Prince Hall was an abolitionist, a community leader, and the founder of the oldest fraternal tradition established by and for Black Americans.
Born in the 1730s, Prince Hall made his life in Boston as a leather worker, a property owner, and a taxpayer. He was a free Black man who devoted himself to the freedom, education, and dignity of his people during the Revolutionary era.
On March 6, 1775, Hall and fourteen other free Black men were initiated into Freemasonry by a military lodge attached to a British regiment stationed in Boston. It was one of the few lodges willing to receive them. When the regiment departed, the men were granted permission to gather as African Lodge, though not yet to confer degrees or do full Masonic work.
Denied recognition by the white American lodges of his day, Hall petitioned the Grand Lodge of England directly. In 1784 it granted a charter for African Lodge No. 459; the document reached Boston in 1787, and the lodge was formally organized with Prince Hall as its first Master. From that single lodge grew the worldwide fraternity that today bears his name.
For Prince Hall, Masonry was never separate from justice. He petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to abolish slavery and to stop the kidnapping of free Black citizens, and he fought for the education of Black children in Boston, opening a school in his own home when the city refused to provide one.
Today Prince Hall lodges span the United States, the Caribbean, and beyond. Stone Square Lodge No. 22 stands in that unbroken line. Through the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Delaware, it descends from African Lodge No. 459 in Boston, where it all began.