RIStAlban6
Contents
LODGE
Location: X
Chartered By: X
Dispensation Date: date
Charter Date: date
Current Status: status
NOTES
Meeting Date: Second Wednesday
PAST MASTERS
REFERENCES IN GRAND LODGE PROCEEDINGS
ANNIVERSARIES
VISITS BY GRAND MASTER
BY-LAW CHANGES
HISTORY
OTHER
This Lodge was founded in 1800, the earlier communications being held in the Court House in Bristol, which at the time was being used also by the State Legislature for some of their quarterly meetings.
The Lodge was named, apparently, to honor an earlier member of the Craft, the Duke of Alban, and the arms of the Lodge are based, in part, on the coat-of-arms of that nobleman. The name St. Alban however, comes from the man who, about 303 A.D., became England’s first saint and martyr. While the motto associated with the early saint is Semper Fidelis, “Always Faithful”; that of this Lodge is Auspicium Melioris Aevi, meaning “An Omen of Better Times.”
The first Master of the Lodge was Nathaniel Waldron. The third Master was the Reverend Alexander V. Griswold, Rector of St. Michael’s Church in Bristol, who subsequently made Bishop of the Eastern Diocese of the Episcopal Church. The Only St. Alban brother who became Grand Master was Wendell R. Davis, who attained the office in 1912 and who was later instrumental in forming Overseas Lodge.
Possibly a new dimension in Ancient Craft Masonry was reached about 60 years ago when various St. Alban’s Lodges in this country, and also outside its borders, began meeting each fall. The Lodge in Bristol was host to these meetings in 1959 and 1966. It had the high honor of again being host in October of the Bicentennial Year of our Nation.
The closing years of our country’s second century, has been blessed by a renewal of the ecumenical spirit, and St. Alban’s Lodge can be proud of a share in this enterprise. In recent years, joint meetings have been held with the local Council of Knights of Columbus. These affairs have not only been conducive to a greater fellowship, but have produced tangible charitable benefit to the community.