 African Lodge 459. Certificate of Initiation in favor of Richard P.G. Wright dated June 23, 1799 authorized by ''We the Master Wardens and Secretary of The African Lodge...Boston...Massachusetts''. Part printed form, attractively engraved with Masonic and familial scenes, on vellum. 30.5 x 25.3 cm. Blue ribbon woven through left margin, red paper seal at upper left corner. Signed in the same hand ''Prince Hall GM, George Medallion GSW, Jube Hill JW, and William Smith Sc'y.'' Extremely rare as late 18th c. Masonic ephemera. Extremely important as a witness to the early days of Afro-American Masonry.
The story of how the African Lodge was founded in 1784 has been told by George Draffen in his article ''Prince Hall Freemasonry'' posted on the internet (http://www.freemasonry.org/phylaxis/prince_hall.htm).
Draffen writes in part ''Prince Hall was born at Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies, about September 12, 1748. He was freeborn. His father, Thomas Prince Hall, was an Englishman and his mother a free coloured woman of French extraction. In 1765, at the age of 17, he worked his passage on a ship to Boston, where he worked as a leather-worker, a trade learned from his father. Eight years later he had acquired real estate and was qualified to vote. He was religiously inclined and later became a preacher in the Methodist Church with a Charge at Cambridge. On March 6, 1775, Prince Hall and fourteen other free Negroes of Boston were made Master Masons in an Army lodge attached to one of General Gage's regiments, then stationed near Boston. This lodge granted Prince Hall and his brethren authority to meet as a lodge, to go in procession on St John's Day, and as a lodge to bury their dead, but they could not confer degrees nor perform any other masonic 'work.'
For nine years these brethren, together with others who had received the degrees elsewhere, assembled and enjoyed limited privileges as masons. Finally, in March 1784, Prince Hall petitioned the Grand Lodge of England, through a Worshipful Master of a subordinate lodge in London for a warrant or charter. On September 20, 1784, the warrant was issued. It was not delivered, however, until three years later, owing to the fact that the brother to whom the matter was entrusted failed to call for it. It was delivered, however, on the 29th day of April 1787, by Captain James Scott, a sea-faring man and, incidentally, a brother-in-law of John Hancock, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
On May 6, 1787, by virtue of the authority of this Charter, African Lodge No. 459 was established and began work as a regular Masonic body.''
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