An early tipping point came in 1826, when William Morgan announced that he would be publishing a tell-all book revealing the secrets of Freemasonry in detail. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared. The local Masons in his home city of Batavia, New York had vociferously protested Morgan’s upcoming exposé, which broke the Masons’ oath not to reveal any of their organization’s secrets. It is suspected that local Masons were behind several short stints that Morgan spent in jail following the announcement of his publication. But it was his disappearance that would incite a firestorm that eventually gave rise to the term “anti-Masonry.”

Upon his second arrest in September of 1826, Morgan was whisked away from the jail in a carriage, under cover of night. He was never heard from again. Several Masons were eventually convicted of taking part in Morgan’s kidnapping, but his whereabouts and the details of his presumed murder were never conclusively determined.

Related: These Recently Unearthed Coins May Have Solved a 17th-Century Mystery

The one undeniable legacy left behind by Morgan’s disappearance was the rise of anti-Masonry in the United States. In fact, immediately after he vanished, the Anti-Masonic Party formed, one of the earliest third-party political groups in American history.

The party was nearly defunct by 1835, but the sentiment remained. In the years since then, the anti-Masonry movement hasn't had any kind of formal organization. It has been driven by everything from conspiracy theories to religious objections to political machinations, and has taken many forms across different governments throughout history.

During World War II, Freemasons were among those persecuted during the Holocaust. This was, in part, due to one of the longer-standing conspiracy theories surrounding Freemasonry: an antisemitic claim that Freemasons and Jews plotted together to control global geopolitical and economic forces.

The History of Freemasonry, a Fraternal Organization Fraught with Conspiracy Theories

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