Daniel Carter “Uncle Dan” Beard (June 21, 1850 – June 11, 1941) was an American illustrator, author, youth leader, and social reformer who founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905, which Beard later merged with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).

Mariner’s Lodge No. 67, New York City, New York
Cornucopia Lodge 563, Flushing, New York

Beard was born in Cincinnati, Ohio into a family of artists.[1] As a youth, he explored the woods and made sketches of nature. He lived at 322 East Third Street in Covington, Kentucky near the Licking River, where he learned the stories of Kentucky pioneer life.

He started an early career as an engineer and surveyor. He attended art school in New York City. He wrote a series of articles for St. Nicholas magazine that later formed the basis for the American Boy’s Handy Book. He was a member of the Student Art League, where he met and befriended Ernest Thompson Seton in 1883. He illustrated a number of books for Mark Twain, and for other authors such as Ernest Crosby.

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Stephen F. Austin – Louisiana Lodge No. 109, Ste. Genevieve, Mo.
(1793-1836)

Stephen Fuller Austin (November 3, 1793 – December 27, 1836), known as the Father of Texas, led the second and ultimately successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States. The capital of Texas, Austin in Travis County, Austin County, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Austin College in Sherman, as well as a number of K-12 schools are named in his honor.

Stephen F. Austin was born in the mining regions of southwestern Virginia (Wythe County), in what is now known as Austinville, some 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Richmond, Virginia. He was the second child of Moses Austin and Mary Brown, the first, Eliza Austin, having lived only one month. On June 8, 1798, when he was four years old, his family moved forty miles west of the Mississippi River to the lead mining region in present-day Missouri. His father Moses Austin received a Sitio from the Spanish government for the mining site of Mine á Breton. In 1813, a decade after the Louisiana Purchase transferred sovereignty of the area to American hands; his father lobbied the territorial legislature to create the county of Washington and to locate the new county seat at the town he created, called Potosi in present-day Washington County, Missouri.

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Francois-Marie Arouet (November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.

Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.

He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Catholic Church dogma and the French institutions of his day. Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.

Freemasonry
Voltaire was initiated into Freemasonry one month before his death. On April 4, 1778 Voltaire accompanied Benjamin Franklin into Loge des Neuf Soeurs in Paris, France and became an Entered Apprentice Freemason. Both being deists and lovers of reason, Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin became close friends over time. As noted philosophers, they were included in the intellectual circles of their day and contributed to the Intellectual Enlightenment. Though both men represented two different worlds of thought, their friendship attested to the consanguinity of a common conclusion.

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