Friendly #239
Our Meetings
- Regular Day: 2nd Tuesday
- Regular time: 6:30pm
- Location: Barbados Ave
- Installation Month: February
- Installation Day: Tuesday
- Dark: July, August & September
About Us
- Website: http://www.friendlylodge.com/
- Constituted: 12th December, 1797
Relevant Extracts from "An Historical Account of Jamaican Freemasonry" by F. Seal-Coon
Warranted on 31 January 1809, was actually constituted on 12 December 1797 as an offshoot of Union Lodge No.257(A) and given the Provincial number 8(A). Its number under the 1809 warrant was 342(A) which became 438 after the Union, 291 in 1832 and 239 in 1863, under which last number it is still working. Given Provincial No.3 in 1816, it is now District No.2.
A printed history of the Lodge relates that it was constituted at the first meeting, on 12 December 1797, of the Atholl Provincial Grand Lodge under the presidency of Col. William Vick of the Artillery Lodge No.262, along with Provincial Nos.6(A) and 7(A). Two letters, dated respectively 29 December 1796 and 17 June 1797, were written by Solomon Morales, a P.M. of Union Lodge No.257 and later Provincial Grand Secretary, to Robert Leslie, Grand Secretary of the Atholl Grand Lodge, the first giving the reason for asking for a new lodge as "we are in the Union Lodge too numerous". The second designates himself as prospective Master, David Sanches as S.W. and Abraham P. Mendez Jr. as J.W.; but the first officers were, in fact, Abraham D'C. Alvarenga, W.M.; Abraham P. Mendez Jr., S.W.; Solomon Bonitto, J.W., presumably installed the same day. (A small portrait of Bonitto, lent by the Lodge, lies in the District Grand Lodge museum). However, when an engraved warrant was issued in 1809, it named the officers as Solomon Morales, W.M.; Samuel Mendez, S.W.; David Belesario, J.W. (Most of the members down the years have been Jewish and the Lodge is still occasionally referred to as "the Jewish lodge", although it has had a few, and now has several, non-Jewish members.
The FRIENDLY Lodge has given many leaders to Jamaican Masonry, including several Provincial or District Grand Masters and Deputies. It has worked continuously, and a [Bi]Centenary warrant has been issued.
The printed history states that the Lodge's first meeting-place was "The Lodge Room" in Port Royal Street, Kingston. Subsequently it appears to have met at Masons' Hall in Church Street, but in 1869 purchased 23 Hanover Street, afterwards known as the "Friendly Lodge building". About 1892 these premises were sold and meetings were held at Sussex Hall, also in Hanover Street, where all Kingston lodges then met. After this hall was destroyed in the 1907 earthquake, the Lodge met at different places by dispensation until 10 August 1908, when it moved to a temporary structure at 80 Hanover Street, replaced a year and a half later by a Temple erected on the same site. [In the 1970s] it moved to the Scottish Freemasons' Building at McGregor Square, the first English lodge to do so and the only one up to the end of 1973.
