Historical fiction novel is about teenage girl almost killed for witnessing secret ceremony
OCEAN CITY — A novel about a young lady almost killed for spying on a secret ceremony in 1712 makes for compelling reading 300 years later.
Author Kathleen Aldworth Foster, a lifelong summer visitor to Ocean City, stumbled across the true story of Elizabeth Aldworth (nee St. Leger) more than 20 years ago, compelling her to go on her own genealogical quest that resulted in her first historical fiction novel, “Doneraile Court: The Story of the Lady Freemason,” published in March.
The novel is based on the true story that happened when 17-year-old Elizabeth St. Leger was caught spying on a mysterious, dark and bloody initiation ceremony in the family home, Doneraile Court on the Doneraile Park Estate in Doneraile, County Cork, Ireland.
Aldworth Foster said when the teenager was discovered, Freemasons, including her own father, argued that she should be killed to protect the secrets of the organization. She was saved, however, when one Freemason, Richard Aldworth, suggested that instead of putting her to death, that she be put through the ritual and sworn to secrecy, becoming the first female Freemason. He also promised to be “responsible” for the girl for the rest of his life. They were married five months later and lived together for some 60 years, Aldworth Foster said, the only married Freemasons in recorded history.
If readers noticed a similarity in the names of the author and the “First Lady Freemason,” that’s no coincidence. In fact, that’s what inspired the book.
Aldworth Foster, a veteran journalist and TV news producer, said she was celebrating New Year’s Eve 2000 at the pyramids in Egypt when she met a man who was studying Freemason ties to that country.
“I must have mentioned my name and he said, ‘Did you know the first-ever female Freemason was Elizabeth Aldworth?’”
The author is the namesake of her great-grandmother, Kathleen Aldworth. She began to wonder if there were a connection.
Six years later, back in the Middle East covering a war between Israel and Hezbollah, she had to leave the assignment early to meet her father and siblings in Ireland on a planned genealogy trip about the other side of the family, but before departing Israel did a bit of research on the Aldworth name. She discovered the Lady Freemason also was from County Cork.
She also discovered they were not directly related.
“She’s not one of my great-grandmothers, but we are distantly related,” Aldworth Foster said, “like distant cousins through her husband.”
When she met her dad at the airport, the man hired to drive them told them the Doneraile Court home was still standing and asked if they’d like to see it.
“So, we went right from the airport to this estate in Doneraile, Ireland, where this whole story took place,” Aldworth Foster said. Although it would later be renovated and opened to the public, at the time it was cordoned off behind a chain-link fence.
“When you go there, everyone tells the story about the Lady Freemason. She fell asleep in the library and woke up, heard some noises, pulled some bricks out of the wall and saw someone in the middle of an initiation ceremony for Freemasonry,” the author said. “The men tied her up and were going to kill her until one man said, “Wait, this is crazy, let’s put her through the paces, make her the first freemason and I’ll be responsible for her for the rest of her life. That man, it turned out, was Richard Aldworth, the man she married five years later.”
After hearing the tale, she said, “I just wanted to know more.”
Between work and research and having twins, it took Aldworth Foster 15 years to finish the book.
She settled on historical fiction — “it’s the only genre that I read” — because after setting out to write a nonfiction account, realized “there really wasn’t enough about her life.”
“This whole thing happened in 1712. It was 300 years past and Freemasonry is involved, so you know the information is not going to be easy to get to,” she said.
Finishing the book was a labor of love.
“It was an amazing feeling, but it was something I always knew I would do. There was a part of it that felt normal. I was meant to do it,” she said. “My dad always said this particular story, me writing it, was preordained. Why did they give me this name? Why did I love this name so much that I researched it and found this story? There have been a lot of things that led up to it, but I did cry the day my first proof arrived in the mail. I sat on the floor of my foyer crying.”
Aldworth Foster isn’t done. She said “Doneraile Court: The Story of the Lady Freemason” is the first in a series. Two or three more are planned, with the series ending around the Revolutionary War.
“One of the things my great-grandmother Kathleen Aldworth told me before she died and told my mom, is that an Aldworth signed the Declaration of Independence. And no one knew who it was. I started doing research. I looked at the Declaration and saw no Aldworth on it, but through this research, it took about 35 years but the Aldworth who signed the Declaration of Independence was Elbridge Gerry,” she said. Gerry was governor of Massachusetts, a vice president and an avid Freemason.
“I figured somehow in my story I can have the Lady Freemason and Elbridge Gerry meet up and share the mysteries of freemasonry together as the dawning of America was unfolding,” she said about future installments.
A good beach read from an author who loves Ocean City beaches
Aldworth Foster has been visiting Ocean City her whole life. She learned to walk on the beach here in 1976 when she was 10 months old and her grandparents live in Gardens Plaza.
Ocean City, she said, is the one constant in her life. Her parents divorced when she was very young and they moved from the Philadelphia area “but Ocean City was the one thing I could come back to over and over again. Things change every year, but for the most part it’s always the same feeling. Ocean City feels like home more than anywhere else in the world.”
Her family now lives in Rutherford, but her identical twins, now 6 years old, “haven’t missed a summer in Ocean City.”
“Doneraile Court: The Story of the Lady Freemason,” is available at Sun Rose Words and Music at 756 Asbury Ave. in Ocean City, where she will do an author signing this summer, and through book sellers online.
The book, the author said, “Is an absolute beach read because it’s so easy to read. People who are reading it say they pick it up and don’t put it down until they’re done. Most people can read it in two or three days. You’ll get it done on your vacation. You won’t be lugging it around with you forever,” she said, laughing.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
