On July 29, 1837 the members of Nantucket’s African Baptist Society published in the
Nantucket Inquirer
a card of thanks to the island’s Union Lodge of Freemasons for the donation of a chandelier to the African Meeting House on Nantucket. At the same time, the donation was entered into the records of the lodge.
Union Lodge had already been in existence for sixty-six years when they made this gift. To begin with, they had met in rented quarters, but in 1802 the lodge brothers bought a piece of land on Main Street, built a hall for themselves, and furnished it with, among other things, graceful chandeliers.
Nantucket’s Quakers had been against Freemasonry from the beginning, yet despite their opposition, the lodge flourished. Nonetheless, in the 1830s membership had dwindled, and lodge brothers realized that they could not retain their hall. Foreseeing the loss, they donated one of their chandeliers to the African Meeting House.
Union Lodge members had been supportive of education for the residents of Nantucket’s New Guinea neighborhood before the African Meeting House was built and consecrated in January 1825 as a place of worship and as a schoolhouse. Prior to the opening of the African School, Wilson Rawson, deacon of the First Congregational Church and also a lodge brother, had conducted a Sabbath School for New Guinea’s youths.
The chandelier was installed in the African Meeting House and graced it for many years. Something apparently happened to it, however, because in January 1880, The Rev. James Crawford, pastor of the church (described as his “little church on the corner”) was presented with “a handsome chandelier” by a group of men who were Union Lodge members. On this occasion there were speeches, music, and recitations by students. It was a grand event.
Over the next thirty years, membership in what had been renamed the Pleasant Street Baptist Church gradually fell. On September 7, 1911, the fifteen surviving members sold their building, and a few months later, in 1912, custodian Edgar Wilkes turned the key in the lock for the last time. Some of the church furnishings were said to have been placed in storage at the home of Ruth Grant. Perhaps the chandelier was among them, but after Ruth Grant’s passing in 1985, any hope of recovery was lost.
Between its closure as a church in 1912 and the beginning of the 1990s, the African Meeting House was variously used for storage, as a garage, and as a boat-building shop. Finally it simply fell into ruin until it was rescued at the last minute. In 1999 the restored building was opened to the public. Missing was a chandelier, but in June 2014 Union Lodge presented the building with a third, historically accurate, chandelier dedicated to the role of the Rev. William Oliver in the Civil Rights movement and his service as site manager for the African Meeting House.
For the third time, the mutual friendship between Union Lodge and the African Meeting House had been expressed through a gift of light.