Our first president and founding father, George Washington was indeed a member of this order and it was something he took very seriously. He joined the Masonic lodge in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1752 at the age of just twenty. Even while the War for Independence was raging on, he continued to take part in Masonic celebrations and religious observances in many states.
So devoted was he to his order, that when he was inaugurated as president and took his oath of office, his hand rested on a bible from St. John’s Lodge in New York. In the two terms he served as president, he would often visit lodges in North and South Carolina, and when the Capitol began construction in 1793, it was Washington, along with the Grand Master of Maryland Joseph Clark, who presided over the cornerstone laying ceremony, a very Masonic ritual.
