What's A Mason?

"I think my grandfather was one, but I'm not sure what it means."

"Yeah, my dad and uncle both used to go to Masonic meetings--I remember Uncle Fred coming by to pick him up. But I don't know where they went or what they did. "

"I think they wear those funny hats."

"I remember when I went away to college, my father showed me his ring and told me, if I ever needed help, I should look for a man with a ring like that and tell him I was the daughter of a Mason, but he never told me much about it."

If Masonry started in Great Britain, how did it get to America?
In a time when travel was by horseback and sailing ship, Masonry spread with amazing speed. By 1731, when Benjamin Franklin joined the fraternity, there were already several lodges in the Colonies, and Masonry spread rapidly as America expanded west. In addition to Franklin, many of the Founding Fathers men such as George Washington, Paul Revere, Joseph Warren and John Hancock--were Masons. Masons and Masonry played an important part in the Revolutionary War and an even more important part in the Constitutional Convention and the debates surrounding the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Many of those debates were held in Masonic lodges.

 

What's a Mason?
That's not a surprising question. Even though Masons (Freemasons) are members of the largest and oldest fraternity in the world and even though almost everyone has a father or grandfather or uncle who was a Mason, many people aren't quite certain just who Masons are.

The answer is simple. A Mason (or Freemason) is a member of a fraternity known as Masonry (or Freemasonry). A fraternity is a group of men (just as a sorority is a group of women) who join together because:

In 1717, Masonry created a formal organization in England when the first Grand Lodge was formed. A Grand Lodge is the administrative body in charge of Masonry in some geographical area. In the United States, there is a Grand Lodge in each state and the District of Columbia. In Canada, there is a Grand Lodge in each province. Local organizations of Masons are called lodges. There are lodges in most towns, and large cities usually have several. There are about 13,200 lodges in the United States.

What's a lodge?
The word "lodge" means both a group of Masons meeting in some place and the room or building in which they meet. Masonic buildings are also sometimes called "temples" because much of the symbolism Masonry uses to teach its lessons comes from the building of King Solomon's Temple in the Holy Land. The term "lodge" itself comes from the structures which the stonemasons built against the sides of the cathedrals during construction. In winter, when building had to stop, they lived in these lodges and worked at carving stone.

While there is some variation in detail from state to state and country to country, lodge rooms today are set up similar to the diagram above.