Mill Valley Lodge Celebrates
the Feast of St. John
at Bro. Samuel P. Taylor State Park

Our Picnic

The Brethren, their families and friends look forward each year to our decades old tradition of the Lodge's picnic in the Redwood Grove at Samuel P. Taylor State Park where it has been held except for two years when a reservation could not be secured. Everyone enjoys a day out in the beautiful, majestic redwoods for a campfire breakfast with their friends. Bros. Ed Walder , Al Fields, and Dick Mills fill the fresh morning air with the aroma of sausage, hash-browns, scrambled eggs, flap-jacks and coffee, while our "bartender" mixes up a bracing Bloody-Mary or Tequila Sunrise. After breakfast, everyone takes pleasure in relaxing with friends, playing a friendly game of cards, baccé ball, croquet, or horse-shoes, wading in the creek, or hiking along the park's verdant trails. This occasion of conviviality has its roots in the earliest times, long before Mill Valley Lodge began its traditional outdoor celebration.

St. John's Day in Freemasonry

The solstices of the sun in June and December, together with the equinoxes in March and September, from time immemorial have been guides for seed time and harvest. Ancient festivals attended these changes of the seasons, set by astronomers-priests who alone knew the secret; hence the festivals were religious as well as worldly. Calendars, as we know them, were unknown to the ancients. The sun, at four stages, foretold the seasons, and was the God of worship.

On a day close to June 24 Masons observe the festival of summer sun and on or about December 27 Masons observe the festival of the winter sun. The June festival commemorates John the Baptist and the December one - John the Evangelist. In Masonic usage, the festivals are idealistic and allegorical: Masonry has no saints. However, Masonic tradition holds that our ancient brethren dedicated their lodges to King Solomon because he was our first most excellent Grand Master, and that Masons of the present day dedicate theirs to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist because each, according to legend, was an eminent patron of Freemasonry.

As it relates to the summer feast, the Baptist's day is the older in Masonic observance. In Christian Theology he was the prophet of the coming of the Christ, and the Evangelist, or Divine, was the apostle of his revelation. The Baptist was the fiery preacher of repentance, baptism, and purification who was executed by Herod Antipas; the Evangelist was the accredited author of the mystical and allegorical Fourth Gospel, which presents the belief that future life depended upon loving God and man, that beauty, truth, goodness, and infinite personality and spirits exist as eternal attributes of the Divine Power, and that truth depends not on factual accuracy but on the strength of the ideas and experiences allegorically symbolized.

The first Grand Lodge organized in England in 1717, on the day of the Baptist. It reorganized at the reunion of 1813, on the day of the Evangelist. The day of St John the Baptist is truly a day of beginnings, as the day of the Evangelist is that of endings. It is observed alone with the later adopted Evangelist's day, for Masonic festival, throughout the World. A lodge which forgets either forfeits a precious link with the past and loses an opportunity for the renewal of allegiance to everything in Freemasonry symbolized by these Patron Saints.

In keeping with this tradition, Mill Valley Lodge No. 356 celebrates the Feast of St. John the Baptist in the beautiful Redwood Grove next to Papermill Creek in a park named for a famous Mason and California pioneer.

Samuel P. Taylor

"Buried in a lonely site on a brow of a hill above Paper Mill Creek, … lies one of the most notable [California Freemasons] in the Nineteenth Century, Bro. Samuel Penfield Taylor. Member #87 of Oriental Lodge No. 144, he came with the forty-niners to California in 1850 and died on January 22, 1886.

"Eventually a great financial and social success, he began working in the gold fields of the Sierra foothills and in the streets of San Francisco. In 1856, he served as a member of the famous San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, and for many years, he was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. A man who had the vision and initiative to put a plan into action, he supported his wife's efforts to end the importation of Chinese slave girls and implemented many business enterprises….

"An entrepreneur at heart, he saw there was money in cooking and selling meals. He went into a bacon-and-egg stand on the beach [in San Francisco] and made enough money from this enterprise to go into the lumber business. Taking some time off in 1853, he went to Hawkins' Bar in Tuolumne County and made $5,691.99 in gold, working the streams in the foothills. Using this profit, he expanded his lumber interests. While looking for trees for his lumberyard, Samuel Taylor rode into Western Marin County. As he explored the area, he came to a stop west of present-day Lagunitas. This spot, he decided would make an excellent location for a paper mill [Pioneer Paper Mill, as it was called, was the first such mill built in the western United States]. There was abundant fresh water and raw materials, so he purchased 200 acres of land from the local landowner and set up a paper mill. Soon, he made this site his home and, eventually, an industrial complex, a farm center, and a recreational paradise.

"In time, the mill area then became known as Taylorville. Residents, most Taylor employees, ran the mill and other enterprises, hauled goods on ox carts, and tended to the many dairy cows that Taylor imported from New Jersey. As the mill grew and steam power was introduced, cordwood was needed to keep the steam engines going 24 hours a day.

"When the North Pacific Railroad arrived at western Marin, Taylorville was an important stop. Taylor built the Azalea Hotel for visitors to stop and spend a few days away from city life. He allowed people to come and camp during the summer months, swim, fish, hunt, and enjoy themselves. Between 1855 and 1893, the Pioneer Paper Mill expanded and produced a vast line of products, including flat-bottomed bags, (a first in the industry) which an employee of the mill perfected, candy bags, hat bags, ballot and book paper, and manila wrapping. Samuel Taylor's exhibits at the state fair were perennial prize winners.

"As his paper mill grew, Samuel Taylor became involved in several environmental projects far ahead of his time. In order to produce quality paper, he collected rags and old paper, recycling them at his mill into new paper products. His employees collected rags and old paper from San Francisco and other cities. In order to help the salmon and steelhead around his millpond dam on Paper Mill Creek, he created the first fish ladder on the West Coast and introduced oyster farming to western Marin.

"As to Masonry, every Tuesday night Bro. Taylor attended Oriental Lodge No. 144 and took part in the business of Masonry. From the letters and speeches that have survived, it is evident his Brethren held Bro. Taylor in high regard. Lodge records show that four of his sons also became Master Masons. On January 22, 1886, at the age of 58, Brother Samuel P. Taylor died in his home in San Francisco. The members of Oriental Lodge held a Masonic funeral for him within their Lodge Room. His body was then taken across the bay by ferry and then by rail to Taylorville where, at the brow of a hill across from his paper mill, he, a fine example of a just and upright man, was buried in the Taylor family plot."