Author Unknown The earliest known use of the word "freemason" is encountered in the London Assize of Wages, 1212 CE. The first reference to a Mason's Lodge is found in 1277, and to "Freemasonry," in an English building contract of 1436.
The oldest Masonic Document is the Regius MS., circa 1390. the first use of the word "Freemason" in print was in 1563, in a book entitled 'Dives Pragmaticus.' The first extended printed account of Freemasonry appears in Plot's 'Natural History Of Staffordshire', Oxford, 1686, pp. 316-18. The first Masonic book is known as the "Roberts Constitutions," printed and sold by J. Roberts in London, 1722. The first Official Masonic book is Anderson's 'The Constitutions of the Free-Masons', London, 1723, of which Benjamin Franklin (a Mason) published a reprint in Philadelphia in 1734, it being the first American Masonic Book.
The first duly constituted Lodge in America was The First Lodge of Boston (still in existance as St. John's Lodge), constituted July 30, 1733 by Henry Price of Boston. The first native-born American to be made a Mason was Jonathan Belcher, born in Boston in 1681, and made a Mason in Europe in 1704. He was governor of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire from 1730 to 1741.
Just slighly shy of one half of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons; 31 of the 55 Delegates to the Constitutional Convention were Masons; so were many of Washington's Generals.
Promiment famous masons of History include: Paul Revere, John hancock, Joseph Warren, George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James K. polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, WIlliam Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Gerald R. Ford.
