About the Book

Like several of America’s founding fathers, George Washington was a Freemason. Yet Washington’s ties to the fraternity and the role it played in his life have never been widely researched or understood. In A Deserving Brother, Mark Tabbert presents a complete story of Washington’s known association with Freemasonry.

Much more than a conventional history, this book has curated an exhibition of artifacts and episodes to fully contextualize our first president’s Masonic life and experiences. Consulting the Library of Congress, Mount Vernon, the Boston Athenaeum, and numerous private Masonic lodges, libraries, and museums, Tabbert chronicles all known instances of Washington’s association with Freemasons, confirming some existing knowledge, adding new insights, and debunking unsubstantiated myths. The record of Washington’s Masonic ties is presented through contextualizing descriptions and color illustrations, ranging from lodge minute books recording Washington’s attendance, to his Washington’s Masonic aprons, from the tools used at the U.S. Capitol cornerstone ceremony to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts’s gold urn, made by Paul Revere, containing a lock of Washington’s hair.

A Deserving Brother documents the significance of Freemasonry in Washington’s life and career in a way that separates fact from fiction and will satisfy both historians and general readers, including today’s Freemasons.

About the Author

Mark Tabbert is the Director of Collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. He has also been an active Freemason for over twenty years.

He is the author of American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building Communities; Museum and Memorial: Ten Years of Masonic Writing with Prof. William D. Moore; Secret Societies in America: Foundational Studies of Fraternalism; and Almanac of American Freemasonry.

As a Freemason, Mark was raised in Malta Lodge No. 318, Burlington, Iowa and is a Past Master of Mystic Valley Lodge, Arlington, Mass. and the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 1776, Washington D.C. He is a full member of Quatour Coronati Lodge 2076, London, a member of the Society of Blue Friars, a Fellow of the Philalethes Society, as well has holding honorary memberships in several American lodges of research.

He has received the York Rite degrees and orders and is a 33° in the Scottish Rite (NMJ) of Freemasonry. He is a past president of the Masonic Library and Museum Association, a Fellow and past board member of The Masonic Society, and past secretary of the Masonic Restoration Foundation.

Mark Tabbert was a member of the Washington Library’s 2018-19 Class of Research Fellows.