A HISTORY OF ST. JOHNS LODGE

St. John’s Lodge enjoys the unique privilege of being the oldest duly constituted and chartered Masonic lodge in the Americas.

Contemporary accounts reveal that a Masonic lodge had met in King’s Chapel, Boston, as early as the 1720s (meeting according to the “old customs”). In 1733, Henry Price, a prominent tailor and storekeeper who had emigrated to Boston in 1723, was appointed “Provincial Grand Master of New England and Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging” and authorizing him “to Constitute the Brethren now Residing or who shall hereafter reside in those parts into One or more Regular Lodge or Lodges as he shall think fit” by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, Anthony Lord Viscount Montague. On July 30, 1733, at a meeting held at The Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston, Henry Price exercised his authority and granted a group of eighteen Masons a charter empowering them to work as a Masonic lodge in Boston. Thus was formed St. John’s Lodge, the first duly constituted and chartered lodge in the Americas.

The Lodge has been in continuous existence since its constitution in 1733, since which time its members have convened for over 3,700 regular meetings, or ‘Communications.’ Famous Masons like George Washington, Ben Franklin, and the Marquis de Lafayette visited St. John’s Lodge in their travels to Boston.