Cincinnati Lodge Profile

How did a Lodge in Morristown get the name Cincinnati?

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Cincinnati Lodge is one of eight that make up the 11^th Masonic District of the Most Ancient and Honorable Society of Free  and Accepted Masons of the Grand Lodge of New Jersey.

Warranted in 1803, we celebrated our 200th anniversary in 2003.  Regular Communications are held on the second and fourth Monday, with Officer's rehearsals on all other Mondays except during July and August when the Lodge is on Summer Refreshment.

On the second Thursday, except during Summer Refreshment, the Temple building hosts the 11th District's Lodge of Instructions with member Lodges taking turns acting as host.

During the winters of 1779-80 and 1780-81, George Washington was in Morristown with the encampment of the Continental Army.  Among the soldiers from the Connecticut Line and a few from the Pennsylvania Brigade were men who belonged to the Society of Cincinnati.  These men were members of a Military Lodge named American Union Lodge.

The Society was named after the Roman leader Cincinnatus who was thrice called from his estates to lead Rome out of difficulty.  The farmer soldiers had left their plows to fight for freedom.  As most armies are composed of young men, it is well taken that some of these men married girls from the surrounding country, and the Encyclopedia Britannica states that men who had migrated from the northern counties of New Jersey in 1788 established the town of Cincinnati, Ohio.  They had followed the call of Jonathan Heart, who presided many times over American Union Lodge here, and who had gone a few years before to the fertile valley of the Ohio River and established the town of Marietta.  It is only natural that when this Lodge was founded in 1803 that it was named Cincinnati, as its first members in establishing the Lodge were also members of the Society of Cincinnati.

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