John Dove (2 September 1792–16 November 1876), Masonic leader, was born in Richmond and was the son of James Dove, a Scottish immigrant, and Julia Lee Dove. After his father died in 1798, his mother remarried but died in March 1807. Dove remained under the care of his stepfather David Holloway and worked as a clerk at a local pharmacy. He decided to become a physician and received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in April 1814. Dove returned to Richmond and on 28 November of that year married Ann Eliza Ege. They had five daughters and three sons.

Dove enjoyed a thriving medical practice and became a well-respected member of Richmond's medical community. In December 1820 he helped found the Medical Society of Virginia and served on the committee that drafted the organization's constitution and bylaws. Dove was the first president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Richmond in 1852. He was also a member of a city board of health created to combat a potential cholera outbreak in 1832, a member of the Common Council during the 1840s, and longtime physician for the city jail. Dove paid taxes on five enslaved laborers over age twelve in 1835 and in that year chaired public meetings to protect the interests of slave owners with resolutions that demanded that postmasters prevent the distribution of materials encouraging slave insubordination, that called for the creation of a vigilance committee to prevent abolitionist activities in Richmond and Henrico County, and that asserted southerners' exclusive right to determine the propriety of slavery. He also served on the board of trustees for the city's Lancasterian school and acted as the board's secretary until it became part of the nascent public school system in 1871.

Active in Virginia Freemasonry for more than sixty years, Dove became a nationally recognized leader of the fraternity. In December 1813 he was initiated into Richmond's Saint John's Lodge No. 36. Later he joined Randolph Lodge No. 19, where he served three nonconsecutive terms as worshipful master. Dove held office as grand secretary of the Virginia Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons for fifty-eight years (1818–1876), grand secretary of the Grand Lodge of Virginia for forty-one years (1835–1876), and grand recorder of the Virginia Grand Commandery of the Knights Templar for thirty-one years (1845–1876). He also represented Virginia at two national Masonic conventions in 1842 and 1843. Dove was elected president of the latter meeting, which had been called in an effort to promote uniformity among Masons throughout the country. At the Universal Masonic Congress held in France in 1855, the American delegation nominated Dove (who had not attended) as the American representative on a proposed five-member Permanent Commission, intended to encourage international cooperation and standards for the order. He played an important role in the cornerstone-laying and dedication ceremonies for the equestrian statue of George Washington in Richmond's Capitol Square in 1850 and 1858.

In September 1846 Dove completed the Masonic Textbook (1847) to help standardize Masonic rituals and which gained a reading among Masons nationwide. Subsequent editions appeared in 1854 and in 1866 (with the title Virginia Text-Book). He also wrote the Virginia Text Book of Royal Arch Masonry (1853) and A History of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Virginia, Its Origin, Progress, and Mode of Development, in Two Lectures (1854). In 1874 he edited the annual proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Virginia held between 1778 and 1822, a volume that also included as a preface a history of the fraternal order in the state from 1733 to 1778. Often viewed as the Father of Freemasonry in Virginia, Dove is credited with contributing more to the fraternity during his lifetime than any other person and with preserving numerous Masonic documents that might otherwise have been lost. In 1850 Dove Lodge No. 51, in Richmond, was named for him, and in 1872 the sculptor Edward Virginius Valentine, a Freemason, honored Dove's long service by presenting a bust of him to the lodge. John Dove Chapter No. 21, Royal Arch Masons, constituted in 1869 in Winchester, also bears his name.

John Dove died on 16 November 1876 at his son-in-law's residence in Richmond. Two days later large crowds gathered to watch an impressive Masonic funeral cortege proceed to Saint John's Episcopal Church, where Dove was buried near his wife, who had died on 12 October 1865. Shortly after his death, the Grand Lodge of Virginia erected a monument to him in Hollywood Cemetery.

Sources Consulted:
Biography in undated typescript by grandson John Dove Hughes, Allen E. Roberts Masonic Library and Museum, Grand Lodge of Virginia, Richmond, Va.; birth date on gravestone published in J. Staunton Moore, ed., Annals of Henrico Parish… by L. W. Burton (1904), 435; Richmond Daily Compiler, 1 Dec. 1814; John Dove Letters, Accession 21473, Dove's Lectures on Materia Medica, Accession 22562, and Dove's notes on Rush's Lectures on the Practice of Medicine, Accession 22563, all Library of Virginia (LVA); Dove letters printed in "Washington as past master," 1874 Broadside, LVA; Dove letter in Gooch Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.; William Moseley Brown, Freemasonry in Virginia (1733–1936)… (1936); Brown, The Cryptic Rite in Virginia (1958), frontispiece portrait; Richard A. Rutyna and Peter C. Stewart, The History of Freemasonry in Virginia (1998); Death Register, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, LVA; obituaries and funeral accounts in Richmond Daily Dispatch, 17, 20 Nov. 1876, and Richmond Daily Whig, 18, 20 Nov. 1876; memorials in Richmond State, 20 Nov. 1876, Virginia Medical Monthly 3 (Jan. 1877): 766, Proceedings of an Annual Communication of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient York Masons of Virginia (1877), 60–62, and Michigan Freemason: A Monthly Magazine 8 (1877): 168–171.

Engraving in William Moseley Brown, Freemasonry in Virginia, 1733–1936 (1936).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch.

How to cite this page:
Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch,"John Dove (1792–1876)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dove_John, accessed [today's date]).

Return to the Dictionary of Virginia Biography Search page.