There is a reason that the very specific term "Appendant" (tr. hanging from) is used to describe these Orders, bodies etc and that is they have all taken something from Freemasonry and used it to become their own entity, sadly today many don't realise this. They are not a part of Freemasonry but they are related to it, some more so than others .
The truth that every person needs to bear in mind is that in 1717 when the first Grand Lodge in the world was formed there were only 2 degrees given to a Freemason: Apprentice and Fellow and the only "Master" was the Master of the Lodge.
Within 10 years a Master Mason degree was being tentatively worked in some Lodges across the British Isles and became common and accepted by Grand Lodge by 1730ish. 20 years later a Mark Man and Mark Master (coming from Scotland) and a Royal Arch Degree and Installed Master (coming from Ireland) were being worked. However, most Appendant bodies owe their genesis to the 1737 oration of Chevalier Andrew Ramsey in Paris following which there was an explosion of degrees, mainly due to the creativity of the french brethren, that linked Freemasonry to many different things.
Even America has had a hand in creating an Appendant Rite called the York Rite, which pulled together several Appendant Degrees and put them into an ascending Order. It is always greeted with incredulity when I state that here in England there is no York Rite practised and that it was only ever worked between for about 30 years in the latter half of the 18th century by the (tiny) Grand Lodge of All England (a long extinct rival to the Premier and Antient Grand Lodges of England) that surfaced twice during the 18th Century. Initially there was a Lodge in York but in 1725 it proclaimed itself a Grand Lodge probably because it didn't like the fact that London Masons came up with the idea first. In its first incarnation 1725 - 1735 it practised exactly the same degrees as the rest of the British Isles, only during its "revival" between 1761 - 1789 did it work the degrees that today make up the (American) York Rite.
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the Ancient & Primitive Rite of Memphis & Misraim are actually closer relations to each other than they are to the Craft, both having been born in France in the latter half of the 18th Century. The Craft of course evolved from the Operative Craft in the British Isles at an undefinable point between the 16th and 17th Centuries. The earliest actual speculative Freemasons we know of at the present time were Inititiated in the 1640s.