William Morgan And The Freemasons

In 1826, Batavia, New York, stonecutter William Morgan announced that he was about to publish a book revealing the secret rituals of the Freemasons. Soon afterward, local Masons had him arrested on flimsy charges, removed from jail by a group of men, and taken toward Fort Niagara, where he disappeared.

He was widely believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by Freemasons to stop the book, and his body was never definitively found. Morgan’s disappearance triggered a wave of anti-Masonic outrage and helped spark the short-lived Anti-Masonic Party in American politics.

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