Short History of Masonic Pennies

Equitable pay was a major theme among Royal Arch Masons. When the Mason became a Royal Arch Mason, they earned a penny - the symbol of a Day's Wages. This evolved through the 1800s. In the early days a US or foreign coin was shaved and made into the Penny. We have found one on a 5 Franc coin that the Mason was a Union Colonel and died in 1861. Early datable ones are scarce. Many were engraved on US large cents. The date of the coin has no bearing on when the penny was made - most were 1880 - 1910. Engraved dates are often when the Mason became a Royal Arch Mason. The penny may have been engraved 20 or more years after the date.

There were Stock Pennies beginning in the 1870s to present. Stock Pennies allowed a local jeweler to engrave the Mason's Penny. They were used by Chapters that could not afford the cost of a die or until they could get a die made.

We do not know when the first Pennies were made from a Chapter Specific Die. We know there was a Mark Lodge Penny in 1880. There were several created in early 1890s. George H. Lovett was probably one of the first engraver of Masonic Chapter Pennies. He died in 1894. He made a dozen different pennies - all in Copper and Silver. All Lovett?s except the copper Washington Chapter No 2 from Houston are RARE.

A Charter Date before 1890 is meaningless as to when the penny was made.

Dr. B.F. Wright, fifth President of ANA, as the first to attempt to catalog the pennies in a series of Articles in The Numismatist (1901-04) - republished in 3 booklets. Wright lamented that the Masonic Chapters often would not furnish their pennies to fellow Masons. This opened the door for Masons to collect the pennies.

A.E. King assembled the Alfred Hanauer Collection at the House of the Temple in Washington D.C. He then wrote letters to all the state Grand Chapters asking for Pennies. In the late 1920s he glued the pennies under glass and wrote Masonic Chapter Pennies.  This King book was a major effort, but many of the pennies cannot be identified due to limits of 1920's technology and inability to observe the reverse.

William Waken and Richard Watley undertook the massive project of inventorying the major collections. They included the King Collection (as best they could), Maurice Storck Collection, WW Gator, Waken and a few others. Their effort was also limited by current technology.  They published their book in 2015 and it is an excellent source of relative Chapter rarity.

In 2014, volunteers started the major effort of adding Masonic Pennies to tokencatalog.com. The 14,000 + pennies in the WW Gator Collection were scanned and about 20 volunteers added them. Tokencatalog.com now has 18,500 listings and we expect there will be 20-22,00 different pennies and shekels.