WHO IS PRINCE HALL?Prince Hall is recognized as the father of black masonry in the United States. Historically, it allowed black people to be recognized and benefit from all the privileges of free and accepted masonry. Many rumors about the birth of Prince Hall have arisen. A few records and papers were found about him in Barbados, where he was rumored to have been born in 1748, but no birth records by church or state were found there, and none in Boston. All 11 countries were searched and churches with baptismal records were examined without finding the name Prince Hall. A widely spread rumor states that "Prince Hall was born free in the British West Indies. His father, Thomas Prince Hall, was an Englishman and his mother a free colored woman of French origin. In 1765 he worked on a ship bound for of Boston, where he worked as a leatherworker, a trade learned from his father. During this period he married Sarah Ritchery, who died at the age of 24. He had acquired real estate. vote Prince Hall also lobbied John Hancock to be allowed to join the Continental Army and was one of the few blacks to fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Religiously inclined, he later became minister of. the African Methodist Episcopal Church with a charge in Cambridge and fought for the abolition of slavery Some accounts are paraphrased from the generally discredited 1903 book Freemasonry among black men began during the War of. independence, when Prince Hall and fourteen other free black men were initiated into Lodge #441, Irish Constitution, attached to the 38th Regiment of Foot, British Army garrisoned at Castle Williams (now Fort Independence) in Boston Harbor on March 6, 1775. The master of the lodge was Sergeant John Batt. Besides Prince Hall, other newly appointed Masons were Cyrus Johnson, Bueston Slinger, Prince Rees, John Canton, Peter Freeman, Benjamin Tiler, Duff Ruform, Thomas Santerson, Prince Rayden, Cato Spain, Boston Smith, Peter Best, Forten Howard and Richard Titley.When the British army left Boston, this Lodge, #441, granted Prince Hall and his brothers authority to assemble in lodge, to go in procession on Midsummer's Day and as a Lodge of bury their dead; but they could not confer degrees or perform any other Masonic “work”.".