Bayliss, M. W.

Bayliss, M. W. The last of the Cerneauites, born in Nova Scotia, 1848, died, 1919. He came to Providence, R. I. in 1869 and is supposed to have been raised in Mt. Vernon Lodge No. 4. He went to Washington, D. C. and took a position as clerk in the Surgeon General’s office. In or about 1884, he joined the Peckham Cerneau Consistory of the Scottish Rite, a spurious body as declared and listed by Albert Pike in or about that same year. From that time Bayliss’ troubles seem to have stemmed principally from his egotism and avarice. In 1885, he sent out circulars styling himself ”33rd Degree, Deputy Inspector General at Large.” In it, he assailed the Charleston Supreme Council and praised that presided over by Dr. J. F. S. Gorgas of Baltimore of which latter body he was a member for a short time, but which expelled him for tr*ason in 1888. By 1896, still in the Surgeon General’s office, Bayliss became head of another clandestine body which went under the name, Supreme Council of the United States and its Territories and Dependencies, claiming it to be the only regular body of Scottish Rite Masons. Grand Lodges, one after another, became completely antagonistic to Cerneauism. Accordingly, Bayliss gradually lost ground all over the country, but it required almost a quarter of a century and Bayliss’ death in 1919 to eliminate this last organized effort to propagate Cerneauism, which had been unfortunately foisted upon the American Scottish Rite 112 years earlier.