Grand Lodge of West Virginia

The Grand Lodge of West Virginia is one of two bodies that govern Freemasonry in the state of West Virginia (the other being the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of West Virginia). It also supervises the West Virginia Masonic Home in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Before the American Civil War, West Virginia had been a part of Virginia, and its Lodges were therefore under the control of the Grand Lodge of Virginia. The area that became West Virginia seceded from the Confederacy and "maintenance of fraternal relations between lodges of the two states became impossible" (Gazette-Times, in 1915). A convention to create a new lodge took place in 1864, and then at the war's end, on April 12, 1865, the day when Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was formally disbanded by ceremony at Appomattox Court House, the Grand Lodge of West Virginia was founded in Fairmont, West Virginia. William Bates was its first Grand Master. Over the following period there was confusion as many West Virginia lodges still maintained loyalty to the Grand Lodge of Virginia although all the Lodges that were originally chartered by Virginia were re-chartered by the Grand Lodge of West Virginia within the next fifty years.

Association of the Grand Lodge with West Virginia state government continues, for example with then-Governor Gaston Caperton attending "West Virginia Masonic Heritage Day Celebration" in Charleston on August 21, 1993 to accept a "resolution honoring the memory of our Brother and former Governor, George Wesley Atkinson." Nationally prominent U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd was to receive a "Legion of Honor" award that day, relating to his public service and Freemasonry.

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