Independence Masons: The Freemasons Who Signed the Declaration of Independence
Eleven men who signed the Declaration of Independence were documented or plausible Freemasons. This is their story - told honestly, evidence tier by evidence tier, without rounding up a family legend into a certainty or flattening a complicated man into a hero.
Independence Masons follows all eleven of these men from their earliest recorded years - a runaway printer's apprentice, an orphaned carpenter who taught himself law by firelight, a Quaker merchant who broke with his own church, a sea captain whose fortune came from the Atlantic slave trade - through the drafting and signing of the Declaration itself, and into what independence actually cost them afterward: prison cells, burned estates, ruined health, and in at least one case, a bill that came due years later in the form of a duel.
Along the way, this book corrects the myths that have hardened into fact over two centuries - including what actually happened (and didn't) at the signing, and why only two names went onto anything on July 4, 1776.
What's inside:
The real evidence behind each man's Masonic connection - rated honestly, from ironclad lodge records to family tradition that doesn't hold up under scrutiny
The actual signing of the Declaration, and the popular quotes and stories about it that never happened
What independence cost these men personally - prison, poverty, ruined health, and family estrangement
An unflinching look at slavery's place in several of these men's lives, and what a few of them later did about it
The stories history forgot to keep, next to the ones it chose to remember instead
This isn't a hagiography. It's the honest version - and the honest version, as it turns out, is a better story anyway.
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