Prince Hall born December 4, 1807 is considered the founder of "Black Freemasonry" in the United States, known today as Prince Hall Freemasonry.
Prince Hall's birth date and birthplace are subject to conjecture. He may have been born in either England, Massachusetts or Barbados, and the year 1738 is now generally agreed on though not certain. Narrative stories of Prince Hall's birth and youth are unsubstantiated and appear to have been invented by their authors (particularly William H. Grimshaw in 1903).
Documents in Massachusetts showing that slave owner William Hall freed a man named Prince Hall on April 9, 1765 cannot be conclusively linked to any one individual as there exists record of no fewer than 21 males named Prince Hall, and several other men named Prince Hall were living in Boston at that time. It is also unknown whether he was free-born or a freedman.
Prince Hall was a property owner and a registered voter in Boston. He worked as an abolitionist and civil rights activist, fought for laws to protect free blacks in Massachusetts from kidnapping by slave traders, campaigned for schools for black children, and operated a school in his own home.
On March 6, 1775, Prince Hall and fourteen other free black men were initiated, passed and raised in Military Lodge No. 441, an integrated Lodge attached to the British Army and then stationed in Boston.
It is probable that Prince Hall served in the Massachusetts militia during the American Revolutionary War, but his service record is unclear because at least six men from Massachusetts named "Prince Hall" served in the military during the war. Historians George Washington Williams and Carter Woodson believed that this Prince Hall did serve in the war. He may have been one of the black soldiers who fought on the American side of the Battle of Bunker Hill.