On June 24, 1797, Prince Hall delivered a speech to the African American Masonic lodge at Menotomy (now Arlington), Massachusetts, the scene of a Revolutionary War battle on April 19, 1775, as British troops returned to Boston from the battles at nearby Lexington and Concord. The lodge had been formed by former members of a British- based lodge that had admitted African American members but had removed to England at the start of the Revolutionary War. Colonial Masonic lodges did not admit African Americans, prompting Hall and others who had developed an interest in Freemasonry to form an entirely African American lodge that received its official sanction from Great Britain.