With support from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati we were able to bring our popular Isaiah Thomas-Patriot Printer program to communities in northern Worcester County. After one such performance at the Leominster Public Library, Donald Hicks came up to me and we chatted about Isaiah Thomas’s involvement with the Masonic order. Mr. Hicks, a retired banker, is an active Freemason himself and a former Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts.
Isaiah Thomas was active in the Lancaster Lodge of Masons before he organized and became the first Master of the Morning Star Lodge of Worcester. He was so active in the organization that several new lodges were named after him. He was elected Senior Grand Warden in 1795 and Grand Master in 1802, a position he held until 1805, and was then re-elected in 1809. Thomas was one of the Masonic dignitaries at the laying of the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument in 1825.
In 2009, the Masons commemorated Isaiah Thomas’s service to their organization by creating a Sebastian miniature of him leaning against his press and reading his newspaper The Massachusetts Spy (above). Mr. Hicks donated one of these limited edition miniatures to the Society and the picture below shows him presenting it to me next to “Old Number One,” Isaiah’s famous printing press located in Antiquarian Hall.
