toaz’s one year as master was a very productive term in the east. In October 1920, the pipe organ was dedicated. Formal permission was granted by Jephtha for two other masonic lodges to be formed in neighboring towns: Amityville No. 977 and Bethpage No. 975 in Farmingdale (now Bethpage-Hicksville No. 975).

Over 110 men attended the second annual outing at the Albert G. Milbank Estate, the first mayor of Lloyd Harbor. The event included a baseball game, tug of war, 100-yard dash, 50-yard dash for “fat men,” potato race, blindfolded boxing match, swimming match and dinner.

His participation in the local community did not end with Freemasonry. Toaz was also a charter member and President of the Huntington Rotary Club; President of the Board of Trustees of the Old First Presbyterian Church; chairman of the Suffolk County Boy Scouts; member of the board of directors of the Huntington Hotel; trustee of the Heckscher trust which administered the Heckscher Park and art museum; and member of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Huntington and Trust Company with several other Jephtha past masters.

John C. Toaz

Robert K. Toaz was alive to see his oldest son, John Clark Toaz (1904-2000) ascend the east of Jephtha Lodge in 1937. A graduate of Harvard Law School, John C. Toaz was a member of the Berman & Toaz Law Firm and Justice of the Peace in Huntington and was President of the Suffolk County Bar Association for several years.

Robert T. Toaz

John’s younger brother Robert T. Toaz (1912-1984) was elected Worshipful Master of Jephtha in 1949. Robert was a long-time appointed musician at Jephtha, sitting behind the organ for over 20 out of 33 years from 1950 until 1983.

A member of the Toaz family has been a member of Jephtha Lodge for 93 years until the passing of John C. Toaz in 2000, far exceeding the period of another local Toaz legacy.              

“We at Toaz will be faithful, loyal, brave, and true;
We at Toaz will be faithful to the gold and blue.
Shoulder to shoulder, this we proudly cry;
Always onward for our school: Toaz Junior High.”
Robert K. Toaz Junior High School alma mater song (1938-1982)

The past masters apron of W:. John C. Toaz, presented January 10, 1938

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Tracing the Fraternal DNA

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By W:. Ronald J. Seifried, DSA

Over twenty-five years ago, I started researching my family tree. In the mid-1990’s, online databases filled with thousands of scanned documents were not available online. A genealogist had to travel to downtown Manhattan to the National Archives, scroll through reels of microfiche just to find the index number of a possible match to the actual Federal or State Census page. To obtain a birth, marriage or death certificate, a dedicated researcher would travel to the Municipal Archives and research again via indexed microfiche before possibly obtaining a certificate.

Depending on when it was recorded, a census page is filled with valuable information, including occupation, birthplace, language, home value, salary and parents’ birthplace, while a birth, marriage or death certificates include additional information, including birth and death date and place of burial.

The Evergreens Cemetery, Brooklyn. Among the missing headstones is the grave of Peter Sanger

While these valuable records retain a treasure trove of important information, they never include any data if an ancestor was a member of a fraternal organization. If you are lucky, maybe a masonic square and compass can be found on a long-forgotten headstone, or a worn relic was preserved by nostalgic minded older relatives. But chances are, most of these artifacts were discarded by descendants who did not appreciate who their ancestor really were.

My maternal grandfather was a Knight of Columbus for many years. I have his gloves and sash in my archives, but sadly, he was mugged in the early 1980’s and forever lost his beautiful ring. I never heard any tales of great grandfathers who were masons or any other fraternal society.  My fraternal heritage began and ends with him.

Or so I thought.

Peter Sanger’s death certificate, October 2, 1887

I recently signed up for an interesting online database that has a large collection of digitally scanned newspapers dating to the late 18th century. The website is searchable, and despite not being perfect, it led to me some new discoveries with my ever-expanding family tree.

One of my 2nd great grandfather’s was born in Whitechapel, Middlesex, England on July 21, 1845. Although both his parents were of German descent and only stayed in England for six years, Peter Sanger’s national pride was toward his birthplace of the United Kingdom. His devotion to Queen Victoria and his homeland was told to me by his granddaughter, my great-aunt, to the point that he would proudly argue with anyone who would listen, that England would one day regain control of the American colonies.

I was able to obtain Peter Sanger’s death certificate many years ago, which includes his premature death at the age of 42 on September 29, 1887 on the second floor of 297 Stagg Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. The location was a mystery to me, as the Sanger family lived on 41 Stagg Street, and his parents Cornelius and Mary were living on 41 Leonard Street. There were no other records of 297 Stagg Street that I could locate, so any leads on his death location went cold.

In the “Secret Society Matters” section, which reports on the “Doings of Brooklyn Lodges and Councils,” of the Saturday, October 8, 1887 edition of the Brooklyn Times Union, an interesting paragraph buried in the second column piqued my interest.

The regular meeting of Progressive Lodge No. 339, I.O.O.F. (International Order of Odd Fellows) was conferring the third degree on five candidates on Thursday, September 29, when Brother Peter Sanger, suddenly became sick and passed away one hour later. The funeral already occurred on Sunday, October 2 by the time the article was published, with many of his brothers in attendance.

Based on his death certificate, I knew Peter Sanger passed away of a cerebral apoplexy, also known as a stroke, which can lead to a sudden death. There was no other Peter Sanger’s living in Brooklyn with the same age, based on an extensive search of census and directories.

Was the lodge meeting held on the second floor of 297 Stagg Street and was my 2nd great grandfather a dedicated Odd Fellow who passed away on the night of a meeting? I have concluded that my long-forgotten ancestor was indeed a dedicated Odd Fellow, devoted to his lodge meetings until he took his last breath.

Brooklyn Times Union, October 8, 1887

In many ways, it is comforting to learn that this man was surrounded by his concerned and caring brothers almost 133 years ago, and not dying alone. His last thoughts were probably of concern for his wife and seven children, including my great grandfather Charles. Peter Sanger died too young, but he left behind a legacy that includes several generations of hundreds of descendants. I would like to think that the two of us share our common DNA that has brought us together in similar fraternities over a century apart.

Postscript

When I continued to read about the other fraternal meetings held in the autumn of 1887, yet another piece of information caught my eye. Joseph Irwin, Past Commander of Huntington Council No. 1176, was appointed District Deputy Grand Commander over the councils in Suffolk, Queens and Richmond counties. Could this be the same Joseph Irwin, raised as a Master Mason in 1871 in Jephtha No. 494 and was Master of the lodge in 1884-1885? That story is for another day…

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From the East Summer 2020

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Due to the ongoing situation and the Grand Master’s edict, the Lodge has been holding “unofficial meetings” on ZOOM for any member who would like to participate. If you would like to be included in the Riverhead mailing add yourself to the Riverhead All members mailing list.

You can find that here -> Riverhead Lodge All members Mail List

Just add your email and each time the Master, Secretary or officer sends out and email of relevance to all members you will get a copy.

 

Stay Safe and Stay healthy.

Masonic Safety ID Training

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Brothers there is a Masonic Safety ID Training at Babylon Lodge #793 on Match 7th 2020

Please see the details on the Suffolk District BAND or here -> Suffolk District Website

 

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