Independence Masons

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.