“As Men and as Masons”

Abstract

This chapter examines John Marrant’s generative role in the early history of African American Freemasonry. Centering Marrant in African American Freemasonry’s early history renders a more expansive understanding of the temporal and geographic origins of the tradition. Over the first half of the eighteenth century, Africans and their descendants encountered European Freemasonry in Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. The existence of lodges outside North America and prior to the organization of the African Lodge in Boston underscores the likelihood that Marrant encountered and formed ideas about Freemasonry prior to his friendship with the Boston abolitionist and Masonic leader Prince Hall. This chapter argues that New World developments alone cannot account for the adoption of Freemasonry by persons of African descent. Striking similarities and multiple points of correspondence—including extreme secrecy and ritual progressions by degrees—point to West African initiation societies as institutional predecessors to African American Freemasonry.