The Legacy Series: Oral Histories with Michigan Masons

The Film Farm is partnering with the Michigan Masonic Charitable Foundation on an Oral History Project called The Legacy Series:  Oral history interviews with Masons across Michigan are taking place and will be posted here.

The Masonic fraternity, or Freemasonry, has captured the imagination of many people. in recent years, with numerous books on the subject, and some Masonic conspiracy theories explored in television and motion picture productions. In fact, the origin of the today’s Masonry is lost in the unrecorded history of the organization. Masonry has been recorded since the early 1700’s, documenting its existence sometime before that.  No links are known to exist with the ancient crusaders, the Knights Templar, or any other mysterious societies.

Modern Masons come from all walks of life, and may well include your next door neighbor. Old paradigms of secrecy about Masonry have changed. Today, Masonry’s biggest secret is said to be that there is no secret. Masonry is first a fraternity, the granddaddy of them all, said to take good men and make them better.

It has become a major philanthropic organization, its various branches in the United States donating over a million dollars to a wide variety of charitable causes, every day! Masonry is increasingly family- and community-oriented.

The Legacy Series is an effort to make Masons known to the public, by capturing their memories of Masonry and about their family, military, and vocational careers. We hope that these interviews will be both informative and interesting, and that you will come away with a better understanding of what Masonry has meant in the lives of these men, and thereby perhaps dispel some myths and reveal what Masonry is all about.

Here’s a short introductory video about the project.