History
List of Past Masters
Abbreviated History of Hay Market Lodge No. 313.
Haymarket, Virginia, USA
Prepared by Right Worshipful Chalmers Robert Custer in 1986 and edited here for space.
The first record of Masons living in the Haymarket area in Prince William County, Virginia was recorded by Fredericksburg Lodge, Virginia in 1769. Masons have thus lived in and around Haymarket for some 240 years – positively affecting the evolution of the region.
The Town of Hay Market (spelled then as two words) was chartered in 1799 and soon thereafter the District Court was relocated to the Town along with associated judges, lawyers, clerks, etc. Among these men were many Masons who decided to petition the Grand Lodge of Virginia for the establishment of a Lodge. In 1802 the Grand Lodge issued a charter in the name of Hay Market Lodge No. 67. Hay Market Lodge’s meetings for the next several years were held in the District Court House.
In 1808, the Virginia Legislature abolished the District Court system and set up Circuit Courts in each representative county seat. By the next year, Prince William County moved her Court out of Hay Market. With the Court closed, so left many of the Masons connected with it and membership fell drastically. A decade later, in 1820, the Grand Lodge accepted a request to change the name of the Lodge and move it. This marked the end of Hay Market Lodge No. 67 in the Town of Hay Market.
Some decades later, during the American Civil War, the original charter of Hay Market Lodge No. 67 was found. Shortly after the Battle of Bristow Station in 1863, Brother Surgeon McDermott of the Union Army, New York, found the charter upon a dead unknown Confederate soldier in Centreville, Virginia. The blood from the wounds of the officer and the unknown custodian of the charter was still apparent on the document. In 1886, the charter of Hay Market Lodge No. 67 was sent from Brother Vergil Price of New York to Brother E. H. Gill of Richmond Randolph Lodge No. 19, Richmond, Virginia, who then placed it in the Grand Lodge of Virginia. It was framed and for several years hung on the office wall of the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Virginia. Since the Grand Secretary’s death, the charter has disappeared. A strict search of the Grand Lodge was made in 1960, but it could not be found.
In 1901 the second Masonic Lodge was started in the town of Haymarket (by this time forward, the town’s name was one word). Dispensation was granted in 1909. The initial petition requested that the name of the Lodge be Eggleston after the then-current Grand Master, but he decided to name the Lodge, Drinkard in honor of the memory of Past Grand Master William F. Drinkard, Grand Master of Masons in Virginia in 1887. In his address to the Grand Lodge, Most Worshipful Brother Eggleston said of the new Drinkard Lodge, “I am very proud. .… When the disposition was asked for, I was told that they proposed to name the Lodge for me. To this I objected for various reasons, but was accorded the privilege of selecting the name. I do not think Lodges should ought to be named for living men, and therefore having selected the name of Fitzgerald under similar conditions for another Lodge I called this Drinkard, in honor of the memory of that Distinguished Mason, Past Grand Master William F. Drinkard, who never had other than three degrees, and yet was known all over the Masonic World and honored wherever known.”
Drinkard Lodge’s first Stated Communication was held on October 26, 1909. On February 16, 1911, the Grand Lodge of Virginia issued a charter to Drinkard Lodge No. 313. Two months later the Lodge was constituted and the officers installed.
Most Worshipful James Alston Cabell from Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 was presented together with the famous George Washington Bible (on which he took his E.A. Degree) on July 10, 1916. The Bible was used that evening to obligate two Brothers on their Master Mason’s Degree.
Advancing forward to July 10, 1961, after honoring Most Worshipful Brother Drinkard for 51 years and at times suffering some embarrassment with the name Drinkard, the Lodge passed a resolution to recommend to the Grand Lodge that its name be changed to the name of the first Lodge in Haymarket, i.e. Hay Market (two words). Subsequently, in 1962, the proposed resolution was adopted by the Grand Lodge of Virginia. Hay Market Lodge No. 313 remains a central presence to this day near the center of the Town of Haymarket, Virginia and enjoys a friendly and growing Brotherhood.
