Members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society now have access to Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts Membership Cards, 1733–1990. They are available at https://www.americanancestors.org/ for surnames beginning with A thru T. The cards contain person's full name, date and place of birth, residence, occupation, dates pertaining to status in the lodge, and in some cases, date of death for those who died or left the organization before 1990.
The database may be searched by name, but for my purposes as a West Brookfield researcher, I found it helpful to search by only the name of the lodge in West Brookfield, which is Bay Path. I went to the search screen and selected the Category, Societies and Organizations; then the Database, Massachusetts: Grand Lodge of Masons Membership Cards, 1733 - 1990; then I scrolled down the page to where it said Lodge and typed in Bay Path. There were 105 entries from which I was able to extract information which I had not previously found, such as birth dates post 1915, and death dates predating the Social Security Death Index.
What's next? I can search for West Brookfield men who left town and became members of Masonic Lodges in other towns using the name search function. I can use dates of death to look for obituaries at http://www.genealogybank.com/. I can look for census and vital record information on https://www.familysearch.org/ for free, or on paid sites such as Ancestry.com. I can use address information to search the http://www.masslandrecords.com/Worcester/
I hope my readers find this information helpful.
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