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154 Masonic Families Founded A City Of 170,000 In Brazil
This article was formerly on line at www.srmason-sj.org/council/journal/jun01/klein.html
Walter J. Klein, 32°
5009 Gamton Court
Charlotte, NC 28226-7920
The entrance to Americana, a Brazilian city founded in 1865
by Confederate emigrants, most of them Freemasons, is marked
by a large Square and Compasses monument with descriptive plaque.
Dom Pedro II, last Emperor of Brazil
William Hutchinson Norris, Colonel in the Mexican War, Alabama State Senator, and Grand Master
Unknown Union officer who, because of a widow’s use of a Masonic sign, saved the gold buried by Colonel William Norris
Charles Nathan, British merchant in Rio
Tavares Bastos, adviser to the Emperor of Brazil
Joachim Maria Saldaña Mariño, Grand Master of the Emperor Dom Pedro’s branch of Freemasonry
Dr. Russell McCord, whose certificates prove the Masonic-Brazilian partnership
And these non-Masons:
Patrick Fields, North Carolinian teacher, who recently rediscovered a Brazilian city of 170,000 founded in 1865 by Confederate Masons
William Lowndes Yancey, Senator from Alabama, Confederate firebrand, and “Voice of the Secession”
Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, who put it in Scarlet O’Hara’s head to flee to Latin America
General Robert E. Lee, who urged Confederates not to move to Brazil
....Surviving Confederate soldiers returned home to families in misery, their livestock consumed, money worthless, railroads and factories destroyed, boats swept from their waters, clothes and food gone. When some of these who were Masons heard of a “New South” with undeveloped land for 22 cents an acre, its emperor a Brother Master Mason, and better cotton than North America’s, they packed up and moved to Brazil. We know at least 154 families began the migration in 1865 from Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina to Brazil, and between 2,000 and 4,000 more moved to Brazil during the next 10 years.
....One was Colonel William H. Norris who had a small fortune in gold buried in his Perry County, Alabama, yard. A Union officer stopped his men from digging it up after Norris’s wife shook the officer’s hand Masonically. With that gold, Colonel Norris bought 500 acres and established an infant community. That spot in Brazil was to become the largest Confederate settlement in South America. It is near Santa Barbara, southeast of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
....Norris and his Brethren founded George Washington Lodge in their little village that was soon named Americana by their neighbors. What began this exodus as a Masonic event in history? Actually, a Mason named Robert W. Lewis of Virginia wrote Robert E. Lee asking his opinion about Confederates leaving the country. Lee answered, “The South requires the presence of her sons…to sustain and restore her.” Then he wrote, “In answer to your question as to what portion I hold in the order of Masons, I have to reply that I am not a Mason and have never belonged to the society.”
....Lewis and other Masons knew Freemasonry was alive and well in Brazil, living hand-in-glove with its Protestant community, especially Presbyterians. Encouragement came from Brother Charles Nathan, a member of the Brazilian immigration society who helped arrange passage for Southerners via New Orleans. Nathan was a British merchant in Rio de Janeiro who had lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. He apparently worked with Reverend Ballard S. Bunn who led migrants to another colony near Americana.
Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil, a Freemason whose
father was a
Grand Master, is pictured here as a young man.
....The most encouragement, though, came
from Brother Taveres Bastos, founder of the immigration society and confidant
of the Emperor of Brazil whose father, Dom Pedro I, was Grand Master. His
close friend was Reverend James Cooley Fletcher, Presbyterian minister
and First Secretary of the U. S. Legation in Brazil. Together, they had
the ears of intellectuals, educators, statesmen, liberals, and the Emperor
himself. They actively promoted close United States–Brazil relations, including
migration and agricultural/industrial development. When Confederate Masons
communicated their distress, these leaders were ready to help.
....Joachim Maria Saldaña Mariño
was a friend of Taveres Bastos. He was a co-editor of a liberal Rio newspaper.
Mariño was Grand Master of the Grande Oriente do Brasil ao Vale
dos Beneditinos, the Emperor’s branch of Freemasonry. Happily, he was also
President of Sao Paulo, the province where Americana was born and flourished.
....Dr. Russell McCord was a migrant from
Alabama who settled in the town of Macaé. Saldaña Mariño
signed McCord’s Masonic certificates for the years 1872, 1874, 1875, and
1879. These documents comprise the best records of the U.S. Confederate
Masonic–Brazilian partnership. Scottish Rite Masons will be particularly
attracted to Saldaña Mariño because of his activity in the
mid-1860s in the cause of separation of church and state.
A Confederate grave in the Brazilian city of Americana
bears a prominent Square and Compasses.
....Dr. McCord’s Masonic documents are
historic in another way. A second signer was the eminent José Maria
da Silva Paraños, best known as the Visconde do Rio Branco. He was
Grand Master of the Grande Oriente do Brasil, and he was the author of
the first emancipation legislation that led, 17 years later, to abolition
of slavery in his nation.
What was life like for former Southerners in Portuguese-speaking Brazil?
In fact, half the Confederate North Americans quit and went home within
ten years. But the rest stuck it out nobly and left a heritage that lives
today, albeit as a small minority among the 170,000 citizens of Americana.
....Patrick Fields of Charlotte, North
Carolina, has ancestors who fought in both the Revolution and Confederacy.
His father and grandfather were Freemasons. He taught several weeks in
the Sao Paulo region last summer and made it his business to investigate
Americana. There he found a burgeoning metropolis populated mostly by people
of Italian heritage spilling over from South America’s largest city, Sao
Paulo. He noted, “The people in Americana are like those all over Brazil:
all colors, all religions, all occupations, all heritages.”
The Confederate Museum in the city of Americana, Brazil,
has a panel discussing Freemasonry as it played a
part in founding that city in 1865.
....Masonic Lodges abound in Brazil. Masonic,
like Confederate, activity surfaces in Americana at their Confederate museum,
cemetery, and frequent festivals which Fields videotaped extensively. He
said, “Masons and other Confederates were never locked into Americana or
other settlements. They spread all over Brazil. So you can’t say today’s
people of Americana are descended from Confederate Masons.”
....What did these remarkable Masons bring
to Brazil? Well, watermelons for one thing. Grown from their American seed,
watermelons became so popular that up to 100 railroad carloads a day were
shipped from Americana by the late 1800s. The Confederate Masonic families
had no trouble raising meat, vegetables, and fruit to feed their families.
Their dishes included corn bread, spoon bread, egg bread, biscuits,
and burgoo stew, a savory mixture of several kinds of meat and vegetables
usually served at political rallies and community occasions. Black-eyed
peas, potatoes, and Southern-fried chicken live on in Brazil. Brazilian
desserts include such Southern staples as vinegar pie, ambrosia, custard,
fruit pies, chess pie, and ginger cake.
....The immigrants introduced the plow
and improved farming methods that increased cotton, coffee, and sugarcane
crop yields nationwide. Brazil hired North Americans as advisers and plantation
administrators. These Confederados, as they were called, got much in return.
The Halls, Thatchers, Gastons, and other Confederados netted a 100% return
on their first two-year cotton planting. They were able to build their
Old South mansions again, though in Brazil. And they regained pride in
their heritage. They felt they were Americans deep inside. Their undying
respect for Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee simply added to their fraternal
bonds to George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson,
and the spirit of freedom of the United States of America.
....The validity of this information can
be proved by reading two books: The Confederados published by the University
of Alabama Press, and The Lost Colony of the Confederacy published by the
University Press of Mississippi. Or, better still, take the next plane
to Sao Paulo and visit Americana!
Walter
J. Klein
is a member of Excelsior Lodge No. 261 in Charlotte, N.C., and the Scottish Rite Bodies of Charlotte. He was producing and donating motion pictures for the Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas years before he petitioned for the Degrees. Presently creating a mini-museum at the Charlotte Scottish Rite Temple displaying “Treasures of Charlotte Masonry,” he discovered the Hezekiah Alexander House was built as a Masonic meeting hall and believes it to be the oldest Masonic structure in America. He conceived and built The American Freedom Bell and, with the Grand Lodge of North Carolina, arranged for its cornerstone to be laid by both white and black Grand Masters before a crowd led by Governor Jim Martin. A member of the Scottish Rite Research Society, he received in 2000 the highest Masonic award in North Carolina, the Joseph Montford Medal, for his services to Freemasonry and America.
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