The Aberdeen Tracing Board

Aberdeen Tracing Board

This unusual composite Tracing Board comes from the personal collection of one of Mill Valley Lodge's Past Masters. When it is not gracing the walls of his home study, he has lent it to Mill Valley Lodge for temporary display.

The Aberdeen Tracing Board appears to have been conceived by engraver W. Garey of Aberdeen, Scotland in December 1866. Among the symbols depicted on it are those of the First, Second and Third Degrees of Masonry, the Holy Royal Arch Degree, and the Orders of Knights Templar.

According to unfounded, romantic legend, Aberdeen was where Peter d'Aumont resuscitated the Order of Knights Templars in Scotland subsequent to 1312. Peter d'Aumont had been the Provincial Grand Master of Auvergne. Purportedly d'Aumont had fled with two Commanders and five Knights toward Scotland, disguised as operative Masons, landing first on the Scottish Island of Mull. Supposedly, d'Aumont's group of fugitives met with the Grand Commander George Harris and several other brethren. The combined group resolved to continue the Order of the Temple and in furtherance of that endeavor d'Aumont was elected Grand Master in a Chapter held on St. John's Day, 1313. These legends of very ancient Templars and Freemasons in Aberdeen have never been substantiated and have largely been discredited among academic investigators.

There are references to lodges at Aberdeen on the June 27, 1483, and a recorded mention of six who were engaged on work in the city. This reference to Masonic Lodges at Aberdeen significantly predates the famed Schaw Statutes of December 27, 1598: William Schaw had been appointed as great master of the Royal Palaces and overseer of all the masons of the realm by King James VI of Scotland, and instituted the Schaw Statutes to reform the craft. (See, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century 1590-1710, David Stevenson (Cambridge University Press, 1988).)

The Masonic Lodges at Aberdeen date to at least 1670. There is a record of one lodge of that time requiring an Apprentice to pay four royal dollars as well as a linen apron and a pair of good gloves for each of the brethren as the price of being Entered. (Miller, A.L., Notes on the Early History...of the Lodge of Aberdeen (1919), p. 61, quoted by Harry Carr, The Freemason at Work, 1976, p. 320.)

Aberdeen was also the birth place of James Anderson (c.1680 -1739), who, September 29, 1721, was ordered by the Grand Lodge of England to 'digest the old Gothic Constitution in a new better method.' The result of this commission was one of the most significant events in the history of Freemasonry: Publication, in 1723, of the Anderson's Constitutions which are the first `modern' rules for the governance of `Speculative' Freemasonry. While proof of James Anderson's initiation at the Lodge at Aberdeen is lacking, it is certain that his father, also named James, was a member of the Lodge at Aberdeen and was the author of the Lockit Buik (a `lockable' Mark Book) of that Lodge, dated 1670.

A number of Masonic Lodges call Aberdeen home: One has been housed in the Old Aberdeen Town House on High Street in Old Aberdeen since its construction in the late 18th century. The Lodge occupies the principal room of the building, which was possibly the original council chamber, that occupies most of the top floor of the building and is most notable for its coved ceiling.

Some eleven other Lodges, seven Royal Arch Chapters, and a number of other Orders in Freemasonry occupy the Masonic Temple at 85 Crown Street in Aberdeen, a building devoted entirely to Freemasonry. The building, which has three Lodge rooms, has richly ornamented interior spaces, including such features as the inlaid marble floor featuring the signs of the zodiac.