A Mason's Sign at the Rope

In the first days of November, 1814, on a hilltop above Waterford in Upper Canada, two millers stood under an oak with a rope over its limb — seized by McArthur’s raiders for twice putting out the fire set in Sovereen’s mill. The rope was already around William Schuyler’s neck when Morris Sovereen rushed to the American general, made a Masonic sign, and shouted “Spare our lives and burn all I have.” “Let them down, boys — I’ll spare their lives.”

Behind the rescue stands a warrant: Lodge No. 26, Townsend, issued at Niagara on 24 June 1812 — six days after the United States declared war — with John Collver its founding Junior Warden and the lodge meeting through the war in Sovereen’s upper room, the door tyled at the stairhead. The sign the little lodge taught in that room proved negotiable currency between enemies at rope’s length.

The episode follows the story’s honest pedigree — Robertson took it down in 1899 from Sovereen’s own circle, with old Schuyler’s habitual conclusion: “My God, if Morris Sovereen hadn’t been a Mason we would have stretched hemp” — and ends at the county registry, where the burned mill’s seat sold in 1816 for £1,005, memorial No. 892.

Text, sources, and notes at history.collver.biz.