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Freemasonry’s
French Connection
Place Paris
Year 1778
Event French progressive, like their American
counterparts, embraced the philosophy of personal liberty.
Many leading voices of the French Enlightenment were
Freemasons, and the Nine Sisters Masonic lodge in Paris
was a well-known gathering place.
Lodge members included the writer Voltaire and respected
artist Jean Antoine Houdon, who sculpted the busts shown
here. And in 1778, a visiting American brother was admitted,
statesman Benjamin Franklin.
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Franklin, in Paris seeking French support for the American
Revolution wascontacts, Franklin met the marquis de Lafayette,
a fiery young officer who immediately outfitted his own
ship and sailed to American. In July 1777, Lafayette received
his commission as major general in the Continental Army.
Around 1779, Franklin befriended yet another patriot at
the Paris lodge, Continental Navy captain John Paul Jones.
Jones was in France awaiting a new command; when he received
his ship in August 1779, he christened it the Bonhomme
Richard after Franklin’s famous Poor Richard’s
Almanack. In the ship’s first engagement against
the British Navy, Jones was victorious, and joined the
ranks of Freemasons who fostered American independence. |
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George
Washington, Freemason
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Place New York City
Year 1783
Event George Washington was only twenty
in November 1752 when he joined the Freemasons.
He rose quickly through the ranks, eventually
becoming grand master of the grand lodge of Virginia.
Washington treasured his Masonic ties, perhaps
never more so than during the years he led the
Continental Army. The marquis de Lafayette,
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who served under him, once observed that
the commander in chief rarely awarded independent
commands to officers who were not Masons.
Indeed, most of Washington’s generals
were brethren, among them Horatio Gates
Henry Knox, Israel Putnam, Baron von Steuben,
and of course, Lafayette. Washington used
Freemasonry to forge unity among his soldiers,
troops who largely identified not with a
nascent nation, but with their individual
colonies. The general welcomed the creation
of at least eleven new military Masonic
lodges, in which men from all the colonies
intermixed. Thus a foot soldier could count
himself a brother not only to his co-colonists,
but to all Freemason soldiers and officers,
even Washington himself.
Lodge meetings were much needed morale
builders for many of the war-weary men,
and Washington personally visited as many
lodges as he could. Even during the horrific
winter at Valley Forge, regular meetings
were held; Lafayette was said to have entered
the brotherhood during a gathering there.
Washington valued the loyalty Freemasonry
inspired. He once wrote that “the virtues
that ennoble mankind are taught, nourished,
and fostered in the halls of the Freemasons:
they encourage domestic life and serve as
a standard for the highest duties of State.”
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After
Wahington’s death in 1799, the Massachusetts
grand lodge of Masons commissioned Paul
Revere to create this gold urn “as
a deposit for lock of hair... of the Hero
and the Patrio
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