Famous Freemasons Through History

The verified roster reaches across more than 250 years, from a young Virginia surveyor to a basketball champion in Boston. A handful of moments mark the sweep of famous Freemasons through history.

No American Mason is better known than George Washington, and the founding generation gave the fraternity its firmest place in the nation’s story. Washington was initiated in 1752 in Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 in Virginia, later served as the first Worshipful Master of Alexandria Lodge No. 22, and laid the cornerstone of the United States Capitol in a Masonic ceremony in 1793.

Benjamin Franklin served as Grand Master of Pennsylvania in 1734 and printed the first Masonic book in America that same year. Paul Revere served as Grand Master of Massachusetts, and John Hancock belonged to the same Boston lodge. The Marquis de Lafayette was honored by lodges across the country during his farewell tour, and John Paul Jones, the father of the United States Navy, was initiated in Scotland. The presence was real and traceable, not the secret hand of legend. The wider question of how many signers of the Declaration and the Constitution actually belonged, and which famous names did not, is taken up in our guide to the Founding Fathers and Freemasonry.

Fifteen United States presidents held verified Masonic membership, and Freemasonry ran through the independence movements of the wider Americas as well. Fourteen of those presidents were raised as Master Masons, while Lyndon Johnson took only the first degree and never advanced. The line runs from Washington to Gerald Ford, and two of them, Andrew Jackson and Harry Truman, led their state grand lodges as Grand Master.

In Latin America, Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin organized parts of the independence struggle through lodges such as the Lautaro Lodge, and Bolivar served as a grand master in the republics he helped found. Benito Juarez, the reforming president of Mexico, was also a Mason. Across the Atlantic, Winston Churchill was initiated in a London lodge in 1901, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, who helped unify Italy, served as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy.

Freemasonry has counted kings and national leaders among its members, and in Britain the Craft has long been led by royalty. King Edward VII served as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England for twenty-seven years before he took the throne. His son King George VI was a Grand Master Mason of Scotland, and Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was initiated in 1952 and remained a member until his death in 2021. The current Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, has held that office since 1967, the longest tenure in its history.

On the Continent, Frederick the Great of Prussia was an active Mason, and the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and later served as prime minister, was initiated in Ireland. The royal association is old and genuine, which is why one correction is worth stating plainly: despite the tradition, the current King, Charles III, is not a Freemason. The royal Grand Masters, the world leaders who belonged, and the truth about whether King Charles is a Freemason are set out in our guide to kings and world leaders.

The Craft followed armies and frontiers, and many of the soldiers and pioneers whose names mark American maps were lodge members. General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded Allied forces in the Pacific, was made a Mason at sight, and General John J. Pershing led the American Expeditionary Forces in the First World War. George C. Marshall, author of the postwar recovery plan that bears his name, and Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War and later a film actor, were both Masons.

On the frontier, Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, who fell together at the Alamo in 1836, were lodge members, as was Sam Houston, who led Texas to independence and later served as Grand Master of Tennessee. Stephen F. Austin, for whom the capital of Texas is named, was a Mason as well. Freemasonry traveled west with the people who settled and governed the frontier.

The Craft drew composers, novelists, and poets whose work still defines their fields. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was initiated in Vienna on December 14, 1784, and wrote several works for his lodge, including the Masonic Funeral Music; his opera The Magic Flute is woven through with Masonic imagery. Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet, was initiated in 1781 and later served as a lodge officer.

American letters were well represented by Mark Twain, a member of a St. Louis lodge, and John Philip Sousa, the march king. British writing gave the fraternity Rudyard Kipling, who wrote Masonic verse, along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. Earlier, the French philosopher Voltaire was initiated in Paris in 1778, at the age of eighty-three, with Benjamin Franklin among those present.

Freemasons were present at the frontiers of exploration and industry, on Earth and beyond it. Buzz Aldrin, a Freemason, carried a Scottish Rite flag to the lunar surface during Apollo 11 in 1969, and several of the early American astronauts belonged to the Craft. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth and later a four-term United States senator, was a member of an Ohio lodge.

The Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was initiated in a London lodge before his expeditions south. In industry, the automobile pioneer Henry Ford and the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who funded thousands of public libraries, were both lodge members. The thread runs from the workshop to the launch pad.

Famous Black Freemasons belong to the Prince Hall tradition, the oldest African American branch of the Craft, founded by Prince Hall in Boston in the 18th century. Prince Hall was an abolitionist and a leader of the Revolutionary era who petitioned Massachusetts against slavery and for Black education; the institutional history of the tradition he started is told in What Is Prince Hall Freemasonry?

The roster is deep. It counts Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education; the educator Booker T. Washington; the scholar and NAACP co-founder W. E. B. Du Bois; and the congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. In music, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, W. C. Handy, and Louis Armstrong were Prince Hall Masons. Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, was a member, and so is Shaquille O’Neal, made a Master Mason at sight in a Boston Prince Hall lodge in 2011, along with his fellow NBA champion Scottie Pippen. The full roster, across law, letters, music, and sport, appears in our guide to famous Black Freemasons.

Many of the names that circulate on famous Freemason lists were never members at all, and getting this right matters as much as the roster itself.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton appear on countless lists but have no verified lodge record. Abraham Lincoln petitioned a lodge in Springfield, Illinois, then withdrew before initiation to avoid the appearance of political motive, and was never a Mason. Two names call for a careful word. Ronald Reagan received an honorary Scottish Rite distinction in 1988 but was never initiated in a lodge, and Lyndon Johnson took only the first degree. Modern political figures who turn up on 33rd degree conspiracy lists, with no lodge record behind them, are not Masons either.