The Anit-Masonic movement started in the year the USA was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the USA independents.

Batavia NY is located halfway between Palmyra NY and Buffalo NY. and is the birthplace for the anti-masonic movement.

William Morgan (1774–1826?) was a resident of Batavia, New York, whose disappearance and presumed murder in 1826 ignited a powerful movement against the Freemasons, a secret fraternal society that had becomes influential in the United States. After Morgan announced his intention to publish a book exposing Freemasonry's "secrets", he was arrested, kidnapped by Masons, and murdered according to Freemason Henry Valance deathbed confession to the Morgan murder.

The events sparked a public outcry and inspired Thurlow Weed, a New York politician, to muster discontent and form the new Anti-Masonic Party, which was also opposed to President Andrew Jackson. It ran a presidential candidate in 1828, but by 1835, was nearly defunct.

In October 1819, when he was in his mid 40s, Morgan married 16-year old Lucinda Pendleton in Richmond, Virginia. They had two children: Lucinda Wesley Morgan and Thomas Jefferson Morgan. If he disliked freemasonry so much, why would he name his son after Thomas Jefferson?

Morgan attempted to join the Masonic lodge in Batavia Masons now claim he was denied admission is the common claim of masons. However, he had a very extensive knowledge of the degrees and was capable of writing the book outlining the initiate ceremonies for multiple degrees with great accuracy and detail. Masons also claim he was angered by the rejection, Morgan said he was going to publish a book entitled Illustrations of Masonry. The book was in fact published (existing still today online PDF format) and Morgan was captured as a result and held at Fort Niagara, his body washed up on shore some 40 miles below Niagara (Oak Orchard Harbor, N.Y). The body positively identified by his wife and doctor and confirmed via Morgan's dental records. Morgan, in his book, critical of the Freemasons and describing their secret degree work in great detail.

He said that a local newspaper publisher, David Cade Miller, had given him a sizable advance for the work. Miller is said to have received the entered apprentice degree (the first degree of Freemasonry), but had been stopped from advancement by the objection of one or more of the Batavia lodge members.[4] This may have inspired him to support Morgan's work, (another claim of masons today as a form of damage control). Morgan had entered into a $500,000 penal bond with three men: Miller, John Davids (Morgan's landlord) and Russel Dyer. Henry L. Valance admitted on his deathbed that Morgan was kidnapped 9/11/1826 by Masons for writing: Illustrations of Masonry, He was taken North, and Later murdered by Freemason Henry L. Valance and a council of 8 masons who determined Morgan would be drowned in the Niagara River just as the masonic blood oath states for those who reveal masonic secrets. The Entered Apprentice' penalty for disclosing his secret grip is to have "the throat cut across from ear to ear, the tongue torn out by the roots, and the body buried up to the neck below the high tide line." As quoted in Captain Morgan's book Illustrations of Freemasonry.

On September 11 1826, Morgan was arrested; according to the law, he could be held in debtor's prison until the debt was paid. Learning of this, Miller went to the jail to pay the debt and finally secured Morgan's release.

They also kidnapped Mr. Miller, the publisher; but the citizens of Batavia, finding it out, pursued the kidnappers, and finally rescued him.

On October 7, 1827 came the discovery of a drowned man's body (Captain William Morgan), on the beach at Oak Orchard Harbor, N.Y., about forty miles from Niagara. The body was positively identified as William Morgan by both Morgan's wife, and doctor, and verified via dental records. A lone woman made an identification as her husband to the Medical Examiner who was a mason and that identification stood and remains in the record today.

On January 13, 1827, an anti-Masonic Convention was held at Seneca, N.Y., which was speedily followed by others in Western New York. Churches participated in the general feeling against the fraternity by disbarring Masons from their pulpits, and in general condemning the "irreligious" tendency of the institution. A convention of Baptist churches held September 12, 1827, at Milton, N.Y., adopted a platform giving the following fifteen reasons for denouncing and opposing Freemasonry

In 1830 Morgan's widow Lucinda Pendleton Morgan married George W. Harris of Batavia, a silversmith who was 20 years older. After they moved to the Midwest, they became Mormons. By 1837, some historians believe that Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris had become one of the plural wives of Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.[12] She continued to live with her older husband, George Harris. After Smith was murdered in 1844, she was "sealed" to him for eternity in a rite of the church.

In April of 1831, Joseph Smith and the newly formed Latter-day Saints were force to leave Palmyra, NY. So, Morgan's widow Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris and her new husband George W. Harris packed their belongings on a canal boat and started across the Erie Canal to Ohio.

Members of Freemasonry criticized the Mormons for their alleged adoption of Masonic rituals and regalia. In 1841 the Mormons announced their official baptism of William Morgan after his death as one of the first under their new rite to take people into eternal the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

By 1850 the Harrises had separated. When George Harris died in 1860, he had been excommunicated from the Mormons after ceasing to practice with them. That year Lucinda Morgan Harris was reported to have joined the Catholic Sisters of Charity in Memphis, Tennessee, where she worked at the Leah Asylum. She had been widowed three times.

In June 1881 in Pembroke, New York, a grave was discovered in a quarry two miles south of the Indian reservation. In it was a metal box containing a crumpled paper; its few legible words were interpreted to suggest that the remains might have been Morgan's.

The Prophet Joseph Smith first taught about the ordinance of baptism for the dead during a funeral sermon in August 1840. As part of that sermon, he read much of 1 Corinthians 15, including verse 29, and announced to those in attendance that the Lord would permit Church members to be baptized in behalf of their friends and relatives who had departed this life. He said, “the plan of salvation was calculated to save all who were willing to obey the requirements of the law of God”

It is believed that William Morgan, which was Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris Smith’s first husband was one of the first persons to have been baptized by proxy after death.

Some well-Known Evil Doers who also opposed Freemasonry include:

Hungary's B�la Kun who, in 1919, proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat in Hungary. One of his first decrees ordered the dissolution of the Masonic lodges.

Spain's General Primo deRivera, their first dictator of this generation, ordered the abolition of Freemasonry in his country.

Benito Mussolini was more methodical than some of the others and in 1924 decreed that every member of his Fascist Party who was a Mason must abandon one or the other organization. In 1925, he dissolved Freemasonry.

Hermann Goering who in his capacity as Prime Minister of Prussia, when the Nazis took over power in 1933 wrote that "... in National Socialist Germany, there is no place for Freemasonry."

Dr. Joseph Goebbels as Reichsminister for propaganda and national enlightenment under Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime, he inaugurated in 1937 an "Anti-Masonic Exposition" to display the booty seized by the Gestapo.

Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, another Nazi apostle who attempted to demonstrate the racial superiority of the Germans over all other peoples, wrote openly and virulently against Freemasonry, indicting Freemasonry for the idea of equality! He was convicted of war crimes by the trial at N�rnberg and executed in 1946.

General Francisco Franco (pictured at right) dictator of Spain from 1939 until 1975 in 1940 sentenced all Freemasons in his country automatically to ten years in prison. By the 1950s, even elements of the Catholic Church were opposing his totalitarian rule.

Francisco Xavier Mier E. Campello, Bishop of Almeria and Inquisitor-General of Spain who in 1815 suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the Masonic lodges as "societies which lead to sedition, to independence, and to all errors and crimes."  He then instituted a series of persecutions which caused many of the most distinguished persons of Spain to be arrested and imprisoned in the dungeons of the Inquisition on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry".(1)