Leaving our hosts' home we headed back to Old Town Winchester. We had seen signs for a pedestrian mall. The lady I spoke to the evening before had told me the Masonic Lodge was on this mall. The whole mall is very old and very historic.
I had a lot of interest in this Masonic Lodge room. It is almost personal to me. During THE War (American Civil War, War Between the States) the Town of Winchester, Virginia changed hands Yankee to Confederate some fifty or more times (most of the townies say it is over seventy time). Churches, the Masonic Lodge, houses, stores were used as hospitals, prisoner of war holding pens, etc. Lt. Col. Homer Sprague, my great grandfather's lieutenant colonel of the 13th Connecticut Infantry Volunteers, was captured at Opequon (Opequan) or Third Winchester. Before being sent to Libby prison, he was temporarily held in the Masonic Lodge room. He was a Connecticut Mason (Hiram #1).
Other historical opportunities in that Lodge Room are that George Washington once presided and President William McKinley (lieutenant at the time) was initiated, passed and raised in three days before he eventually transferred to his home state of Ohio.
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