Back To The Future With George Washington

This is a paid post contributed by a Patch Community Partner. The views expressed in this post are the author's own, and the information presented has not been verified by Patch.

By Ed Coster, Madison Lodge

Washington the Freemason

In 1753, George Washington was made a Master Mason, at the age of twenty-one, in Fredericksburg Lodge in Virginia.

Two years before his election as our first President, he was elected the first Worshipful Master of Alexandria Lodge No. 22, of which he remained an active member until his death in 1799.

February 15, we will celebrate the birth, in 1732, of George Washington, the Father of His Country, who, in recent years has fallen victim to criticism by some who choose to forget much of his contribution to the founding of America. Perhaps it is time to reflect on a decision he made that is not known about universally, albeit well documented in the history of Morristown, New Jersey. It is a story dramatized in a play written and performed as part of the State’s Bicentennial Celebrations in 1975-76.

“The Petition,” written by Willett R. Wilson, of Whippany, NJ, in 1975, relates the true story of a meeting held in Arnold’s Tavern, which occupied a building on the Green in Morristown from revolutionary times until the 1960s. The time was 1779, during the coldest winter on record, the second time Washington’s army wintered in Jockey Hollow on the outskirts of Morristown. The actual date, December 27, St. John the Evangelist’s Day in the Christian calendar. (A painting of the assembly, entitled “The Petition,” by John Ward Dunsmore, a member of Puritan Lodge #185, is on permanent exhibition at the Morristown National Historical Park Museum.)

In spite of their physical misery, Freemasons in Washington’s Army still found time to plan for the future of their nascent nation and the preservation of their institution of Freemasonry, from which many derived their ideas of the equality of man.

The Grand Lodge of England, from which all of the Lodges derived their charters up to that time, was torn by a schism which divided in two Grand Lodges, one calling itself “The Ancient” and the other “The Modern,” both of which claimed the other to be subversive of the Ancient Landmarks of the Craft. With a desire to bring about peace and harmony in the new Nation, Masons from the various States which made up the Army then in the Morristown area, called a Convention Lodge of prominent Masons from the States that was held at the Tavern. American Union Lodge, a Military Lodge of the Connecticut Line, hosted the event, attended by over 100 Masons, from eight of the thirteen Colonies. The roster reads like a Who’s Who of the founders, including General Washington.

The Petition

General, and Brother, Mordecai Gist, of Maryland, read a Petition addressed to the Grand Lodges of England seeking permission to establish the Colonial Lodges under one American General Grand Lodge, as the proposers wanted to avoid duplicating the schism of Ancients and Moderns and establish one, unified body of Masonic Lodges. At that meeting General Washington was suggested to be the first General Grand Master for America. He declined.

The committee met in February 1780 and agreed to circulate the petition to all the American Grand Lodges. They recommended that Washington be chosen as General Grand Master, but he did not wish it. As officers in the Continental Army, the ideals the participants were fighting for were peace and harmony, the right to worship Diety as each person sees fit and the right to express his own political beliefs without recrimination from anybody. Men of different beliefs and different political persuasions worked to build unity in the common interest. What a concept! Indeed, what an achievement. What an example for the twenty-first century.

Nine separate times from then until 1848 the idea of a single, general Grand Lodge was proposed for America. The result was always that Freemasonry in America replicated the idea of the independence of each State to manage its own Masonic affairs. That is the model today, with fifty Grand Lodges which collaborate on many issues but without a single, sovereign Grand Lodge.

Also, despite the separation from England resulting from the War, all American Grand Lodges maintain mutual recognition with the Grand Lodge of England and dozens of other Grand Lodges throughout the world. Mutual respect and mutual tolerance are the binding elements that unite Freemasons despite religious, cultural, philosophical and political differences that might otherwise divide them.

This is a paid post contributed by a Community Partner, a local brand partner. To learn more, click here.