On exhibit through July 12, 2013

Today is the George Washington Birthday Holiday.  George Washington’s Family Bible is currently on display in Little Rock at Historic Arkansas Museum.  It is part of the museum’s exhibit, Treasures of Arkansas Freemasons, 1838 – 2013, on exhibit  through July 12, 2013, in the museum’s Study Gallery. The exhibit correlates with the 175th anniversary of the Grand Lodge of Arkansas, Worshipful Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Arkansas, in downtown Little Rock and also features which will be on display for the entire length of the exhibit. Admission to the exhibit is free.

The George Washington Family Bible is on loan from the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, VA. It contains Washington’s signature and notes written in his hand. George Washington was a life-long Mason, having joined as a young man. He was later asked to be Charter Master of Alexandria Lodge No. 2. renamed after his death Alexandria-Washington Lodge. The Lodge was the recipient of many of Washington’s personal possessions, including this family bible. The George Washington Masonic Memorial is now the repository of many of the Alexandria-Washington Lodge’s artifacts.

“Freemasonry has been described as a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols, the goal of which is to take good men and make them better men,” guest curator Dick Browning wrote for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Along with the George Washington bibles, Arkansas treasures often imbued with the symbolism of freemasonry will be on exhibit, including masonic aprons and jewels, ceremonial trowels, gavels, a ballot box and the chair of Arkansas’s most famous Freemason, Albert Pike.