PRINCE HALL HISTORY

Without a doubt, the history of Prince Hall is one of the most complex problems in freemasonry today. During his lifetime there were several Prince Halls and during this time, stories were told without factual information. In the book "Black Square & Compass" by Joseph A. Walkers, Jr., he describes the number of different stories about Prince Hall. He comments on the story fabricated by William Henry Grimshaw, Past Grand Master of the District of Columbia :

(1) Grimshaw was probably well-meaning in his attempt to enlarge beyond the bounds of truth regarding Prince Hall's life. The stories cooked-up by him are inexcusable and cannot be justified. Such falsehood as Prince Hall's being born in Bridgetown, Barbados on the12th of September 1748, the son of Thomas Prince Hall, an English leather merchant and his wife a free negro woman of French descent, etc.... William H. Upton in his "Prince Hall Letter Book", pointed out that the state of Ohio claimed Prince Hall as a native

(2) The generally accepted, but completely false, date of Prince's Hall birth is September 12, 1748. However, the death notices appeared in six Boston newspapers published Monday, December 7, 1807, point to his birth being 1735. Extract from " Boston Gazette": Deaths. On Friday morning, Mr. Prince Hall, aged 72, Master of the African Lodge. Funeral this afternoon, at 3 o'clock from his late dwelling house in Lendell's Lane; which his friends and relatives are requested to attend without a more formal invitation. Extract from "Independent Chronicle": Deaths. Mr. Prince Hall aged 72, Master of the African Lodge. Funeral this afternoon at 3 o'clock from his late dwelling house in Lendell's Lane; which his friends are requested to attend without a more formal invitation.

(3) Many historians say Prince Hall was the slave of William Hall Boston, a leather-dresser by trade and owned real estate ten yards in the vicinity of what is now Post Office Square . He had been active in the Charitable Irish Society of Boston since 1737 and was the first elected president of the society. William Hall died August 16, 1771, aged 75, and his will specified the distribution of his property between his wife and children. He did not mention Prince Hall in this will, but it seems probable, according to John M. Sherman, the Philalethes Magazine of June, 1962, that he generously did what he could to set Prince up in business as a Leather-dresser and gave him what was needed before he died or when he set him free. This story can not be verified. It is generally accepted that freemasonry among blacks in the United States began with the initiation of Prince Hall and fourteen Other, "free" Blacks in Lodge No. 441, Irish Constitution, attached to the 38th foot regiment, British Army garrisoned at Castle Williams (now Fort Independence), Boston Harbor on 6 March 1775, the master of the lodge being one sergeant J. Batt (or J.T. Batt or John Batt). When the British Army left Boston , Hall was left a "permit" to meet as a lodge, but apparently not to confer any degrees. Masonic authorities agree that this was how African Lodge No. 1 was organized, and that Prince Hall later petitioned the mother Grand Lodge of the World, England , for a warrant that was issued on September 29, 1784, for African Lodge No. 459. All Masonic Lodges in the United States were under the English Lodge until 1813. There were soon hints of the pettiness ahead. The lodge celebrated the feast of St. John and an account printed in a Boston newspaper referred to the lodge as "St. Blacks' Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons". Hall wrote the paper a chiding letter and signed it, Prince Hall, Master of African Lodge No. 459, dedicated to St. John . While he was busy with his masonic duties, his ministry and colonies' war, Hall had not neglected his concern with the condition of blacks in this country. As early as January 13, 1777, he filed a memorandum to the House of Representative of Massachusetts urging emancipation. And, after the war, on October 17, 1787, he petitioned the legislature to provide schools for black children. In a speech known as the "charge" delivered to the Brethren of the African Lodge on 25 June, 1792, he said: "Let us lay by our recreation, and superfluities, so that we may have that to educate our rising generation which was spent in the follies. Make you this beginning, and who knows but God may raise up some friend or body of friends as He did in Philadelphia, to open a school for the blacks here, as that friendly city has done".

Meanwhile, with the white masons of Boston continuing to ignore him and his lodge, Hall began to expand the organization. One Peter Mantore wrote him from Philadelphia , March 2, 1791, asking for a dispensation for an African Lodge: "We have been tried by five Royal Arch Masons whose group of 11 consisted of black men who were made masons in England and Ireland . The white masons have refused to give us a dispensation fearing the black men living in Virginia would get to be masons too." Mantore's group was

African Lodge No. 459 of Philadelphia . Absalom Jones, the first black priest in the Episcopal Church in America was master and Richard Allen, the founder and first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the treasurer. The third lodge Hall set to work was Hiram Lodge No. 3 in Providence , Rhode Island , on June 25, 1797. About 1813, the members of that lodge immigrated to Liberia with the settlement project of the African Humane Society. The Liberian Lodges remain, with a handful in Ontario and the Bahamas , the only foreign lodges of what are now known as Prince Hall Masons. Hall died of pneumonia December 5th or 7th, 1807. His burial place is not known but, on the back of his last wife's (Sarah Ritcher) headstone is printed: "HERE LIES YE BODY OF PRINCE HALL, FIRST GRAND MASTER OF THE COLORED GRAND LODGE OF MASONS IN MASS. DIED DEC. 7, 1807" In fact, Hall was buried on 7 December 1807 and died two days prior. Six months after his death, the three lodges then existing met in

Boston and strangely-since masons throughout the world and blacks in the United States were overwhelmingly protestant- elected Nero Prince, a Russian Jew, the Grand Master. At the same convention, the name of the Grand Lodge, the governing body for individual lodges, was changed to Prince Hall Grand Lodge. There are now 4,795 Lodges of Prince Hall Masons with more than a Quarter of a million members.