Famous Masons
Famous Masons
Many great men of history were also Freemasons. What is it about the Masonic Fraternity that attracted so many great men of history? From prodigys like Mozart to great leaders like George Washington and Winston Churchill. Great thinkers like Benjamin Franklin, and Gothe. Business leaders like JC Penny, Henry Ford, and Dave Thomas. Freemasons have had such a profound impact on the world.
The wisest and best of men in all ages have been encouragers and promoters of our Art, and have never deemed it derogatory to their dignity to level themselves with the Fraternity, to extend its privileges, and to patronize its assemblies.
Famous Masons
James Monroe
5th President of the United States, initiated as a young student in colonial Williamsburg.
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James Naismith
Canadian-born physician who invented basketball in 1891 and later served as Master of his lodge in Kansas.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German poet and statesman whose Masonic poems remain part of German lodge life.
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John Glenn
First American to orbit the Earth, later a U.S. Senator, made a Mason at Sight by the Grand Master of Ohio.
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John Steinbeck
Nobel Prize–winning author of The Grapes of Wrath, raised in his hometown lodge in Salinas.
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Joseph Haydn
Composer and friend of Mozart, who was initiated into the same Viennese Masonic circle but never progressed past the first degree.
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King Edward VII
Long-serving Grand Master of English Freemasonry as Prince of Wales, whose patronage helped the Craft grow rapidly.
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