Grand Lodge of Massachusetts

Grand Lodge of Massachusetts A.F. & A.M.

Seal of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts A.F. & A.M.
English Motto	Follow Reason
Constituted	1733
Jurisdiction	Massachusetts
Location	Massachusetts USA
Website	massfreemasonry.org

The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, commonly referred to as the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and abbreviated GLMA, is the main governing body of Freemasonry within Massachusetts, and maintains Lodges in other jurisdictions overseas, namely Panama, Chile, the People's Republic of China (meeting in Tokyo, Japan), and Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.

It claims to be the third oldest Masonic Grand Lodge in existence (after the United Grand Lodge of England, which dates its own existence from the formation of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, and the Grand Lodge of Ireland founded in 1725), interpreting the 1733 warrant, creating Henry Price the Provincial Grand Master of New England, as the creation of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. Both the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and the Grand Lodge of Virginia dispute this claim to be the third oldest Grand Lodge in the world.

Price's successors as Provincial Grand Master, Robert Tomlinson, Thomas Oxnard, Jeremy Gridley and John Rowe, were all appointed (in 1736, 1743, 1755 and 1768 respectively) by the Moderns' Grand Master in London. The Provincial Grand Lodge, which, due to the American Revolution, held no meeting during the period 1775 to 1787, finally merged with its counterpart Antient Provincial Grand Lodge, created in 1769 by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. On the date of that merger, 5 March 1792, the newly created body first exercised its new sovereign powers by electing a Grand Master in the person of John Cutler, and by adopting the name The Grand Lodge of the Most Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.