Matthew McBlain Thomson

Matthew McBlain Thomson (9 January 1854 – 13 September 1932) was a Scottish-born convert to Mormonism, Freemason and a convicted fraudster.

Masonic activities Thomson was born in Ayr, Scotland on 9 January 1854. He was by trade a house painter. Eventually, the lodge members refused to accept his Masonic degrees from Scotland and also accused him, as a Mormon taking part in the Temple endowment ceremony, of practicing a "clandestine" form of Masonry. Thomson claimed the AMF descended from an African-American lodge in New Orleans, and accepted blacks as members unlike the "regular" Grand Lodges of the time.

He sold Masonic degrees by mail to "shopkeepers, workers and other people" mainly from Utah, who as Mormons were not eligible to become Freemasons under the Grand Lodge of Utah. In 1918, Thomson dedicated a Masonic temple.

Notably absent from the Congress was Aleister Crowley, a high-ranking member of Reuss' organization Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O), who at the time was running his "Abbey of Thelema" at Cefalu, Sicily. It seems, however, that Thomson was in contact with Crowley: in his Confessions Crowley writes that he received a "shower of diplomas, from Bucharest to Salt Lake City", an obvious reference to Thomson.

Mail fraud trial and conviction In 1915, the United States Post Office Department began investigating Thomson. Thomson was convicted for selling Masonic degrees by mail while misrepresenting "the standing and character" of his Masonic organization by claiming it was "the only regular, legitimate, and true Scottish Rite body in America".

Legacy Thomson died in Salt Lake City on 13 September 1932.

The American Masonic Federation was apparently still in existence in the 1970s.