09/30/2026
On September 28, 1868, President Andrew Johnson wrote a letter to Charles T. Gay, Worshipful Master of Star of Bethlehem Lodge.
The letter still survives. Today it is preserved by the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library in Massachusetts, giving us a small but unusually direct connection between the White House and nineteenth-century American Freemasonry.
Gay had sent Johnson a copy of his Lodge's by-laws together with a pamphlet that mentioned the dedication of the new Masonic Temple in Boston. Johnson replied to acknowledge receiving them. The reference to Boston would have been personally familiar to him.
A little more than a year earlier, on June 24, 1867, Johnson had travelled to Boston for the dedication of the city's new Masonic Temple. It was an enormous public occasion. Contemporary Lodge histories describe thousands of Freemasons participating in the procession through Boston, with Lodges and Masonic representatives arriving from across the United States. Among them walked the President of the United States. Johnson was already a Freemason.
He had received the Craft degrees in Tennessee years before becoming president, and his Masonic involvement continued during his time in the White House. In fact, something remarkable had happened only four days before the Boston ceremony. In June 1867, Johnson received the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite inside the White House itself. His presidential schedule prevented him from attending the ceremony at the Masonic Temple in Washington, so the ceremony was brought to him. Benjamin B. French, a prominent Washington Freemason and former Commissioner of Public Buildings, was among those who conferred the degrees. Johnson's participation in Freemasonry was therefore hardly hidden from the public. He attended Masonic ceremonies while president, participated in cornerstone events and maintained correspondence with members of the fraternity.
That is what makes the surviving letter of September 28 interesting. There is nothing dramatic about it. No secret negotiations. No mysterious instructions. It is simply the President of the United States replying to a Worshipful Master about Lodge material and recalling a Masonic event he had personally attended. Yet the ordinariness of the correspondence tells us something about the period. Freemasonry occupied a highly visible place in nineteenth-century American civic life.
Masonic cornerstone ceremonies could become major public events. Newspapers reported on them. Politicians attended them. Presidents could openly appear wearing Masonic regalia or participate alongside thousands of Brethren without treating their membership as something that needed to be concealed.
The original letter has survived for more than 150 years. It is now catalogued simply as:
"Letter from Andrew Johnson to Worshipful Master Charles T. Gay, 1868 September 28."
Sometimes it survives because someone kept a letter.
—MasonicFind
