RIWashington3
Contents
LODGE
Location: X
Chartered By: X
Dispensation Date: date
Charter Date: date
Current Status: status
NOTES
Meeting date: Second Tuesday
PAST MASTERS
REFERENCES IN GRAND LODGE PROCEEDINGS
ANNIVERSARIES
VISITS BY GRAND MASTER
BY-LAW CHANGES
HISTORY
The history of our Lodge reads like a romance of early times and is complete with interesting traditions of the sea and of the development of Freemasonry in Rhode Island. Of the fifty-eight members at the time the Lodge was constituted, twenty-one were sea captains who sailed their ships to the seven seas and brought back many interesting mementos of their voyages. The Masonic building on Baker Street is timbered with oak beams that were formerly parts of old British frigates that were sunk in Newport Harbor. Masonic tradition tells us that Worshipful Brother Peck, during the anti-Masonic period, kept the Charter of the Lodge in a copper box buried at the bottom of the Warren River. At any rate, we now have the original Charter in our possession.
The Lodge on February 20, 1798, voted to present a request for the promised Charter, and on this date a committee, consisting of Charles Wheaton, Sylvester Child, and Nathaniel Phillips, was appointed to draft by-laws. The Charter was granted March 15, 1798 and was received at a meeting held at the house of Benjamin Cole. The names included in the Charter are the same as those of the petitioners present at the first meeting.
The Charter, which is still in the possession of the Lodge and in a good state of preservation, gave to the Lodge the designation of Washington Lodge No.1, and provides as follows: “We do hereby declare the precedence of said Lodge in the Grand Lodge and elsewhere, to be third from us.” The Grand Lodge was formed in 1791 by St. John’s Lodge No.1 of Newport, and St. John's Lodge No. 1 of Providence, each taking the rank of No. 1. The first Charter was granted to Washington Lodge, which accounts for the original designation as No. 1 though it ranked No. 3 in order of seniority, the designation it now bears.