Lynchburg Daily Virginian

The Daily Virginian
The Lady Free Mason.
Hon. Elizabeth St. Leger was the only female who was ever initiated into the ancient and honorable mystery of Freemasonry. How she obtained this honor, we shall lay before our readers, premising that our information is derived from the best sources. Lord Doneraile, Miss St. Leger's father, a very zealous Mason, held a warrant and occasionally opened lodge at Doneraile House, his sons and some intimate friends assisting, and it is said that never were masonic duties more rigidly performed than by the brethren of No. 150, the number of their warrant. It appears that previously to the initiation of a gentleman to the first steps of masonry Miss St. Leger, who was a young girl, happened to be in an apartment adjoining the room generally used as a lodge room; but whether the young lady was there by design or accident, we cannot confidently state. The room at the time was undergoing some alteration, among other things, the wall was considerably reduced in one part for the purpose of making a saloon. The young lady, having heard the voices of the freemasons, and being prompted by the curiosity natural to all, to see this mystery so long and so secretly locked up from public view, had the courage to pick a brick from the wall with her scissors, and thus witnessed the two first steps of the ceremony. Curiosity gratified, fear at once took possession of her mind, and those who understand this passage well know what the feelings of any person must be who could unlawfully behold that ceremony; let them then judge what were the feelings of a young girl under such extraordinary circumstances. There was no mode of escape, except through the very room where the concluding part of the second step was still being solemnized, at the far end, and the room a very large one. Miss St. Leger had resolution sufficient to attempt her escape that way, and with light but trembling steps glided along unobserved, laid her hand on the handle of the door, and opening it, before her stood, to her dismay, a grim and surly Tyler, with his long sword unsheathed.
A shriek, that pierced through the apartment, alarmed the members of the Lodge, who all rushing to the door, and finding that Miss St. Leger had been in the room during the ceremony, resolved, it is said, in the paroxysm of their rage, to put the fair spectatress to death; but at the moving and earnest supplication of her youngest brother, her life was spared on condition of her going through the two remaining steps of the solemn ceremony she had unlawfully witnessed. This she consented to, and they conducted the beautiful and terrified young lady through those trials which are sometimes more than enough for masculine resolutions, little thinking they were taking into the bosom of their craft a member that would afterward reflect lustre on the annals of Masonry.
Miss St. Leger was directly descended from Sir Richard de St. Leger, who accompanied William the Conqueror to England, and was of that high repute that he with his own hand supported the prince when he first went out of his ship to land in Sussex. Miss St. Leger was cousin to General Anthony St. Leger, Governor of St. Louis, who instituted the interesting race and the celebrated Doncaster St. Leger stakes. Eventually she married Richard Aldworth, Esq., Newmarket, a member of a highly honorable and ancient family. Whenever a benefit was given at any of the theatres in Dublin or Cork for the Masonic Female Orphan Asylum, Mrs. Aldworth walked at the head of the Freemasons, with her apron and other insignia of Freemasonry, and sat in the front row of the stage box. The house was always crowded on these occasions. The portrait of this estimable woman is in the lodge room of almost every lodge in Ireland.