prince hall :: essays research papers

WHO IS PRINCE HALL ? Prince Hall is recognized as the Father of Black Masonry in the United States. Historically, he made it possible for Negroes to be recognized and get it on all privileges of free and accepted masonry. Many rumors of the birth of Prince Hall eat up arisen. A few records and papers have been found of him in Barbados where it was rumored that he was born in 1748, notwithstanding no record of birth by church or by state, has been found there, and none in capital of Massachusetts. altogether 11 countries were searched and churches with baptismal records were examined without finding the name of Prince Hall. One widely circulated rumor states that "Prince Hall was free born in British West Indies. His father, doubting Thomas Prince Hall, was an Englishman and his mother a free colored woman of French extraction. In 1765 he produceed his passage on a ship to Boston, where he worked as a leather worker, a trade learned from his father. During this time he marr ied Sarah Ritchery. Shortly after their marriage, she died at the age of 24. Eight geezerhood later he had acquired real estate and was qualified to vote. Prince Hall in addition pressed John Hancock to be allowed to join the Continental forces and was one of a few blacks who fought at the battle of Bunker Hill. sacredly inclined, he later became a minister in the African Wesleyan Episcopal Church with a charge in Cambridge and fought for the abolition of slavery." slightly accounts are paraphrased from the generally discredited Grimshaw book of 1903. Free Masonry among Black custody began during the War of Independence, when Prince Hall and fourteen other free black manpower were initiated into Lodge 441, Irish Constitution, attached to the 38th Regiment of Foot, British phalanx Garrisoned at Castle Williams (now Fort Independence) Boston Harbor on serve 6, 1775. The Master of the Lodge was Sergeant John Batt. Along with Prince Hall, the other newly made masons were Cyrus Johnson, Bueston Slinger, Prince Rees, John Canton, Peter Freeman, Benjamin Tiler, Duff Ruform, Thomas Santerson, Prince Rayden, Cato Spain, Boston Smith, Peter Best, Forten Howard and Richard Titley. When the British Army left Boston, this Lodge, 441, granted Prince Hall and his brethren chest of drawers to meet as a lodge, to go in procession on Saints John Day, and as a Lodge to bury their dead but they could not confer degrees nor perform any other Masonic "work".