Freemason Universal Lodge No. 1 Gets Historical Marker... proudest institutions finally get the recognition it deserves. WTF?! Last year, Alexandria Freemason McArthur Myers submitted an application to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources asking that one of Alexandria’s proudest institutions finally get the recognition it deserves. On Saturday, March 23, 2019, that new historical marker for Universal Lodge No. 1, which is among just 10 such markers granted in all of 2018, was dedicated with a long-overdue celebration. The text on the marker reads: “Prince Hall Masonry originated in Massachusetts in 1775 when a lodge attached to the British army initiated Prince Hall and 14 other free black men as Freemasons. Universal Lodge No. 1, the first Prince Hall lodge in Virginia, was established in Alexandria on 5 Feb. 1845.  According to tradition, founders William Dudley, Benjamin Crier, and Sandy Bryant were seamen who had become masons in Liverpool, England, in the 1830s. They later joined Social Lodge No. 1 in Washington, DC, and worked to charter a new lodge across the Potomac River. Before the Civil War, Universal Lodge No. 1 met secretly in a house on South Royal Street in Hayti, a black enclave.”