Masonic Lodge

c. 1790  “...built just beyond the muster house” which was adjacent to Zion Chapel of Ease on the main road “was the Masonic Lodge.   Masonry had been a part of Carolina life since the organization of the Solomon Lodge Number One in Charleston in 1735, and a Scottish rite group would be organized at the turn of the century.  William Drayton was Grand Master of the Fraternal Order of South Carolina Ancient York Masons when he died in 1790.   Other families on the island must have been members also, and although it seems surprising to find a lodge building in such a small and scattered community, evidently islanders used and enjoyed it.”

• Holmgren, Virginia C., Hilton Head, A Sea Island Chronicle, p. 64

A Masonic Lodge was organized and a building erected between the public road and Broad Creek on the northern edge of Leamington Plantation.  Captain John Stoney was Master of the Lodge for many years until his accidental death in 1821.

• Peeples, An Index to Hilton Head Island Names (Before the Contemporary Development), p. 26.