Rob Morris Lodge No. 92 was chartered in Denver in 1892 by several members of Denver Lodge No. 5 who wanted to honor one of the most productive Masons in American history. Their first Worshipful Master, John Fulton, had personally known the man. Morris had died four years earlier, in 1888, and the lodge was one of many tributes that followed. It was an appropriate choice. Rob Morris spent his Masonic life writing about the Craft, organizing on its behalf, founding what became the largest appendant Masonic body in the world, and eventually receiving the title of Poet Laureate of Freemasonry, a distinction no one has held since.
A Teacher’s Early Years (1818–1845)
Robert Williams Peckham was born on August 31, 1818, near Boston, Massachusetts. His parents died when he was young and he was placed with a foster family named Morris, whose name he took. He eventually shortened his first name to Rob to distinguish himself from another writer named Robert Morris.
He spent the better part of his twenties teaching school, eventually making his way south to Oxford, Mississippi, where he took a position at Mount Sylvan Academy, a secondary school founded by local Freemasons. In Oxford he met Charlotte Mendenhall, whom he married in 1841. The connection between the school, its founders, and the fraternity would prove lasting.
Entering the Craft (1846)
Morris was initiated into Freemasonry on March 5, 1846, in Oxford Lodge in Mississippi. He was twenty-seven years old. By every account, including his own, the experience was a turning point. Within months he was writing about Masonry, corresponding with Masons across the country, and thinking about what the fraternity could do that it was not yet doing.
The question that occupied him most was one the institution had not addressed: the wives, daughters, and mothers of Masons had no formal connection to the fraternity their families had joined. Morris believed that was a problem worth solving.
The Rosary of the Eastern Star (1849–1866)
While teaching at Eureka Masonic College in Pickens, Mississippi, in 1849 and 1850, Morris wrote the first ritual for what would become the Order of the Eastern Star. He titled it The Rosary of the Eastern Star. The ritual drew on five heroines from Scripture, each representing a distinct moral principle. It was designed to be communicated openly to Master Masons and their female relatives, and it gave women a meaningful and structured connection to the fraternity for the first time.
He organized a Supreme Constellation in 1855 to begin chartering chapters. By 1866, when he was preparing to travel abroad and handed organizational authority to Robert Macoy of New York, the Order had taken on a life of its own. Macoy later formalized and published the ritual. The General Grand Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, was established in 1876 and has continued to grow ever since. Today it is one of the largest fraternal organizations in the world, with millions of members. Its origin is Rob Morris and a Mississippi schoolroom.
Grand Master and the Conservator Movement (1858–1865)
Morris was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky in 1858, serving through 1859. During and after his term, he became convinced that the ritual of Freemasonry had drifted into inconsistency across jurisdictions, with lodges working significantly different versions of the same degrees. He launched what he called the Conservator Movement, a campaign to standardize Masonic ritual by corresponding with lodges across the country and promoting a uniform working.
The effort drew significant resistance. Many grand lodges viewed it as an overreach into their jurisdictional authority. The Grand Lodge of Kentucky eventually censured him for it. The Conservator Movement collapsed without achieving its goal, though the underlying question of ritual consistency in American Freemasonry has never been fully resolved. It was an ambitious and characteristically energetic project from a man who rarely sat still.
The Holy Land and a Jerusalem Lodge (1866–1872)
After handing over the Eastern Star to Macoy, Morris traveled extensively in the Middle East. He spent time in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, studying the geography of the Holy Land as it related to Masonic symbolism and history. In Jerusalem, around 1868, he organized the first regular Masonic lodge in the city, Royal Solomon Mother Lodge No. 1, and served as its first Master.
He wrote about the journey at length in Freemasonry in the Holy Land, published in 1872. The book documented his travels and reflected on the Masonic significance of the sites he visited. It found a wide readership among American Masons and added to a body of work that was already substantial.
Poet Laureate of Freemasonry (1884–1888)
By the 1880s, Morris had written more than 400 poems, the large majority of them about Masonry and the Eastern Star. His best-known Masonic poem, The Level and the Square, was written in 1854 and remains in circulation today. His verse was read aloud at lodge meetings, printed in Masonic periodicals, and recited at Masonic funerals across the country for decades.
On December 17, 1884, the Grand Lodge of New York named him Poet Laureate of Freemasonry. The title had not been conferred since Robert Burns received it in 1767 at Canongate Kilwinning Lodge No. 2 in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was granted in response to petitions submitted by more than half a million Masons around the world. Morris was the second person ever to hold it. No one has held it since.
His health began to fail in 1887. He became paralyzed in June of 1888 and died on July 31 of that year in La Grange, Kentucky, at the age of sixty-nine. He was buried there alongside his wife Charlotte. His home in La Grange is maintained as a shrine by the Grand Chapter of Kentucky, Order of the Eastern Star.
Why His Name Was Chosen
When members of Denver Lodge No. 5 petitioned the Grand Lodge of Colorado for a charter in 1892, they named their new lodge after Rob Morris. Their Worshipful Master, John Fulton, had met him personally and carried a great admiration for the man and his work.
That personal connection is worth noting. Rob Morris Lodge No. 92 was not named after a distant historical figure. It was named by men who had known him, heard him speak, and read his verse. The lodge carried that particular bond until its merger with Schiller Lodge No. 41 in 2016 formed Pythagoras Lodge, and from there into the merger that created Marquis de Lafayette Lodge No. 41 in 2019.
More than 130 years after his death, Rob Morris remains the last man ever named Poet Laureate of Freemasonry. His work is still read. His order still meets. His name is still part of this lodge’s history.
Sources: Encyclopedia Masonica (universalfreemasonry.org); Grand Chapter of New Brunswick, Order of the Eastern Star (oesnb.ca); Order of the Eastern Star (easternstar.org); Masonry Today (masonrytoday.com); lodge records of Rob Morris Lodge No. 92 and Albert Pike Lodge No. 117.