Quatuor Coronati 2020 Conference – Our Speakers
Ric Berman – Conference Chair
‘The American Frontier: reflections on the foundations of American Freemasonry’
Ric is the author of The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry; Schism, a study of the origins of Antients Freemasonry; Loyalists & Malcontents, a history of freemasonry in Georgia and South Carolina; Espionage, Diplomacy and the Lodge, a reflection on lesser-known aspects of eighteenth-century freemasonry; and From Roanoke to Raleigh, a history of North Carolina freemasonry. His 2016 Prestonian Lecture, Foundations: new light on the formation and early years of the Grand Lodge of England, set a context for the 300th anniversary of the formation of the first Grand Lodge.
Ric holds a Masters in Economics from the University of Cambridge and a Doctorate in History from the University of Exeter. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Life Fellow of the Huguenot Society, and a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. Ric has delivered plenary lectures at Masonic conferences and academic symposia globally, travelling over 300,000 miles in the process.
A freemason for over forty years, Ric holds active Grand Rank and is a Trustee of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry. He is a PM of Quatuor Coronati, Marquis of Dalhousie, and Temple of Athene lodges, and PZ of Marquis of Dalhousie Chapter.
Bob Cooper:
‘Scotland and pre-Revolutionary Masonic America’
Bob has held the post of Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland since 1994 which has given him access to some of the oldest documents and artefacts in the Masonic world, including the Minute Books of Lodge Aitcheson’s Haven, which dates from 9 January 1599. He has published extensively on Masonic matters and appeared on television and participated in radio programs around the world.
Initiated into The Lodge of Light, No.1656 (SC) in 1984, he is a founder member of Lodge Edinburgh Castle, No.1764 (Master, 1998); and a PM of Lodge Sir Robert Moray, No.1641 (Edinburgh Lodge of Research) (2009-11). He is also active in The Great Priory of Scotland (Knights Templar); the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland (Royal Arch); The Royal Order of Scotland; The Supreme Council for Scotland (Scottish Rite for Scotland); and The Grand Imperial Council of Scotland. He is also a Free Gardener and a Hammerman, as well as being a member of several non-Masonic esoteric societies.
Brent Morris:
‘The Higher Degrees in the US, 1730-1830’
S. Brent Morris is the Managing Editor of the Scottish Rite Journal of the Supreme Council 33°, Southern Jurisdiction, USA. He retired as a mathematician from the US federal government with 25 years’ service, having also taught at Duke, Johns Hopkins, and George Washington Universities and given invited lectures at over 100 universities.
He was initiated in Highland Park (now Louis G. Priester) Lodge, No.1150 in Dallas, Texas in 1971. In 1979 and 2000 he served as Master of Patmos Lodge, No. 70, Ellicott City, Maryland, and in 1980 was the Grand Director of Ceremonies of the Grand Lodge of Maryland. He is High Priest (First Principal) of Zeredathah Royal Arch Chapter, No. 35, Laurel, Maryland, and a member of other Masonic orders.
Brent’s main love is Masonic research and writing, and he was the founder of the Scottish Rite Research Society in 1991 and editor of Heredom’s first 14 volumes.
Mike Kearsley:
‘Rob Morriss, the Conservators, and the failure to establish a Grand Lodge of the United States’
Dr Mike Kearsley was born in Lancashire and lived in New Zealand for many years before returning to the UK. He was initiated into freemasonry in Hawera Lodge in Taranaki NZ, and passed and raised in Mairehau Lodge in Christchurch, NZ. In the UK he later joined David Bonner Lodge, the Musicians Lodge of the province of Middlesex under the English Constitution, becoming Master in 2010 and thereafter Secretary. He is a member of Temple of Athene Research Lodge (Master in 2013); Feltham Lodge (Master in 2012); and Quatuor Coronati.
Mike is a prolific researcher and author, a past Provincial Grand Orator for Middlesex, and in 2011 was awarded the Norman Spencer prize. He was appointed Prestonian lecturer in 2014 and ANZMRC lecturer in 2019.
Barry Hoffbrand:
‘Henry Harford, the last Proprietor (and Provincial Grand Master) of Maryland’
Barry Hoffbrand, a consultant physician, studied at Oxford University; University College Hospital Medical School, London; and the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco. The author of numerous articles and the winner of the Norman B Spencer prize essay, Barry has been a freemason since 1979. He is a PM of Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge, Number IV, a member of the Grand Stewards’ Lodge, and holds Grand Rank in the Craft, Royal Arch, Mark and RAM.
Andreas Onnerfors:
‘Revolution and Race in in Nineteenth-Century German America’
Dr Andreas Önnerfors was raised in Trier, Germany. He studied at the University of Lund, Sweden, where he was awarded his BA and MA degrees in the History of Sciences and Ideas. He afterwards studied for a PhD at Lund, taught History of Sciences, and worked as coordinator at the Centre for European Studies.
Following post-doctoral work at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis (France), he was contracted to the University of Sheffield (UK) where from 2007-10 he worked as Director of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, and as a Senior Lecturer in The Department of History.
On his return to Lund, he was awarded the title of Reader or Associate Professor in the History of Sciences and Ideas, and since July 2014 has taught History of Sciences and Ideas at the Universities of Gothenburg and Lund.
Ben Williams:
‘Freemasonry in the Territory of Colorado – Masons, miners, and the rush to Statehood’
Ben Williams is PM of Norwood Lodge No. 111 and Telluride Lodge No. 56 A.F. & A.M. in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, and currently serves as Secretary of the Research Lodge of Colorado.
Ben is a Right Eminent Past Grand Commander of Knights Templar of Colorado, and is the Northwest Department Commander and Chair of the Education Committee for the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the United States. In the Scottish Rite, he is Wise Master of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Rose Croix and a Past Master of Kadosh of the Grand Junction Consistory. He was Grand Orator in the Grand Lodge of Colorado in 2018 and a member of the Education Committee for ten years, serving five as chair.
Hilary Anderson Stelling:
‘Early New York City Mark Medals’
Hilary Anderson Stelling is the Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library in Lexington, Massachusetts. She has been at the Museum since 2000 and has curated exhibitions on topics ranging from Masonic decorative arts and neon signs to colonial history and contemporary photography.
Hilary contributed to the award-winning publication, Curiosities of the Craft: Treasures from the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts Collection. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and holds a certificate in genealogical research from Boston University.
John Kyle Day:
‘Arkansas Prince Hall Freemasonry in the Nineteenth Century’
Dr John Kyle Day is Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Masonically, he is a PM of Acacia-Twilight Lodge 114, A.F.&A.M. Missouri; and 32, A.A.S.R., S.J., Valley of Joplin, Orient of Missouri. He is also a member of the Scottish Rite Research Society, QCCC, and the Missouri Lodge of Research.
John’s current academic projects include Arkansas: a Land and a People in Search of Identity (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, forthcoming 2020); ‘Democratic United States Senator Thomas Hennings, Jr. of Missouri: Champion of the Black Freedom Struggle’; and ‘From Base to Cope: Founding the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Arkansas, 1863-1890’, journal articles. Past works include The Southern Manifesto: Massive Resistance and the Fight to Preserve Segregation (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014); and Arkansas History: A Collegiate Reader (Southlake: Fountainhead Press, 2nd edition, 2019), and numerous articles.
Walter H. Hunt:
‘The ‘neo-colonial’ expansionism of Massachusetts Masonry’
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and growing up in Andover, Walter serves as the Grand Historian of the GL of Massachusetts. He is a PM of Norumbega Fraternity Lodge and of Mount Hollis Lodge, and equally active in Scottish Rite. In addition to writing for the Trowel, the quarterly magazine of the GL of Massachusetts, Walter has written numerous journal articles and books, both Masonic and fiction.
Leif Endre Grutle
‘Scandinavian Immigrants and New World Freemasonry’
Leif was born in Bergen, Norway, and graduated from MF, the Norwegian School of Theology in 1998 as Candidatus Theologiae, a degree ranking between Master and PhD in Theology. He took holy orders in 2001 and worked as provost in the Church of Norway.
Leif was initiated in 2004 into the Norwegian Order of Freemasons and is Knight & Commander with the Red Cross, the XI and last degree of the Swedish Rite. He joined Niels Treschow Lodge, the Research Lodge of the Order, in 2012 and was appointed Master in 2017. He will serve as such until 2023.
Leif is co-editor of Acta Masonica Scandinavica, the annual transactions of Scandinavian Masonic research, and has had research published in both this and other Masonic publications, most recently Heredom, volume 26.
Hans Schwartz:
‘Freemasonry in Revolutionary New England’
Dr Hans Schwartz was awarded his MA in history at Salem State University and his doctorate in Atlantic and Early American History at Clark University. His research focuses on freemasonry in trans-Atlantic networking in the Atlantic colonial period, and in political organizing in the American Revolutionary period.
Hans has presented and published several papers on trans-Atlantic freemasonry as a cultural, political, and intellectual network, notably at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, the German Historical Institute, and the QC Conference. At present, he is working on turning his dissertation into a book.
Dr Schwartz has extensive teaching experience in the United States and Japan in history, science and English, and is presently a lecturer at Northeastern University. Masonically, he is a PM of Mount Carmel Lodge, Lynn, Massachusetts.
John Wade:
‘Senator Bro. Samuel Latham Mitchill and Eighteenth-Century America’s Medical Education in Edinburgh’
Dr John Stephen Wade was initiated in Fellowship Lodge, No.4069 in 1981 and served as Master in 1991. He was exalted into Fellowship Royal Arch Chapter, No. 4069, in 1985, and was the founding Master of Amadeus Lodge, No 9539, in 1994. John is PPrJGW, Yorkshire (West Riding) and Derbyshire; and a Past Provincial Grand Sojourner in the Royal Arch. From 2003-5 he was President of the Sheffield Masonic Study Circle.
John was elected a full member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge in 2005, appointed Secretary a year later, and served as Master in 2009-10, the year during which he was nominated Prestonian Lecturer.
John is an active member of lodges in Scotland, Ireland, Italy and the United States. He is also the musical director of the Sheffield and District Masonic Choir which he founded in 1991.
Jeffrey Croteau:
‘Joseph Cerneau vs. Emanuel De La Motta: A View of the 1813 Founding of the Scottish Rite’s Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, USA, Through the Lens of Religious Intolerance’
Jeffrey Croteau is Director of Library and Archives at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library in Lexington, Massachusetts. He previously worked at the Brooklyn Museum and the Pierpont Morgan Library.
Jeffrey earned his Master of Library Science degree from Queens College (New York), and his MA in English from the University of New Hampshire. He has presented on the topic of nineteenth-century American Masonry at several conferences, including the 2009 Society of American Archivists conference, the 2010 Canonbury Masonic Research Centre conference, as well as the 2010 and 2017 conferences at the American Antiquarian Society’s Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC).
His articles on Freemasonry and anti-Masonry have appeared in several magazines and journals, including Imprint: Journal of the American Historical Print Collectors Society, Heredom, and Cabinet. His introductory essay, “Provenance of the 1783 Francken Manuscript,” was included in The 1783 Francken Manuscript, published in 2017 by the Supreme Council, 33°, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.
Adam Kendall:
‘History’s Hidden Reverse: The Scandals and Secret Rites of Benjamin D. Hyam’
Adam Kendall is the editor of The Plumbline, the quarterly bulletin of the Scottish Rite Research Society, and a member of their board of directors. A past master of San Francisco’s Phoenix Lodge No. 144 and the Northern California Research Lodge, he is also a member of Quatuor Coronati, Lodge No. 2076 in London, serving on the editorial committee for Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, and the Regional Secretary for QCCC North America.
Adam is a past president of the Masonic Library & Museum Association, and the former collections manager and curator of exhibits for the Henry W. Coil Library and Museum at the Grand Lodge of California. A frequent speaker at local and international symposia, Adam has published several essays in notable publications such as the European Journal of American Culture, The Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, Heredom, and The Art and Science of Initiation. He has also appeared in several feature-length documentaries including Illuminated: The True Story of the Illuminati and The Royal Art of Freemasonry, as well as contributing screenwriting and historical consultancy. He will complete a Master of the Arts degree in History at California State University, Los Angeles, in December 2019.
