Prince Hall Cemetery

Prince Hall Cemetery—or The Prince Hall Mystic Cemetery—and the conjoined Masonic Lodge—Prince Hall—were founded at the inception of our country.

Prince Hall himself was a black man originally from Barbados who fled with his native father and white mother to Massachusetts to avoid persecution. Hall quickly got involved in the word of God and became a popular Methodist Minister around Boston.

Hall was a staunch abolitionist who worked to free those enslaved during the founding of our country. Hall primarily worked within the channels of freemasonry, education and the military to quell the oppression he saw going on all around him in Boston. Hall founded the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Masons March 6, 1775 where he was named Grand Master. Hall died in 1807.

Jumping to 1864, then Grand Master William B. Kendall handed over this Gardner Street piece of land he had purchased in 1856 to his lodge's Masonic Order.

The Masonic Lodge and Cemetery are best known for helping to stem the tides of racism in our countries' early history by providing a decent place for African-Americans to be put to rest. Prince Hall Cemetery is believed to be the only remaining African-American Masonic Cemetery in the entire US.

According to the Arlington Historical Society's website, “Records indicate it was in use until about 1897 when for unknown reasons, it fell into disuse and as time passed it was forgotten.”

Then, in 1987, the Arlington Historical Society re-discovered this lost artifact of American history and together with the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Dorchester, restored the aged cemetery. The group that revitalized the cemetery is known as the Prince Hall Mystic Arlington Cemetery Association.

Led by the Association, “[t]he cemetery was restored through donations from the Prince Hall Grand Lodge and by the generosity of the town of Arlington through the town's sharing its Community Development Block Grant funds. In 1990, the cemetery was rededicated. In 1998, the cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places,” according to the Arlington Historical Society's website.

Since this restoration of the cemetery, every Memorial Day, there is a noontime celebration where local Masons honor the dead with a benediction ceremony, presentation of flags, an address and the playing of taps. To complete this procession, members of the lodge proceed to the Copps Hill Burying Ground in Boston where Prince Hall is buried to give him one final dedication.

Click here for last year's address on Memorial Day to honor those that are at peace in Prince Hall Cemetery.