Worshipful Eugene Vining’s Installation – December 5th, 1911

On the 225^th regular communication of Thomas Talbot Lodge, a new suite of officers were installed. While certainly a special occasion, it was unlikely the brethren in the lodge room that night fully grasped its significance in that moment. At the head of the new suite was Brother Eugene Vining, an educator and man who was just a teenager living in Maine during the lodge’s founding. Heading the installation was Worshipful Charles H Kohlrausch Jr., who was not only a charter member of Thomas Talbot Lodge, but was its inaugural Worshipful Master. Though Freemasons are used to the rotation of leadership, this installation would come to mean much more due to Wor. Kohlrausch’s death mere months later. In his final significant masonic act before his death, Wor. Kohlrausch would place Bro. Vining in the east and welcome a new generation of men to lead the lodge forward trusting that they would do so with the same spirit that the founding generation had.

By the time Bro. Eugene Vining was preparing his journey to the east as the 13^th Worshipful Master of Thomas Talbot Lodge, he was 37 years old and had found considerable success in his profession as a teacher. Graduating magna cum laude from Bowdoin College, he attended Andover Theological Seminary, but ultimately decided that what he wanted most was to be a teacher. Finding positions at Pinkerton Academy and the Perkins School for the Blind, where the young educator assisted Helen Keller in passing her entrance exams for Harvard University’s Radcliffe College, Vining eventually settled in Billerica in 1901. He had received an assistantship at the Howe Highschool, and by the time of his installation as master of the lodge he was serving as the school’s principal. Quickly becoming a cornerstone to his adopted home of Billerica, it was apparent Bro. Vining had a similar spirit to the man conducting the installation on December 5^th, 1911.

Worshipful Charles H Kohlrausch Jr., like Vining, was not a Billerica native. Born in Lowell, MA, it would be in that city’s Pentucket Lodge that he was also raised to the degree of Master Mason. President of Talbot Dyewood and Chemical Works of North Billerica, he also held the position of town moderator for fifteen years with great success. Perhaps Wor. Kohlrausch’s most significant contribution to the town, and certainly his most important to Freemasonry, was his decision to lead the effort towards establishing Thomas Talbot Lodge in 1889. This was no easy task, as Kohlrausch freely admitted to, but “indomitable will, untiring energy, pluck, perseverance, and patience overcame all obstacles, and through the darkness of the night the anxious watchers saw appearing slowly but surely, the dawning light in the Masonic east of Billerica.”[1] With this continued spirit, Worshipful Kohlrausch was now able to witness the lodge he helped to establish, grow and thrive.

During Worshipful Kohlrausch’s final installation, he was bringing to the east a man who, like him, was filled with energy, cared deeply for his town, and would work in the best interests in the craft. With the passing of Kohlrausch the following year in 1912, It was apparent now that the founding generation of Thomas Talbot Lodge were giving way to the next set of men like Vining  who would continue to build on their work in both Freemasonry and the town of Billerica.

[1] Kohlrausch, Charles. “Historical Sketch of Thomas Talbot Lodge”