About Us
In the late 1860's, Masons living in and around the Plainfield area were traveling to Joliet at attend a lodge meeting at Mount Joliet #42 or Matteson Lodge #175. Getting to Joliet from Plainfield at that time was a challenge. Masons living in Plainfield decided to have their own lodge. They petitioned the Grand Lodge of Illinois in 1866. They held their first meeting on the 4th Tuesday in December 1866. They recieved a charter from the Grand Lodge on December of 1867. At that time they were renting a room upstairs in the middle of the block on the North side of Lockport street. There were no numbers on the buildings at that time and by looking at old pictures, one cannot tell which building they were using.
Many writers and thinkers have tried to define Freemasonry but it really defeats definition. It is too complex, too profound in conception, to easily expressed in words. Perhaps the simplest and best definition of all is the phrase "the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God." Our Masonic forefathers had an understanding of human needs and human aspirations. They may never have dreamed of the mindless computer which governs our lives, or the fission of matter which threatens our lives, but they understood human nature and what motivates the spirit of man. Thus from a simple process of using stone and mortar for building they progressed to the most important of life's functions, the building of character. -Louis L. Williams