Matthew McBlain Thomson

Thomson was born in Ayr, Scotland on 9 January 1854. He was by trade a house painter. Eventually, the lodge members refused to accept his Masonic degrees from Scotland and also accused him, as a Mormon taking part in the Temple endowment ceremony, of practicing a "clandestine" form of Masonry. Thomson claimed the AMF descended from an African-American lodge in New Orleans, and accepted blacks as members unlike the "regular" Grand Lodges of the time. He sold Masonic degrees by mail to "shopkeepers, workers and other people" mainly from Utah, who as Mormons were not eligible to become Freemasons under the Grand Lodge of Utah. In 1918, Thomson dedicated a Masonic temple. He also published a periodical entitled the Universal Freemason, in which he attacked the Grand Lodge of Utah's policy of exclusion. The Grand Lodge of Utah protested Thomson's activities, and sent a letter to all Utah Masons warning them that AMF lodges were "clandestine, spurious, and fraudulent". ==Contacts with European "fringe" Freemasonry==

Despite being rejected by "regular" Grand Lodges in America, Thomson and his organization were welcomed by the main "fringe" Freemasons of Europe, including Jean Bricaud and Theodor Reuss. Notably absent from the Congress was Aleister Crowley, a high-ranking member of Reuss' organization Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O), who at the time was running his "Abbey of Thelema" at Cefalu, Sicily. It seems, however, that Thomson was in contact with Crowley: in his Confessions Crowley writes that he received a "shower of diplomas, from Bucharest to Salt Lake City", an obvious reference to Thomson. ==Mail fraud trial and conviction==

In 1915, the United States Post Office Department began investigating Thomson. Thomson was convicted for selling Masonic degrees by mail while misrepresenting "the standing and character" of his Masonic organization by claiming it was "the only regular, legitimate, and true Scottish Rite body in America". ==Legacy==

Thomson died in Salt Lake City on 13 September 1932. The American Masonic Federation was apparently still in existence in the 1970s. ==See also==