Montpelier — The Anti-Masonic Register Conspiracy

Montpelier became Vermont's capital in 1805, but it's the Vermont State House built in 1859 by Thomas Silloway that crystallized political tensions. Its 220-foot golden dome, visible 30 miles away on clear days, has housed a 13-foot Statue of Liberty since 1880. Within these Renaissance walls, the 1830 legislative sessions saw confrontations between supporters of Governor Redfield Proctor, a Masonic Grand Master, and Anti-Masonic militants led by Chandler. The secret register you seek would have been hidden in the State House archives after the 1826 Morgan Affair.

The Washington County Courthouse of 1824-1825, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, became the theater of Vermont's most resounding Anti-Masonic trials. This Federalist architecture in red brick, with its symmetrical facade and Doric columns, served as the venue for heated debates during the 1830s rise of the Anti-Masonic Party. Judicial archives reveal that several Masonic cases were tried here, involving influential members of Montpelier society.

Christ Episcopal Church, founded in 1823 with its current 1870 Victorian Gothic church, hides troubling links with local Freemasonry. Its 120-foot steeple, added in 1880 and housing an 1804 bell, dominates downtown. This Episcopal parish, the oldest in central Vermont, counted among its pastors and parishioners several members of Montpelier's Masonic elite circles, creating permanent tension with Chandler's Anti-Masonic movement.

The Kellogg-Hubbard Library, built in 1891-1892 thanks to Lyman D. Kellogg's donation, preserves the era's secrets within its Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. Listed on the National Register in 1973, this first public library in Montpelier houses a mural painted by Lafayette Benedict Mendel in 1895, measuring 20x12 feet. Its collection of 50,000 volumes included personal archives of Vermont cultural figures, including several lodge members who might have possessed copies of the sought-after register.

Your investigation ends at Green Mount Cemetery, opened in 1854 according to Jacob Weidenmann's plans in the rural cemetery movement spirit. Across 35 acres dotted with Gothic monuments and 2 miles of winding paths lies Redfield Proctor (1831-1908), Vermont governor and major Masonic figure. Listed on the National Register in 2007, this cemetery reveals the final clues of the Anti-Masonic register. You leave with an understanding of the political stakes that shaped 19th-century Vermont, where Freemasonry and American democracy clashed in the shadows of institutions.