Honey Grove Lodge No. 164, A. F. & A. M.
Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Granted a dispensation by the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1854, the Honey Grove Masonic Lodge was officially chartered in 1856. Early meetings were held in the attic of the old Smith Hotel on the town square and on the second floor of the Walcott School Building. In 1914 the Lodge moved to a building on N. 6th Street shared with the newspaper office. After it burned in 1955, the Lodge and newspaper built adjacent structures at this site. The Lodge facilities are shared by four Masonic organizations, which support many programs in Honey Grove. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered in 1856 after a dispensation two years earlier, the Honey Grove Masonic Lodge met first in the attic of the old Smith Hotel and above the Walcott School before settling into its own quarters. Fire destroyed its N. 6th Street building in 1955, after which the lodge and the local newspaper rebuilt side by side at this site. For more than a century it has been a fixture of the town's civic and charitable life.
Why it matters
Fraternal lodges like this one were mainstays of civic and charitable life in nineteenth-century American towns, knitting frontier communities together.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Honey Grove City Hall
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A decade after Honey Grove incorporated, Mayor J. P. Gilmer pressed the council in 1885 to build a proper city hall and jail, and the surviving minutes record every step—choosing a lot, arranging financing, and even rejecting the county's offer of aid when commissioners demanded a quarter interest. Built of stone from the local Floyd Quarry by contractor W. N. Allen, it opened in 1889 and remains Fannin County's only original civic building still standing. It is a rare survivor of small-town self-government in the Gilded Age.
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Church of St. Mark, The Evangelist, Episcopal
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Crockett Park
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