Many Freemason websites and those I have spoken to
are in the lines that Thomas Jefferson was definitly not a Mason.
web.mit.edu...
“... On 11 June 1776, Congress appointed a committee to draft a declaration of independence. Of the five men on this committee, two -- Franklin and
Richard Montgomery's father-in-law, Robert Livingston -- were Freemasons, and one, Roger Sherman, is believed, though not confirmed, to have been.
The other two -- Thomas Jefferson and John Adams -- were not, despite subsequent claims to the contrary. The text of the declaration was composed by
Jefferson. It was submitted to Congress and accepted on 4 July 1776. The nine signatories who can now be established as proven Freemasons, and the ten
who were probably so, included such influential figures as Washington, Franklin and, of course, the president of the Congress, John Hancock. The army,
moreover, remained almost entirely in Freemasonic hands.
“Franklin, as we have seen, was a Freemason of long standing, having been initiated nearly a half century before, in 1731. In 1734 and again in 1749,
he had been Grand Master of Pennsylvania. In 1756, he had been inducted into the Royal Society, still at that time strongly oriented towards
Freemasonry. Between 1757 and 1762, and again between 1764 and 1775, he had spent considerable time abroad, in England and in France. In 1776, as the
conflict in the colonies became a full-fledged war for independence, Franklin became, in effect, the American ambassador to France, and was to serve
in this capacity until 1785. In 1778, in Paris, he was to become a member of a particularly important French lodge, Neuf Soeurs or “Nine Sisters”,
which was also to include such luminaries as John Paul Jones (first initiated in Scotland in 1770) and Voltaire. A year later, on 21 May 1779,
Franklin became Master of Neuf Soeurs, a post to which he was reelected in 1780. In 1782, he became a member of a more elusive and mysterious
Freemasonic conclave, the Royal Lodge des Commandeurs du Temple a l'Ouest de Carcassonne (“Royal Lodge of Commanders of the Temple West of
Carcassonne”).”
Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
The Temple and the Lodge
www.falmouth.packet.archives.dial.pipex.com...