John Pannell posted about a new Massachusetts Lodge, Pocumtuc Lodge.
Memsochet and Allogagan Lodges made it official and merged September 28, 2008 at a meeting of the Lodge Steering Committee. The new lodge will be known as the Pocumtuc Lodge. Our new totem is the wolf.
According to the Lodge bylaws, the lodge is named:
The name of this lodge will be the Pocumtuc Lodge, Western Massachusetts Council, #234, Boy Scouts of America, and shall be under the supervision of the council camping committee and the administrative authority of the Scout Executive.
So What’s the Lodge Number?
Unlike CSP Collectors who collect and catalog by name, OA Collectors using either Arapaho or the Blue Book have collected and catalogued by lodge number. While it has been several years since National ‘abolished’ lodge numbers (or at least stopped using them for any official purpose) there had only been 2 mergers since the policy became effective.   So there are only two other lodges that don’t an official lodge number, (364) Kittan and (146) Takoda.
My understanding is Takoda chose to use 146 one of their predecessor lodge numbers and Kittan is using 364 which is both their council number and the number of one of their predecessor lodges (Loon #364). Both are using it for their own internal purposes.
Roy Weatherbee, the New England Blue Book Editor commented in John’s post that:
Some things to add (based on my conversation Saturday with a past lodge advisor of Allogagan Lodge 83)… The new lodge (Pocumtuc) will not officially use any number – this was reportedly decided upon explicitly by youth vote.
Unless OA Collectors change their old habits of number collecting what number should be used?
There would seem to be at least four options which could be followed:
- Use what number the new lodge is using. Except that won’t work in this case.
- Arbitrarily use the lowest predecessor Lodge number. (83 in this instance)
- Use the Council Number (234). This could work but could lead to some confusion where there is an active lodge using ‘their’ number and an active Council with the same number leading to confusion over what issue a 234S1 is.
- Use an arbitrary number assigned for and by the collecting community for its own convenience (900).
So what number/policy would you prefer/recommend?
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- Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
I’m not an expert, but I would use #83. I may be an old fart, but I can still think like I was still a scout youth, and I would use the lower lodge number of the merging lodges. Example: Gonlix #34 and Ona Yote Kaonaga #300 merged to form Ko-Nosh-I-Oni #34 .. and so on to Ga-hon-Ga #34.
It is my understanding that all Lodges must use the council’s number when doing business with national, but can use an existing number for all else. New lodges are supposed to use the council’s number only. What is supposed to happen if that conflicts with a currently used number I don’t know. What is even crazier than that is that I and members of 4 other lodges that I know about, when filling out a staff application have to use a council number that doesn’t belong to any of our councils.