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"He disappeared soon after, and was most likely kidnapped and killed by Masons."
There is no proof of Morgan's murder, and many so-called confessions have been disproved, thus the statement that he "was most likely kidnapped and killed by Masons", is not only nonfactual, but libelous. Jasper Ridley is British, not American, nor is he an authority of US history, and his speculations are not fact. Then they use, Henry Paul Jeffers, for a fact check, who is into conspiracy theories, like the Bilderberg Group, etc., to agree with Ridley's speculation, who in no way is factual. Last, they have C.T. Congdon, who wrote about a third hand account, which is pure speculation, and not factual.
Also, here is another unproven statement; "for supposedly stealing a shirt and a tie, a charge that was probably fabricated". Someone really needs to clean this up, since it makes a mockery out of factual writing and reporting.-- Craxd ( talk) 18:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
This article is neither neutral nor factually accurate. Imacomp 16:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
This article is poorly cited and several links are both POV and not notable. Imacomp 16:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
The ĕbiographical article is neither neutral nor factually accurate. This person is not notable either, nor are his dusty deluded rantings. (A Christian "Saint". Doh! You are avin a laf, wibble wibble) Imacomp 16:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of inconsistencies in Finney's work which render it in violation of WP:RS. For example, it includes the confession of one Henry Valance, who was not a Mason, and was never implicated in the original incident, according to the GL of Vermont page. There were many confessions which were shown to be false, and this is likely one of them. Second of all, Finney says Morgan was an "estimable man", when other sources (as cited also by GL VT) say he was very much "dissolute and shiftless". So, I believe that Finney's work, while notable, fails WP:RS, as the facts of the matter were then and are now still very unclear. MSJapan 18:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Evaluating sources
Do they have an agenda or conflict of interest, strong views, or other bias which may color their report? Remember that conflicts of interest are not always explicitly exposed and bias is not always self-evident. However, that a source has strong views is not necessarily a reason not to use it, although editors should avoid using political groups with widely acknowledged extremist views, like Stormfront.org or the Socialist Workers Party. Groups like these may be used as primary sources only i.e. as sources about themselves, and even then with caution and sparingly, or about their viewpoints.
Obviously yes, both by the original author and the reposter.
Were they actually there? Be careful to distinguish between descriptions of events by eyewitnesses and by commentators. The former are primary sources; the latter secondary. Both can be reliable.
No, Finney was not there, and Valance seems to have no connection; his presence at Niagara is not verifiable. Finney is furthermore reprinting something he was not present for (which I forgot about myself, actually).
Find out what other people say about your sources.
No real mention of it anywhere save on one anti-Masonic site.
Have they reported other facts reliably, including on different subjects? Cross-check with what you already know.
No.
Are the publications available for other editors to check? We provide sources for our readers, so they must be accessible in principle, although not necessarily online.
Yes.
Also "Partisan websites" further down the page is relevant - Partisan political and religious sources should be treated with caution, although political bias is not in itself a reason not to use a source. Widely acknowledged extremist political or religious websites — for example, those belonging to Stormfront, Hamas, or the Socialist Workers Party — should never be used as sources for Wikipedia, except as primary sources i.e. in articles discussing the opinions of that organization or the opinions of a larger like-minded group, but even then should be used with great caution, and should not be relied upon as a sole source.
We're not talking about opinion here, and it's not used in primary source, nor is it even mentioned in the article to any great degree.
So, I must admit I am very hard-pressed to understand quite where the misunderstanding is mine. WP:RS says nothing about notability of sources, and that's not the issue. MSJapan 21:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Morgan's little myth, here, needs the fact tags to be replaced by some cited facts. If the tags are just removed, or reverted, this will say alot about the crediblility of the subject. Imacomp 12:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
The person who tagged every line in the article should see WP:Point, of which this is a clear violation. No attempt has been made to itemize objections to the article. Furthermore, the article already has a POV tag. The fact tags should be immediately removed or explained, one by one. Also please not that I have only reverted the nonsense twice. I have no doubt that someone else will pick up the baton. -- JJay 00:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
JJay reverted a discussed compramise, and has shown bad faith. It is not the duty of the tagger to prove a citation, so JJay is in error. If 2000 tags are needed, then 2000 facts need citing QED. The tags are in themselves one-by-one statments of explaination of a need for a citation - and this is not covered by the general POV tag."Also please not that I have only reverted the nonsense" of your bad faith JJay in discussing only at your 3RR. Imacomp 00:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Right. So no discussion preceded your tagging orgy and there was no "compromise". You still have not stated why the tags were placed on every line in the article. Not that I expect you will since that would detract from your edit warring here and on the other masonry pages. -- JJay 01:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
It's interesting that you have to explain the placement of the tags, because Imacomp couldn't be bothered. As the article had no sources, fact tagging every line is overkill and a violation of WP:Point. Be that as it may, see any of the 19th century books for the brewery info and most of the other bigraphical details. -- JJay 03:48, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
JJayAre you sure any "19th century books for the brewery info and most of the other bigraphical details..." may be consulted? Contacts at the Library of Congress and the British Library say otherwise. The more that anti-Masons depend on this Morgan, and his biography, the closer it will be scrutinised – and the more suspect become the so-called facts. Imacomp 17:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
What exactly is your problem? There is a source on the article. There are also many more valid sources that I could add. You have refused to say what you object to in this article. You have fact tagged every line including the year of Morgan's dissapearance. You have made comments on this page that cross the line of WP:CIV. I'm asking you directly and I hope you can finally provide a response. What exactly are you looking for here? -- JJay 20:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Well bravo. You won't explain what you object to in the article besides that it lacks sources. But you also won't let me add sources and have now removed the reference I added three times without any explanation. There was no discussion of this and you have no grounds to remove that reference. I don't know what you mean by "edit if needed" since you are only looking to edit war. -- JJay 23:53, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I think citations can be added no problem. Most, if not all of the info comes from the two sources cited. However, I believe that we must also link to the confessions page on bcy.ca here, because it offers a very good case for the confession Finney reprinted to have been a fanciful tale, and mentions that Whitney also told his story. However, I do not think we need to cite line by line; One per paragraph would work just as well, given that the material is only from two sources. I also think that we need to add some of the character material; it is relevant to the situation, because Morgan was not an upstanding citizen wronged by a group of people suddenly and for no reason - he was a man of ill repute who willfully antagonized the community over a relatively long period of time. I think the addition of this information (also from the sources already used and therefore considered trustworthy) and the relevant citations will put an end to the dispute, because I can see from reading the sources that this article is definitely POV. Warring about it, however, will not solve the problem. MSJapan 02:39, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
In a series of vandalism to the disambiguation page at William Morgan, the following version (with no wikification) was posted. Maybe there's something the editors here would value. This version was contributed by User:216.160.128.231. I'd have proposed a merge if the disambig page didn't need to be restored.
The case of William Morgan (1774-1826?) is an interesting example of the often fierce socio-political struggle between Masonic and anti-Masonic groups during the nineteenth century in America.
Morgan was an ex-Mason living in Batavia, New York who wrote a short pamphlet in 1826 entitled Morgan's Freemasonry Exposed and Explained in which he endeavored to provide a "clear and correct view of the manner of conferring the different degrees, as practiced in all lodges throughout the globe; together with the means to be used by such as are not Masons to gain admission therein."
This pamphlet was seen by many Freemasons as a threat to the secret activities of their organization and was the start of a controversy lasting decades. Shortly after the publication of the pamphlet, Morgan's body was reportedly discovered in a local river; this added to the growing anti-Masonic sentiment when a group of Freemasons were accused of Morgan's abduction and murder. The case was never satisfactorily settled, but more than twenty years later, in 1848, Henry L. Valance gave a deathbed confession of his involvement in the alleged crime.
In 1882, thirty-four years after Valance's confession and fifty-six years after the original incident, anti-Masonic activists were still using the Morgan case for political gain. The National Christian Association, a well-known anti-Masonic group, honored Morgan by erecting a statue of him in Batavia and invited Thurlow Weed, a retired politician and newspaper-owner, to write an article about Morgan. Weed responded with The Facts Stated, which he described as an attempt to "...vindicate the violated laws of my country, and next, to arrest the great power and dangerous influences of 'secret societies.'"
Cover of Henry L. Valance: Confession of the Murder of William Morgan (1869), titlepage of William Morgan: Morgan's Freemasonry Exposed and Explained (1882), and cover of Thurlow Weed: The Facts Stated: Hon. Thurlow Weed on the Morgan Abduction (1882)
-- Scott Davis Talk 09:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank You,
[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 04:00, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
In the text of this article, Morgan's book is identified as Illustrations of Masonry, and a link is provided to the text of the book in question (although personally I would go with this copy as I feel the source is more neutral - minor nitpick.)
However, the External Links section contains a link to The Mysteries of Free Masonry, also identified as written by Morgan (by both Wiki and Gutenberg) - yet this is not explained in the article.
The two do not seem to be identical (specifically, Illustrations covers up to Master Mason, while Mysteries also covers a number of other degrees.) The title page of the latter book would seem to indicate Mysteries contains the text of Illustrations plus details of other rituals as recorded by a George R. Crafts.
Unfortunately this isn't an area I have much knowledge of, and a bit of searching the interwebs has thus far turned up empty. If anyone could help expand on this it would be much appreciated. ElijahOmega ( talk) 15:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
A recent contribution to the article by SilverDawg ( talk · contribs) was out of place in the article text, and really belonged here on the talk page, so I have moved it below. -- 208.81.184.4 ( talk) 17:20, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
Under the heading "Book on Freemasonry", it states "Morgan belonged to the Masonic lodge in Rochester. When he attempted to join the Batavia lodge he was denied admission. Angered by the rejection...Miller is said to have received the entered apprentice degree (the first degree of Freemasonry), but had been stopped from advancement by the objection of one or more of the Batavia lodge members". This is incorrect on many levels. First, Morgan was never initiated a Mason (i.e., received the First Degree, much less the Second or Third). There is no record of him ever having done so in New York's Grand Lodge archives, nor in either the Rochester of Batavia Lodge archives. Nor would he have been admitted by the Rochester Lodge to begin with since his Investigation (necessary for him to pass before he could've received the First Degree) would've determined that -- as a man with a criminal record, frequently in debt, a gambler and a brewer -- he would be ineligible to join. It was, at the time, prohibited to be a brewer, distiller, saloon or tavern-keeper and to become a Mason. And there has always been a prohibition against men who are habitually in debt or have criminal records (although this is occasionally overlooked if the crime was minor and the man's character seems sound -- not the case for Morgan). Morgan appears to have fraudulently received the Royal Arch Degree (sometimes called the "Fourth Degree"), but as he had not received the necessary first Three Degrees, he was still not a Mason. Clearly, he knew and associated with genuine Masons, and he managed to get into Lodges as a visitor, but he was never a Mason himself. The onus is on the claimant to support the assertion that Morgan was a Mason, not for others to prove that he wasn't. This is not done in the article. Indeed, citations #12 and 13, which someone added to supposedly support the claim that he was a Mason, actually say the *opposite*: "That he (Morgan) was really a Mason is doubtful; no record of his raising or Lodge membership exists...there was no evidence educed, then or afterwards, that he ever received any Masonic degree save the Royal Arch..." Consequently, I am going to remove the claims that Morgan was a Mason. Bricology ( talk) 09:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
William Morgan (anti-Mason) article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"He disappeared soon after, and was most likely kidnapped and killed by Masons."
There is no proof of Morgan's murder, and many so-called confessions have been disproved, thus the statement that he "was most likely kidnapped and killed by Masons", is not only nonfactual, but libelous. Jasper Ridley is British, not American, nor is he an authority of US history, and his speculations are not fact. Then they use, Henry Paul Jeffers, for a fact check, who is into conspiracy theories, like the Bilderberg Group, etc., to agree with Ridley's speculation, who in no way is factual. Last, they have C.T. Congdon, who wrote about a third hand account, which is pure speculation, and not factual.
Also, here is another unproven statement; "for supposedly stealing a shirt and a tie, a charge that was probably fabricated". Someone really needs to clean this up, since it makes a mockery out of factual writing and reporting.-- Craxd ( talk) 18:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
This article is neither neutral nor factually accurate. Imacomp 16:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
This article is poorly cited and several links are both POV and not notable. Imacomp 16:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
The ĕbiographical article is neither neutral nor factually accurate. This person is not notable either, nor are his dusty deluded rantings. (A Christian "Saint". Doh! You are avin a laf, wibble wibble) Imacomp 16:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of inconsistencies in Finney's work which render it in violation of WP:RS. For example, it includes the confession of one Henry Valance, who was not a Mason, and was never implicated in the original incident, according to the GL of Vermont page. There were many confessions which were shown to be false, and this is likely one of them. Second of all, Finney says Morgan was an "estimable man", when other sources (as cited also by GL VT) say he was very much "dissolute and shiftless". So, I believe that Finney's work, while notable, fails WP:RS, as the facts of the matter were then and are now still very unclear. MSJapan 18:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Evaluating sources
Do they have an agenda or conflict of interest, strong views, or other bias which may color their report? Remember that conflicts of interest are not always explicitly exposed and bias is not always self-evident. However, that a source has strong views is not necessarily a reason not to use it, although editors should avoid using political groups with widely acknowledged extremist views, like Stormfront.org or the Socialist Workers Party. Groups like these may be used as primary sources only i.e. as sources about themselves, and even then with caution and sparingly, or about their viewpoints.
Obviously yes, both by the original author and the reposter.
Were they actually there? Be careful to distinguish between descriptions of events by eyewitnesses and by commentators. The former are primary sources; the latter secondary. Both can be reliable.
No, Finney was not there, and Valance seems to have no connection; his presence at Niagara is not verifiable. Finney is furthermore reprinting something he was not present for (which I forgot about myself, actually).
Find out what other people say about your sources.
No real mention of it anywhere save on one anti-Masonic site.
Have they reported other facts reliably, including on different subjects? Cross-check with what you already know.
No.
Are the publications available for other editors to check? We provide sources for our readers, so they must be accessible in principle, although not necessarily online.
Yes.
Also "Partisan websites" further down the page is relevant - Partisan political and religious sources should be treated with caution, although political bias is not in itself a reason not to use a source. Widely acknowledged extremist political or religious websites — for example, those belonging to Stormfront, Hamas, or the Socialist Workers Party — should never be used as sources for Wikipedia, except as primary sources i.e. in articles discussing the opinions of that organization or the opinions of a larger like-minded group, but even then should be used with great caution, and should not be relied upon as a sole source.
We're not talking about opinion here, and it's not used in primary source, nor is it even mentioned in the article to any great degree.
So, I must admit I am very hard-pressed to understand quite where the misunderstanding is mine. WP:RS says nothing about notability of sources, and that's not the issue. MSJapan 21:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Morgan's little myth, here, needs the fact tags to be replaced by some cited facts. If the tags are just removed, or reverted, this will say alot about the crediblility of the subject. Imacomp 12:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
The person who tagged every line in the article should see WP:Point, of which this is a clear violation. No attempt has been made to itemize objections to the article. Furthermore, the article already has a POV tag. The fact tags should be immediately removed or explained, one by one. Also please not that I have only reverted the nonsense twice. I have no doubt that someone else will pick up the baton. -- JJay 00:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
JJay reverted a discussed compramise, and has shown bad faith. It is not the duty of the tagger to prove a citation, so JJay is in error. If 2000 tags are needed, then 2000 facts need citing QED. The tags are in themselves one-by-one statments of explaination of a need for a citation - and this is not covered by the general POV tag."Also please not that I have only reverted the nonsense" of your bad faith JJay in discussing only at your 3RR. Imacomp 00:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Right. So no discussion preceded your tagging orgy and there was no "compromise". You still have not stated why the tags were placed on every line in the article. Not that I expect you will since that would detract from your edit warring here and on the other masonry pages. -- JJay 01:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
It's interesting that you have to explain the placement of the tags, because Imacomp couldn't be bothered. As the article had no sources, fact tagging every line is overkill and a violation of WP:Point. Be that as it may, see any of the 19th century books for the brewery info and most of the other bigraphical details. -- JJay 03:48, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
JJayAre you sure any "19th century books for the brewery info and most of the other bigraphical details..." may be consulted? Contacts at the Library of Congress and the British Library say otherwise. The more that anti-Masons depend on this Morgan, and his biography, the closer it will be scrutinised – and the more suspect become the so-called facts. Imacomp 17:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
What exactly is your problem? There is a source on the article. There are also many more valid sources that I could add. You have refused to say what you object to in this article. You have fact tagged every line including the year of Morgan's dissapearance. You have made comments on this page that cross the line of WP:CIV. I'm asking you directly and I hope you can finally provide a response. What exactly are you looking for here? -- JJay 20:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Well bravo. You won't explain what you object to in the article besides that it lacks sources. But you also won't let me add sources and have now removed the reference I added three times without any explanation. There was no discussion of this and you have no grounds to remove that reference. I don't know what you mean by "edit if needed" since you are only looking to edit war. -- JJay 23:53, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I think citations can be added no problem. Most, if not all of the info comes from the two sources cited. However, I believe that we must also link to the confessions page on bcy.ca here, because it offers a very good case for the confession Finney reprinted to have been a fanciful tale, and mentions that Whitney also told his story. However, I do not think we need to cite line by line; One per paragraph would work just as well, given that the material is only from two sources. I also think that we need to add some of the character material; it is relevant to the situation, because Morgan was not an upstanding citizen wronged by a group of people suddenly and for no reason - he was a man of ill repute who willfully antagonized the community over a relatively long period of time. I think the addition of this information (also from the sources already used and therefore considered trustworthy) and the relevant citations will put an end to the dispute, because I can see from reading the sources that this article is definitely POV. Warring about it, however, will not solve the problem. MSJapan 02:39, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
In a series of vandalism to the disambiguation page at William Morgan, the following version (with no wikification) was posted. Maybe there's something the editors here would value. This version was contributed by User:216.160.128.231. I'd have proposed a merge if the disambig page didn't need to be restored.
The case of William Morgan (1774-1826?) is an interesting example of the often fierce socio-political struggle between Masonic and anti-Masonic groups during the nineteenth century in America.
Morgan was an ex-Mason living in Batavia, New York who wrote a short pamphlet in 1826 entitled Morgan's Freemasonry Exposed and Explained in which he endeavored to provide a "clear and correct view of the manner of conferring the different degrees, as practiced in all lodges throughout the globe; together with the means to be used by such as are not Masons to gain admission therein."
This pamphlet was seen by many Freemasons as a threat to the secret activities of their organization and was the start of a controversy lasting decades. Shortly after the publication of the pamphlet, Morgan's body was reportedly discovered in a local river; this added to the growing anti-Masonic sentiment when a group of Freemasons were accused of Morgan's abduction and murder. The case was never satisfactorily settled, but more than twenty years later, in 1848, Henry L. Valance gave a deathbed confession of his involvement in the alleged crime.
In 1882, thirty-four years after Valance's confession and fifty-six years after the original incident, anti-Masonic activists were still using the Morgan case for political gain. The National Christian Association, a well-known anti-Masonic group, honored Morgan by erecting a statue of him in Batavia and invited Thurlow Weed, a retired politician and newspaper-owner, to write an article about Morgan. Weed responded with The Facts Stated, which he described as an attempt to "...vindicate the violated laws of my country, and next, to arrest the great power and dangerous influences of 'secret societies.'"
Cover of Henry L. Valance: Confession of the Murder of William Morgan (1869), titlepage of William Morgan: Morgan's Freemasonry Exposed and Explained (1882), and cover of Thurlow Weed: The Facts Stated: Hon. Thurlow Weed on the Morgan Abduction (1882)
-- Scott Davis Talk 09:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank You,
[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 04:00, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
In the text of this article, Morgan's book is identified as Illustrations of Masonry, and a link is provided to the text of the book in question (although personally I would go with this copy as I feel the source is more neutral - minor nitpick.)
However, the External Links section contains a link to The Mysteries of Free Masonry, also identified as written by Morgan (by both Wiki and Gutenberg) - yet this is not explained in the article.
The two do not seem to be identical (specifically, Illustrations covers up to Master Mason, while Mysteries also covers a number of other degrees.) The title page of the latter book would seem to indicate Mysteries contains the text of Illustrations plus details of other rituals as recorded by a George R. Crafts.
Unfortunately this isn't an area I have much knowledge of, and a bit of searching the interwebs has thus far turned up empty. If anyone could help expand on this it would be much appreciated. ElijahOmega ( talk) 15:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
A recent contribution to the article by SilverDawg ( talk · contribs) was out of place in the article text, and really belonged here on the talk page, so I have moved it below. -- 208.81.184.4 ( talk) 17:20, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
Under the heading "Book on Freemasonry", it states "Morgan belonged to the Masonic lodge in Rochester. When he attempted to join the Batavia lodge he was denied admission. Angered by the rejection...Miller is said to have received the entered apprentice degree (the first degree of Freemasonry), but had been stopped from advancement by the objection of one or more of the Batavia lodge members". This is incorrect on many levels. First, Morgan was never initiated a Mason (i.e., received the First Degree, much less the Second or Third). There is no record of him ever having done so in New York's Grand Lodge archives, nor in either the Rochester of Batavia Lodge archives. Nor would he have been admitted by the Rochester Lodge to begin with since his Investigation (necessary for him to pass before he could've received the First Degree) would've determined that -- as a man with a criminal record, frequently in debt, a gambler and a brewer -- he would be ineligible to join. It was, at the time, prohibited to be a brewer, distiller, saloon or tavern-keeper and to become a Mason. And there has always been a prohibition against men who are habitually in debt or have criminal records (although this is occasionally overlooked if the crime was minor and the man's character seems sound -- not the case for Morgan). Morgan appears to have fraudulently received the Royal Arch Degree (sometimes called the "Fourth Degree"), but as he had not received the necessary first Three Degrees, he was still not a Mason. Clearly, he knew and associated with genuine Masons, and he managed to get into Lodges as a visitor, but he was never a Mason himself. The onus is on the claimant to support the assertion that Morgan was a Mason, not for others to prove that he wasn't. This is not done in the article. Indeed, citations #12 and 13, which someone added to supposedly support the claim that he was a Mason, actually say the *opposite*: "That he (Morgan) was really a Mason is doubtful; no record of his raising or Lodge membership exists...there was no evidence educed, then or afterwards, that he ever received any Masonic degree save the Royal Arch..." Consequently, I am going to remove the claims that Morgan was a Mason. Bricology ( talk) 09:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)