Many of the United States' founders,  participated as members of Masonic Lodges. The first Lodge in the American colonies opened in Boston in 1733.

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George Washington was a Mason and Benjamin Franklin served as the head of the fraternity in Pennsylvania, as did Paul Revere and Joseph Warren in Massachusetts. Other well-known Masons involved with the founding of America include John Hancock, John Sullivan, Marquis de Lafayette, Baron Fredrick von Stuben, Nathanael Greene, Joseph Warren and John Paul Jones. Another Mason, Chief Justice John Marshall, shaped the Supreme Court into its present form.

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​Washington began his life as a Freemason in 1752 at the age of twenty when he was admitted into a small Freemason Lodge in Fredericksburg, Virginia. For the rest of his military and political career, Washington was an active member of Freemason social circles and established Alexandria's Freemason Lodge No. 22 in 1788.

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Washington himself best articulated his membership in, and relationship to, Freemasonry when he replied to the brethren of King David’s Lodge in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790:

 

"Being persuaded that a just application of the principles, on which the Masonic Fraternity is founded, must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society, and to be considered by them as a deserving brother."

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Learn about Freemasonry's involvement in the founding of our country, America250PA and the Liberty Tree Project.​​