Did you know who made our ballot box.. and past master's frames?

[Doug Ellis]

Brothers - for those of you not at lodge last night, I wanted to share what was certainly a discovery for me. 

At Sunday evening's officer rehearsal, we were admiring Corinthian's ballot box.  It's beautifully built and doesn't look like any other ballot boxes we've ever seen.  We wondered where it came from, so we looked in and on it for any markings.  Upon removing the drawer we found this inside:

It's a little hard to read, so I went back to our original by-laws and determined that the maker is Brother William Chaplin, who was raised in March of 1882 (how awesome is it that we have all our records!).  

I did some further research on Brother Chaplin and learned that he was indeed a Mason we can all be proud of:

• He was born in Acton April 18th, 1840. 
• He served in the Civil War in the Massachusetts 6th Regiment
• He worked at the prison for 25 years (lodge lore always said our past master's frames were carved by a brother who worked at the prison)
• He maintained all the Civil War graves in Acton's Mt Hope Cemetery until he was at least 83.
• In 1923 at age 83, he donated $1,500 for the perpetual care of the civil war graves and a monument to their memory.  This would be about $24,000 in today's dollars.  This came completely from him saving his pension dollars.  The monument is shown below.  There was a full page Boston Globe article on the donation which was intended to be anonymous.  (attached)
• He died in 1927 at age 87.

What a wonderful brother he is and blessed we are to be reacquainted with him!  

I hope you enjoyed learning this as much as I have discovering it! 

Doug