QC’s 2018 Conference Success
Quatuor Coronati held a three-day conference – ‘Freemasons in the Transatlantic World’ – at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria, VA from 14 – 16 September. The event attracted a large audience of some 180 delegates from across the United States and Latin America, and included attendees from the UK, Europe, Australia and Singapore. Delegates had the opportunity to hear presentations from a slate of world-class academic and masonic speakers including Paul Monod, Mark Wallace, Jackie Ranston and Susan Mitchell Sommers, academics with a significant research interest in freemasonry. Attending members of QC Lodge were John Acaster, Ric Berman, James Campbell, Bob Cooper, Adam Kendall, Brent Morris, Andreas Önnefors and Mark Tabbert.
Friday’s conference programme covered four topics – Freemasonry in the Caribbean, Scottish-American Freemasonry, French Lodges, and Freemasonry in North America, and concluded with a demonstration Universal Lodge in the Memorial’s iconic North Lodge Room attended by the Grand Master of DC and his team.
Delegates had full access to the Memorial building over the weekend, with informal tours conducted by Mark Tabbert, Director of the Museum and Library.
Saturday’s papers covered topics including Religion and Freemasonry, Colonial Freemasonry, and The Freemasons of Jamaica, a beautifully illustrated paper from Jackie Ranston. The afternoon ended with delegates gathering for dinner at Joe Theismann’s, a restaurant on the edge of Alexandria’s Old Town and a favourite among local masons.
Sunday’s events, introduced by Brent Morris, included a plenary paper delivered by Oscar Alleyne – recently elected as JGW of the Grand Lodge of New York – that explored the role of men of colour in early freemasonry. The morning concluded with Ric Berman and Susan Mitchell Sommers revisiting the question ‘1717 or 1721’, which was followed by an animated discussion / Q&A. The Conference wrapped up in the afternoon with guided tours of DC. The feedback has been uniformly positive with numerous requests for a follow-up conference in the US in 2020. Watch this space!
