Floydada Chapter No. 31, Order of the Eastern Star
Floydada, Floyd County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Floyd City Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star (O.E.S.), was organized in early 1898 when members of the Floyd City Lodge No. 712, A. F. & A. M. and their families petitioned the Grand Chapter of Texas O.E.S. for a charter. Mrs. Ella B. Starks was named worthy matron and Mr. J. L. Crabtree was appointed worthy patron. Officially chartered in October of that year, the chapter had a strong beginning with its charter and many new members. In 1933 the chapter was renamed Floydada Chapter No. 31 in keeping with the renaming of the Masonic Lodge, since the town itself had been renamed soon after its founding. In observing their O.E.S. objectives, the Floydada chapter has contributed time, effort and funds to many charitable and civic projects and organizations. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1898 the members and families of Floyd City's Masonic lodge petitioned Texas for a charter to found a local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic-affiliated fraternal order open to both women and men. Led by Worthy Matron Ella B. Starks and Worthy Patron J. L. Crabtree, the chapter took root quickly. It was renamed Floydada Chapter No. 31 in 1933 to match the town's own renaming, and over the decades it channeled its members' energy into charitable and civic work.
Why it matters
Fraternal orders like the Eastern Star knit frontier communities together and, unusually for their era, gave women a formal, active role in civic and charitable life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1898, the town that would become Floydada was a young frontier community on the Texas plains, still finding its footing. Places like it were being knit together not only by churches and schools but by fraternal orders — lodges and societies that gave scattered settlers a shared civic life. This was the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era, a time when such organizations flourished across America.
The Masonic order was among the most widespread of these, and it carried with it a companion organization built to include the whole family. The Order of the Eastern Star, affiliated with Freemasonry, was open to both women and men — a notable thing in an age when women had few formal roles in public and civic institutions.
On the frontier especially, these orders did double duty. They offered fellowship and ritual, but they also organized the charitable and civic work that a growing town needed and that government did not yet provide.
People & events
Early in 1898, members of Floyd City Lodge No. 712 of the Masons, together with their families, petitioned the Grand Chapter of Texas for a charter to found a local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. Mrs. Ella B. Starks was named Worthy Matron and Mr. J. L. Crabtree was appointed Worthy Patron — the paired leadership, one woman and one man, that is characteristic of the order.
The charter came through in October of that year, and the chapter began strongly, with its charter members joined quickly by many new ones. From the start it was meant to be an active body, not a merely ceremonial one.
In 1933 the chapter was renamed Floydada Chapter No. 31, following the Masonic lodge's own renaming — which in turn followed the town's, for the community had changed its name not long after its founding. Through all of it, the chapter kept to its purpose, giving its time, effort, and funds to a long list of charitable and civic causes.
Its place in the American story
The story of this chapter is the story of how ordinary American communities held themselves together before the modern welfare state and the modern nonprofit. Fraternal orders like the Eastern Star were the social infrastructure of countless towns, channeling neighbors' energy into charity, mutual aid, and civic improvement.
What sets the Eastern Star apart in the national picture is the role it gave to women. In an era when women could not yet vote and were largely shut out of public institutions, the order offered them a formal, recognized place in organized civic life — a Worthy Matron leading alongside a Worthy Patron. That was quietly significant, a small but real expansion of women's public standing.
Multiplied across thousands of towns, chapters like this one form a large chapter in the American story of voluntary association — the deep habit, often noted by observers of American life, of citizens banding together to do for their communities what no one else would.
If you visit
This is a place to appreciate for what it represents rather than for a dramatic view. Read the marker with an eye for its dates — 1898 for the founding, 1933 for the renaming — and notice how the chapter's name changed in step with the lodge and the town itself. That small detail is a clue to how tightly these institutions and their community were bound together.
Let it prompt a thought about the people behind the titles: a Worthy Matron and Worthy Patron leading a brand-new chapter on the plains, and the decades of quiet charitable work that followed and rarely made the history books.
Set in the context of a visit to Floydada, this marker pairs naturally with the town's other historic sites as a way of reading how a frontier community built its civic life. It is a reminder that a town is made not only of buildings and battles but of the societies its people chose to join.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Ella B. Starks
- · J. L. Crabtree
Themes & tags
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