5th Masonic District
MWPHGL
State of New Jersey
M.W. Thomas R. Hughes, Sr. Grand Master
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The
5th District Monthly
January 2010
M.W. Thomas R. Hughes, Sr 33º.,
Grand Master
“No Cross, No Crown” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge but fools despise wisdom and instruction
Proverbs 1:7
THE PRINCE HALL PRIMER
Prince
Hall is buried in Copp’s Hill Cemetery in Boston, Mass., and a large
monument is erected to his memory and upon regular occasion the various
grand bodies throughout the country make a pilgrimage thereto…………….
Prince Hall
was the son of Thomas Prince Hall an Englishman, a leather merchant,
whose wife was a free Negro woman of French descent. He came to
New England during the middle of the eighteenth century settling in the
city of Boston
He took a
very prominent part in both the religious and civic affairs of the
Negros in the colony. In 1771, he made application to
the Committee for Safety for permission to recruit some of the slaves in
the colony for the Revolutionary Army. The Committee declared that
none but ‘free men” could be enlisted as solders and declined the
request. This decision didn't indicate that Prince Hall himself
was a slave and he definitely belonged to that group of colored citizens
in Boston
It is of record he enlisted in
the Revolutionary Army sometime during the month of February, 1776.
He together with several others, addressed a petition protesting against
the existence of slavery in the colony on January 13th, 1777. This
was forwarded to the Massachusetts Legislature.
He was the first black man to be
initiated into the Masonic Order in the American Colonies.
Although the date of his initiation is not definitely known, it is
presumed to have been upon the same occasion when fourteen other “free”
Negroes obtained the degrees of Freemasonry. It has been claimed
by some that Hall received his degrees prior to that date on March 6,
1775. The initiation was held in Lodge 441, which was a Military
Lodge working under the Grand Lodge of Ireland and attached to one
of the regiments in the army under the command of General Gage.
In a letter bearing the date of
March 2, 1784, and after due consideration a Charter was granted to the
brethren of color under the denomination of “African Lodge No 419” and
after a series of delays, the documents arrived in Boston on April 29,
1787 and on May 6, 1787, African Lodge was formally constituted at the
Golden Fleece in Water Street, Boston Mass.
The first
African Grand Lodge of Negroes was called “African Grand Lodge of North
America” and was formed on June 24, 1791 in Boston
Mass.
On December
7, 1807, Most Worshipful Brother Prince Hall, the first black man known
to have received the degrees of Freemasonry upon the American Continent,
also, later the first Negro Grand Master in the same territory, passed
into the Great Unknown in
Boston
Mass.
At the
General Assembly of the craft in 1808, the title “African Grand Lodge of
North America” was change to it’s present title of “Prince Hall Grand
Lodge, F.& A.M. of Massachusetts
From ‘The Prince Hall Primer” by Harry A. Williamson, Past Deputy Grand Master, Prince Hall Grand Lodge, F.&A.M. of New York, 1956 Revised Edition