Daniel Carter Beard Award.

So a Freemason and a British Lord walk into a partnership.

No, seriously.

According to the Boy Scouts of America Website, “Freemasonry’s relationship with the Boy Scouts started with a Freemason named Daniel Carter Beard,” who was made a Freemason in New York, N.Y., and later became affiliated with the Flushing, N.Y. Lodge.

Beard started a male youth program in the late 1800’s called the “Society of the Sons of Daniel Boone,” which by 1905 had become “The Boy Pioneers.”

Meanwhile, Lord Robert Baden-Powell of Great Britain, who was not a Mason, read of Beard’s program in the U.S. and, “based on his own military experience, developed what is known as the Boy Scouts.”

The Boy Scouts Program came to the U.S. in 1910, when Beard merged his Boy Pioneers into the Boy Scouts of America and became the organizations first National Commissioner, according to the BSA website.

Beard was responsible for the elements of what are now considered the core of Boy Scouts: the badge, uniform, and various early BSA publications, and he also “exemplified Masonic ideals throughout the scouting program,” the BSA website says.

It was at the June 2001 Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania that the Grand Master approved the creation of the Daniel Carter Beard Masonic Scouter Award, according to the Pennsylvania Masonic Youth Foundation website. The BSA approved the creation of the award, and it was decided that the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania would present the award as a service to all other Grand Lodges.

The Daniel Carter Beard Award, or “Masonic Scouter Award,” is one of 12 awards recognized by the BSA as a “Community Organization Award.”

Eleven of the 12 COAs use the same knot as the Daniel Beard Knot, which was the first authorized in the series.

According to the BSA website, “the relationship between individual masons and scouting, which has existed since the founding of scouting in America, has resulted in great benefits for both Freemasonry and scouting.”

The award, according to the PMYF website, “is an honor due to the countless Freemasons who practice the ideals of Freemasonry and act as role models to the young men who are part of one of our nation’s most outstanding youth organizations.” The award, the website says, “not only supports the Masonic relationship through the man who brought scouting to America, but proclaims the integrity of the Freemason who is honored by receiving the award.

One must be a Master Mason to be eligible for the award, and also currently a registered scouter and active in a scout unit, district, council, or national affiliate. The candidate must also have displayed outstanding dedication to scouting through activities like developing new scouting units, assisting lodges in forming units, exemplifying Scout Law and Masonic virtues, recruiting scouting volunteers, and strengthening the relationship between Freemasonry and scouting.

According to the BSA website, “work, accomplishment, and dedication, rather than a specific number of years in scouting, will be the criteria for this award.” Any community organization can create its own Community Organization Award to honor Boy Scout volunteers by creating its own neck medallion and awarding a purple square not badge with a gold border.

Nominees for the award must be recommended by a Master Mason in good standing.

An official petition must be completed by the nominator and submitted with an attached statement of the candidate’s qualifications for the award. The petition must also be verified and approved by the Viking Council, stating that the candidate is currently an active scout leader. A Worshipful Master of the candidate’s masonic lodge must then review the petition, and if found to be qualified to receive the award, the petition is then forwarded to the lodge’s district deputy or other Masonic authority designated to handle the award in his home jurisdiction. That person can then submit the petition as instructed by his Grand Lodge for further action. At that point, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania will forward the information on awardees to the Boy Scouts of America Relationships Division in Texas for the official record.

The award is to be presented at the discretion of the Grand Master of the lodge of the candidate’s membership. It can be presented at a Grand Communication or other meeting where a representative of the Grand Lodge presents the award to the recipient. Presentations can also be arranged for Lodge our scout related functions, but according to the BSA website, “in all cases, a representative of the Grand Lodge should present the award.”

According to the PMYF, no mason can submit himself for the award, and Masons are not to seek it out but to be nominated for it.

“It should be given because the Lodge recognizes that he is doing a Mason’s work by training and working with youth,” according to the PMYF website.

The candidate’s lodge bears the cost of the award kit, which is $35. The award is given solely at the discretion of the Grand Master.

Between 2001, when the award was founded, and the end of 2015, 2,746 Daniel Carter Beard awards have been given to Mason-Scouts nationwide.

Twelve of those were from Warren County. From the first to the most recent, the scouts here who’ve received the award are: George D. McAfoose, Donald T. Johnson, Leslie Myron Sanford, Dennis M. Hedges, William E. Yeager, Robert J. Zimmerman, James L. Marshall, Barry J. Cunningham, John A. Lasher, Thomas J. Dunn, Ernest M. Crawford, and Gregg N. Trisket.