Famous Freemasons
Statesmen, scientists, soldiers, artists, writers and humanitarians who knelt at the same altars.
Freemasonry never claims credit for its members’ genius — but the roll of documented brethren shows how wide the Craft’s door has stood. A small selection:
Statesmen
- George Washington — initiated at Fredericksburg, 1752; took the presidential oath on a lodge Bible and laid the Capitol cornerstone in Masonic regalia.
- Benjamin Franklin — printer of the first Masonic book in America (the 1734 Constitutions) and Master of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris.
- Winston Churchill — initiated 1901, Studholme Lodge, London.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman — Truman a Past Grand Master of Missouri.
- Simón Bolívar and Giuseppe Garibaldi — liberators of South America and Italy.
Scientists
- Edward Jenner — pioneer of vaccination, lodge Master in Berkeley.
- Sir Alexander Fleming — discoverer of penicillin, active London Mason.
- Joseph Banks and many fellows of the early Royal Society, whose membership intertwined with the first Grand Lodge era.
- Buzz Aldrin — Apollo 11 astronaut, member of Clear Lake Lodge, Texas.
Military Leaders
- The Marquis de Lafayette — hero of two revolutions.
- Field Marshals Kitchener and Haig; General Douglas MacArthur; John J. Pershing.
- Countless regimental lodges carried the Craft around the globe — soldiers initiating soldiers between campaigns.
Artists
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — initiated in Vienna, 1784; composed extensively for the lodge (hear the tradition in our Music collection).
- Joseph Haydn and Jean Sibelius — Sibelius wrote a complete cycle of ritual music still in use.
- Marc Chagall, Alphonse Mucha — painters of light and symbol.
Writers
- Robert Burns — Scotland’s bard, Depute Master of his lodge.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — whose Masonic poems remain in German lodge use.
- Rudyard Kipling — whose lodge in Lahore inspired “The Mother-Lodge”.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Alexander Pushkin.
Humanitarians
- Albert Schweitzer — physician of Lambaréné.
- Thomas John Barnardo — founder of homes for destitute children.
- The anonymous thousands behind Masonic hospitals, orphanages and relief funds — the Craft’s truest celebrities.
Hundreds more are documented lodge by lodge in our Encyclopedia and the biographical shelves of the Library.