Our history · Instituted June 13, 1822
From a meeting in a Dunstable home to the Masonic Temple on Main Street, here is how Rising Sun Lodge No. 39 came to be.
Scroll down and watch the sun come up.
Instituted
June 13, 1822In Dunstable, at the home of John HuntTemple dedicated
January 21, 1891A thousand guests at the banquetStill meeting
200A Main StreetMasonic Building, third floorThe story so far
Every lodge has its founders, its moves, its proud days and its odd little stories. These are some of ours.
1822
June 13, 1822
Rising Sun Lodge was instituted in the town of Dunstable, the community that would take the name Nashua in the 1830s. With no hall of their own, the first brethren gathered in the home of John Hunt.
The lodge is among the older lodges in New Hampshire, chartered nearly fifty years before Nashua’s second lodge, Ancient York.
1822–1889
The early decades
As the mill town grew, so did the lodge, and for most of the nineteenth century it moved from one rented meeting place to another. Its last home before the Temple was Nutt’s Block.
1837–1964
A lodge tradition
For its first fifteen years the lodge met on Wednesday afternoons. Then, in 1837, Rising Sun became a “Moon Lodge,” meeting on the Wednesday night closest to the full moon. The practical Yankees knew that they and their horses could find their way home by its light.
The custom lasted 127 years, until 1964.
1874
A side story
When Masons in East Providence, Rhode Island, were choosing a name for their new lodge, Brother A.O. Miles, a member of our lodge, proposed “Rising Sun.” Rising Sun Lodge No. 30 carries the name to this day.
1889
Main and Pearl Streets
The Masonic Building Association bought the lot at Main and Pearl Streets, once the site of a two-story wooden house and a skating spot, owned by Leonard W. Noyes since 1829. The brethren paid for their future building by selling shares of stock in the Association.
1891
January 21, 1891
The brethren said farewell to Nutt’s Block and dedicated their new Temple in what the city called the social event of the season, with a thousand guests at the banquet.
Built in the Queen Anne and Romanesque styles of sandstone and brick, crowned by a copper tower, the Temple held stores and offices on its lower floors and the lodge rooms, parlors and banquet hall above.
1950s
A curiosity
When the Nashua Trust faced the first floor in granite, no one realized the new stonework had closed over the cornerstone. The time capsule inside has been out of reach ever since, still waiting somewhere behind the granite.
1972
Sesquicentennial
The lodge marked its 150th year, and in 1975 the Temple added an elevator so that every brother could reach the lodge room.
1991
October 19, 1991
The brethren rededicated the Masonic Temple on its centennial, a century after the doors first opened on Main Street.
2022
Bicentennial
Two centuries after the first meeting in John Hunt’s home, Rising Sun Lodge still meets in the Temple its brethren built, a landmark on Main Street and a working lodge devoted to brotherly love, relief and truth.
Become a Mason
Our story is still being written. If you’d like to learn more about Freemasonry or visit the lodge, we’d be glad to hear from you.