More From Copp's Hill: A Smuggling Patriot and A Masonic Grand Master

I wanted to follow up on my recent post about Copp's Hill Burying Ground in Boston. Although the really famous patriots are buried in the Granary Burial Ground, there are also some interesting Revolutionary War era people buried at Copp's Hill. 

One of them is Captain Daniel Malcolm (1725 - 1769). Malcolm's grave is marked with a large and impressive stone engraved with a traditional death's head, but as you can see from the photos there are unusual round indentations in the stone. They could be natural wear and tear, but according to tradition these holes were made by musket balls. In other words, someone shot at Malcolm's gravestone. 

Daniel Malcolm was a patriot and took great joy in smuggling wine and tea into Boston without paying taxes to the British. He once allegedly brought sixty casks of wine into Boston without the British finding out - or collecting taxes on the black market cargo. As the inscription on his grave reads,

A true son of Liberty
A friend of the Publick
An enemy to oppression
And one of the foremost
In opposing the Revenue Acts on America 

The British had great hatred for Captain Malcolm. They knew he was a smuggler but were never able to catch him in the act. He always managed to outsmart them. He knew the British hated him, so he left instructions in his will that he should be be buried in a stone grave ten feet deep. He didn't want the British soldiers to mutilate his body. 

Frustrated that he had escaped them even in death, the British soldiers took out their anger on Malcom's gravestone, firing their rifles at it repeatedly. This is supposedly what caused those round marks - soldiers using Malcolm's gravestone for target practice. Is this story true? I don't know. It sounds plausible to me, but I'm not an 18th century ballistics expert.

Near Daniel Macolm's grave is this impressive monument, which marks the resting spot of Prince Hall (1735? - 1807), one of 18th century Boston's most prominent African-American citizens. Boston had a sizable black population in the 1700s, and of the 10, 000 people buried at Copp’s Hill around 1,000 were of African descent. 

The details of Hall's early life are vague, but it appears that he began his life as a slave and became a free man by the 1770. He was literate and owned his own business (a leather shop). And he wanted to become a Freemason. 

In the 18th century the Freemasons were a really important organization for men, particularly businessmen like Hall. Masonic Lodges were places where they could network, make business connections, and learn important news. Many of the local patriots, like Paul Revere and John Hancock, were Masons. Hall knew he was missing out on a significant opportunity so he applied to join the Boston lodge. They turned him down because he was black. 

Undeterred, Hall went to Boston's other Masonic lodge - the one run by the British and their sympathizers. They accepted him as a member and he eventually became a Masonic Grand Master. Some other local black men followed his lead, and together they eventually founded the Masonic African Lodge, which became the founding lodge of all black freemasonry existing today.

Why were the British willing to initiate black members into the Masons when the Americans weren't? It's possible they were less racist than the locals, but the British also knew they couldn't afford to turn away any possible supporters in a hostile town. Once the Revolutionary Way erupted the British actively urged blacks in America to join the British army, promising them they would get their freedom and equality when the war ended. 

Prince Hall didn't sign up. Instead, he urged blacks to fight against the British, arguing that if black people were involved in the founding of the new nation they would get their freedom. It is believed that Prince Hall served in the Continental Army fighting the British during the Revolution, but it is hard to know for sure. There were six me named Prince Hall enlisted from Massachusetts. Historians tend to think one of them was the Prince Hall of Copp's Hill.

After the war in 1783 ended Hall continued to be involved in community organizing, Masonry, and the abolition movement. He died in 1807, and the African Lodges were renamed Prince Hall Lodges in his honor. In 1784, Massachusetts became the first state to abolish slavery. 

Controversy Over UFO Memorial in Massachusetts Town

I stumbled upon the following Associated Press item the other day. It's dated April 14, 2018:

SHEFFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A memorial in a remote corner of Massachusetts that marks a 1969 UFO sighting has been ordered moved, but one man who experienced a close encounter is objecting. 

The 5,000-pound (2,300-kilogram) memorial in Sheffield was installed in 2015, but was moved about 30 feet (9 meters) a few weeks later when it was discovered it was on town land. 

Now, Town Administrator Rhonda LaBombard tells The Berkshire Eagle it has to be moved again because it's on a town right-of-way easement. 

That's not sitting well with Thom Reed. He was 9 when he, his mother, grandmother and brother saw what he described as a "self-contained glow" that flooded their car with an amber light. About 40 people in several surrounding towns reported the strange light.
Reed is threatening legal action.

More information on the controversy can be found on Newser:

"This isn't fair to the community," says Reed. "It's not right having nothing there." Reed is also perplexed because he and town officials joined forces to give the memorial its current position. "She chose the spot herself," he says about LaBombard. Now Reed is threatening legal action. "This has come up more than once," he says. "We're not done with the monument." He was 9 when he, his mother, grandmother, and brother saw what he described as a "self-contained glow" that flooded their car with an amber light. About 40 people in several surrounding towns reported the strange light.

Thom Reed's encounter encounter with a UFO is one of the better-documented cases in recent history. I suppose I should say "encounters" plural, and not just singular. Reed had his first encounter in 1966 when he was just six years old. Reed awoke in the middle of the night to see small glowing orbs floating through the bedroom he shared with his younger brother Matthew in an old Sheffield farm house.

Photo of Sheffield UFO monument from Mass Live. 

Those orbs disappeared after a while, but several days later something even stranger occurred: small humanoid beings appeared in the boys' room. The small humanoids brought Tom and Matthew outside into the woods and led them into a metal craft. Inside the boys were shown images on a screen, including space ships and a willow tree. 

The humanoid visitations continued after this, and eventually they got so bad the family moved to nearby Great Barrington in an effort to end them. A large willow tree stood in front of their new home, indicating that the family wouldn't easily avoid the visitors who regularly invaded their home.

The Sheffield monument commemorates a very specific encounter the Reed family had with a UFO in 1969. Reed, his brother, mother and grandmother all saw a UFO while driving near Sheffield's covered bridge. All four members of the family were taken from the car and examined by aliens in a "warehouse like facility" before being returned to the car. Many other local residents called a local radio station to report strange lights in thy sky that night, lending some additional credence to Reed's tale. (I should note that the monument was paid for by private citizens, including Reed himself.)

A drawing by Thomas Reed of what he was shown on the screen.

Reed now lives in Kentucky and most recently ran a modeling agency in Miami, but he seems keen on proving to his hometown that his UFO experience was true. In 2015 the Great Barrington Historical Society voted to include information about Reed's extraterrestrial encounters in the town museum. Historical Society director Debbie Oppermann told The Boston Globe:

“I know we’re going to get a lot of backlash. We’re going to get hammered,” she said. “But we have given it an awful lot of thought, and, based on the evidence we’ve been given, we believe this is a significant and true event.” 

The historical society believes it is the first time a “mainstream” historical society or museum in the United States has declared a UFO encounter to be historical fact. But the decision was far from unanimous; of the nine members of the historical society’s board, three were “strongly opposed” to the decision, Oppermann said, but “it passed with consensus.”

It's interesting that the society claimed it was "a significant and true event." I don't doubt that these UFO encounters were significant for the Reed family and the people of Sheffield and Great Barrington. But were these events true in a verifiable, historical way? No hard physical evidence was found that an alien craft had visited Western Massachusetts. We just have the testimony of the Reeds and of their neighbors who saw some lights in the sky. 

Thom Reed's encounter with the strange humanoids reminds me of a visionary or religious experience. It also reminds me of classic haunted house stories, where the family relocates to escaped supernatural hauntings - only to have them follow. Or maybe his story is similar to European stories about fairies, where small beings invade the home to cause mischief. Or even, since this is New England, classic witchcraft stories of hags and demons tormenting sleeping victims. 

I think those types of stories are all significant, but are they true enough to merit a large stone monument? Is Thom Reed's story true enough to merit one? I suppose ultimately the people of Sheffield will have to decide.