Fate Lodge No. 802, A.F. & A.M.
Fate, Rockwall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Fate Lodge No. 802 traces its history to December 3, 1896, when a charter was issued by the Grand Lodge of Texas, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. J. B. Young served as the first worshipful master. The 23 charter members were mostly merchants and farmers. Lodge members met in a local grocery store, blacksmith shop, and schoolhouse until 1953, when a new lodge hall/community building was built. The lodge participates in many outreach activities and continues to serve the community as it has for more than a century. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Grand Lodge of Texas chartered Fate Lodge No. 802 in December 1896, its twenty-three founding members were mostly the merchants and farmers who made up this small Rockwall County town. For decades they met wherever they could — a grocery store, a blacksmith shop, the schoolhouse — before finally building a combined lodge hall and community building in 1953. More than a century on, the lodge still anchors the town's civic life.
Why it matters
Fraternal lodges like this one were the civic glue of small-town America, organizing charity and community in places with few other institutions.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · J. B. Young
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fate Presbyterian Church
Fate, TX
Fate grew up in the 1880s as a new settlement along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, and its Presbyterians organized a congregation there among the Leonard, Kale, and other founding families. A circuit rider served the young church, and in 1894, under head carpenter and charter member H. A. Kale, the members raised their first sanctuary on Brown Street. A new building followed at this site in 1926, keeping the congregation woven into the life of the growing railroad town.
The Church of Christ in Rockwall
Rockwall, TX
Before Texas won its independence in 1836, settlers were expected to uphold Mexico's Catholic state religion—so the arrival of a 300-member "church on horseback and wheels," led by preacher-physician Mansil Matthews, marked a turning point. Crossing the Red River in January 1836, the group is remembered as the first Church of Christ congregation in Texas. Matthews later helped plant a congregation in Rockwall in 1853, and through splits over instrumental music and later reunions, that church endures today as Eastridge Church of Christ.
Blackland Cemetery
Fate, TX
In 1882 William and Cassandra Harvey gave land to the Blackland farming community for a school, church, and cemetery, which absorbed the older Bost family plot and its 1879 graves. The burial ground holds veterans reaching back to the Civil War, along with fraternal emblems, a zinc obelisk, and weathered upright stones. Today it stands as one of the few tangible reminders of the vanished Blackland settlement.
Mount Zion Cemetery
Fate, TX
John and Martha Dewees brought their seven children from Indiana to Texas in 1856, buying 300 acres along Camp Creek and helping found the Mount Zion community. A log church-and-schoolhouse rose on land they donated, and by 1859 a cemetery had taken shape, its first grave that of Julia McCrearby. Today more than 600 graves rest here — pioneers, a county official, and veterans of every war from the Civil War through Korea — with a sobering share belonging to infants who died before their first year.