Thomas Smith Webb

Background

Thomas Smith Webb was born in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Samuel and Margaret (Smith) Webb, who had emigrated to America from England shortly before Thomas' birth.

Education

In his youth he was apprenticed to a printer in Boston.

Career

He removed to Keene, N. H. , where he worked for a number of years at his trade and first became interested in Freemasonry. The first three degrees of ancient craft Masonry were conferred on him in Keene by the Rising Sun Lodge. In 1793 he moved to Albany, N. Y. , where he established a paper-staining factory. In 1797, not yet twenty-six years of age, he published a work which was to establish him as a leading Masonic ritualist, The Freemason's Monitor, or Illustrations of Masonry. The book had wide circulation, and its first publication was followed by many successive editions, revised and enlarged long after the author's death. He was the presiding officer of a convention of committees which met in Boston in 1797 to form a general grand chapter of Royal Arch Masons. In January 1799, as chairman of a committee, he presented for this group a constitution which was adopted at a meeting in Providence, R. I. This meeting resulted in the formation of the grand encampment of the United States. The original draft of this constitution, with alterations and additions interlined in Webb's handwriting, was placed on file in the archives of the St. John's Commandery, in Providence. Late in the same year Webb made his home in Providence, and it was there (and later in Boston) that he became active in musical circles and one of the leading patrons of music. In 1809 he joined a group of music lovers brought together by Oliver Shaw, the blind organist of the First Congregational Church, to form the Psallonian Society, organized "for the purpose of improving themselves in the knowledge and practice of sacred music and inculcating a more correct taste in the choice and performance of it". This society lasted until 1832, and in twenty-three years gave thirty-one concerts. A few years before his death Webb removed to Boston, where he was a member of a group that founded in 1815 one of the oldest and one of the most important musical organizations in America, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. In March 1815, Webb, J. C. Gottlieb Graupner and Asa Peabody signed an invitation for a meeting to consider "the expediency of forming a society for cultivating and improving a correct taste in the performance of sacred music, and also to introduce into more general practice the works of Handel, Haydn and other eminent composers". Sixteen answered the invitation and in April the society was formed. Webb was elected its first president, and he served more than two years. The first concert of the Society was held in the Stone Chapel in Boston, on Christmas night, 1815. He was buried with the Masonic rites in Providence.

Achievements

• Webb has been called the "Founding Father of the York or American Rite" for his efforts to promote those Masonic bodies. He was known as the founder of the American system of chapter and encampment Masonry.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Webb's Freemason's Monitor: Including the First Three Degrees, With the Funeral Service and Other Public Ceremonies; Together With Many Useful Forms; ... as Taught by the Late Bro. John Ba

    (Excerpt from Webb's Freemason's Monitor: Including the Fi...)

  • The Freemason's Monitor

    (Thomas Smith Webb's "The Freemason's Monitor" is the gran...)

Connections

Webb was married to Mrs. Martha Hopkins, of Boston, in the autumn of 1797. They had five children, of whom only two survived the parents. After the death of his first wife, he was married, in 1809, to her sister, who, with their four children, survived him.

Father:

Samuel Webb

Mother:

Margaret (Smith) Webb

Spouse:

Mrs. Martha Hopkins

References

• Thomas Smith Webb: Freemason, Musician, Entrepreneur