Between the Cornerstone and the Arctic
A 1915 speech by the historian of Advance Lodge No. 635 and a 1917 letter from explorer Donald B. MacMillan reveal an unexpected connection between Freemasonry, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, and the brig Advance.
When Brother Henry Martin delivered the historical address at the 1915 cornerstone ceremony for Advance Lodge No. 635’s new Temple in Queens, he looked backward to the Lodge’s founding and to the Arctic vessel that inspired its name. Two years later, that history prompted a reply from Donald B. MacMillan, the American explorer just returned from the brutal Crocker Land Expedition. Their exchange offers a compelling meeting point of Masonic memory, polar exploration, and the enduring symbolism of the brig Advance.
Adance Masnc Tempe
A Lodge History with a Larger Horizon
Brother Henry Martin’s 1915 address was designed to honor the past while dedicating the future. Delivered at the laying of the cornerstone for the Lodge’s new Temple, the speech traced the origins of Advance Lodge back to post–Civil War Astoria, where “a few earnest craftsmen” organized the Lodge and laid the foundations for a lasting Masonic presence in Queens.
Martin’s speech honored charter members, early officers, and distinguished brethren such as Robert McCoskry Graham, John Oloff, and John R. Clark. But one of its most memorable features was its explanation of the Lodge’s name. Advance Lodge, Martin said, had been named for the brig Advance, the vessel used by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane during the Grinnell Arctic expeditions.
That choice gave the Lodge a powerful symbolic inheritance. In Martin’s telling, the Advance stood for endurance, hardship, and perseverance; qualities the founders hoped would define the Lodge itself.
“It is necessary for us to look backward forty-eight years, to the village of Astoria…”
“There gathered together a few earnest craftsmen who, responding to the impulses of fraternity, and being duly prepared, applied for a dispensation.”
Brother Donald B. MacMillan
Who Was Donald B. MacMillan?
Donald Baxter MacMillan (1874–1970) was an American explorer, teacher, and ethnologist best known for his work in Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic. He first came to national attention as a member of Robert Peary’s 1908–1909 North Pole expedition and later became one of the most important American Arctic explorers of the twentieth century.
MacMillan’s work combined exploration, mapping, photography, scientific observation, and the study of Inuit life. Over time, he became closely associated with Arctic research, especially through his later voyages aboard the schooner Bowdoin.
In 1917, however, MacMillan was newly returned from the expedition that had tested him most severely: the Crocker Land Expedition.
The Crocker Land Expedition
Launched in 1913 under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, the American Geographical Society, and the University of Illinois, the Crocker Land Expedition set out to investigate reports of a landmass supposedly visible northwest of Greenland.
That land, Crocker Land, turned out not to exist. It was likely a mirage.
What had been planned as a relatively short scientific mission became a prolonged ordeal in the High Arctic. The expedition endured repeated winters in northwest Greenland, dangerous sled travel over sea ice, supply shortages, failed or delayed rescue efforts, and severe physical and psychological strain. Instead of a short expedition, it stretched into roughly four years in the Arctic and became known as one of the era’s most difficult polar ventures.
For MacMillan, Kane’s world was not distant legend. It was lived experience.
The Letter to Brother Henry Martin
On November 4, 1917, writing from Provincetown, Massachusetts, MacMillan replied to Henry Martin and acknowledged the delay:
“I have been so very busy since my return to this country that I have not had time to attend to it before.”
He then revealed a striking Masonic detail:
“A few nights ago I was made an Honorary Member of the Kane Lodge of New York City…”
MacMillan explained that he had presented Kane Lodge with an American flag entrusted to him in 1913, one he had carried “on my sledge wherever I went during my work in the Arctic.”
Then came the line that connected his experience directly to Advance Lodge:
“I am interested to know that there is a lodge named after Dr. Kane’s ship the ‘Advance’.”
For Martin, who had carefully explained the origin of the Lodge’s name in his cornerstone speech, this was no small acknowledgment. It was recognition from a man who had himself endured the Arctic and who understood the historical meaning of Kane’s expeditions.
A Polar Postscript to the Lodge’s Name
MacMillan’s letter added one more remarkable detail about the brig Advance, which Kane himself left out of his own books. He wrote that after Dr. Kane and his party departed for the south in 1855, Inuit visitors boarded the ship. Unfamiliar with the stove and seeking warmth after sled travel, they built a fire on the cabin floor, accidentally destroying the vessel.
It is a brief but vivid account. In Martin’s speech, the Advance appears as a symbol preserved in the Lodge’s seal and memory. In MacMillan’s letter, the same vessel reappears as a real ship with a dramatic end in the Arctic.
Together, the two accounts deepen the meaning of the Lodge’s chosen name.
The Official Seal of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge no.586
Why the Exchange Endures
Henry Martin later sent MacMillan a full stenographic copy of the 1915 speech, extending the conversation beyond a single exchange of letters. That detail makes the episode especially compelling. A Lodge historian in Queens and an Arctic explorer in Massachusetts, each a Mason, found common ground in the memory of Kane’s Advance.
Martin’s speech was reverent, commemorative, and hopeful. It looked to the founders of the Lodge as “good men and true” and reaffirmed the Lodge’s desire to remain “faithful in our duties.” MacMillan’s reply gave that history an unexpected second life. He confirmed that the Advance still carried meaning; not just in books or symbols, but in the lived memory of exploration.
What survives in this exchange is more than correspondence. It is a moment when local Masonic history opened onto a much larger world.