As president, Washington exchanged letters with many Masonic regional lodges and nation grand lodges. In addition, he met delegations of Freemasons during his visit to Rhode Island in 1790 and his 1791 excursion of the southern states. His most important Masonic activity, nevertheless, happened on September 18, 1793. Acting as grand master pro tem, he presided at the Masonic ceremonial placing of the United States Capitol cornerstone Master mason apron.
At Washington's 1799 funeral, brothers of Alexandria Lodge performed Masonic rites. After Martha Washington's death the lodge acquired many precious things from the property, such as a Masonic apron sent from France in 1793. With these items and many curiosities, the lodge started a museum in 1812.10
In 1910 the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association has been formed. Then in 1932 that the Association dedicated its great Masonic Memorial to Washington in Alexandria, Virginia. Today Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 shows many of its precious Washington artifacts and continues to meet there. The George Washington Masonic National Memorial welcomes the people seven days a week to look at its numerous exhibitions and enjoy the magnificent view for the very top of its 333 foot tower.11
Washington himself best articulated his membership , and relationship to, Freemasonry when he replied to the brethren of King David's Lodge in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790:
Notes:
2 Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics at Eighteenth-Century Europe (NY: Oxford University Press, 1991).
3 William R. Weisberger, Wallace McLeod, and S. Brent Morris, eds. Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays Concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States, and Mexico (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2002).
4: Melvin M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (NY: George H. Doran Company, 1924). Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.)
5 Ronald E. Heaton and James R. Case, Comp. The Lodge in Fredericksburgh: A Digest of the Early Records. Norristown, PA: Ronald E. Heaton (published in USA) 1975, and J. Travis Walker, A History of Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4, A.F. & A.M., (1752-2002) (Fredericksburg VA: Sheridan Books Inc., 2002).
6 Ibid.
7 J. Hugo Tatch, The Facts about George Washington as a Freemason. (NY: Macoy's 1931).
8 Charles H. Callahan, Washington the Man and the Mason (Washington: National Publishing Co., 1913).
The Facts about George Washington as a Freemason. (NY: Macoy's 1931).
10 Charles H. Callahan, Washington the Man and the Master mason apron (Washington: National Publishing Co., 1913).
12 Washington's Masonic Correspondence as Found Among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress, ed. Julius Friedrich Sachse (Philadelphia: Press of the New Era Printing Company, 1915).