James F. Taylor Lodge No. 169, A.F. & A.M.
Hallsville, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Chartered in 1856 in the town of Ash Springs, this Lodge was named for James F. Taylor (1812-1889), a leading citizen, state legislator, and Mason. After the railroad bypassed Ash Springs in the late 1860s, the Lodge moved to the new town of Hallsville, where the members built a two-story lodge hall. The first floor of the building was used for a school, while the second story was the Lodge meeting place. The Masons continued to operate the only school in town until 1915. Throughout its history the Lodge has been a leading force in civic activities. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered in 1856 in the town of Ash Springs, this Masonic lodge honored James F. Taylor, a leading citizen, state legislator, and Mason. When the railroad bypassed Ash Springs in the late 1860s, the lodge relocated to the new town of Hallsville and built a two-story hall, housing a school on the first floor and the lodge room above. The Masons ran the town's only school until 1915, making the lodge a cornerstone of local civic and educational life.
Why it matters
The lodge shows how fraternal orders often supplied the schools and civic leadership that frontier Texas towns lacked, especially as railroads redrew the map of settlement.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · James F. Taylor
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Noonday Holiness Camp Interdenominational
Hallsville, TX
Founded in 1897 by a group of local businessmen and landowners, this interdenominational camp began with meetings held under brush arbors on donated land. A tabernacle went up in 1900, and a plantation bell called worshippers to services that in the early years drew guests arriving by special trains. Governed by a board of managers, the camp carried on the American tradition of the outdoor revival gathering.
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church
Hallsville, TX
Within months of learning of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, newly freed families began settling this Harrison County community. Led by Brother Ned Jacobs, they held prayer meetings in one another's homes, and in 1871 formally organized Pleasant Hill Baptist Church under a brush arbor with the Rev. George Pritchett as pastor. With no other public gathering place, the church doubled as a schoolhouse for reading and writing lessons and a hall for economic and political meetings.
Old Grover Cemetery
Marshall, TX
In 1848 William McKinney gave land here for a community school, later joined by a Union church, and the spot became the heart of the far-flung Grover farm settlement. The cemetery appears in records by the 1850s, its oldest marked grave that of Susan Green, a Tennessee migrant who died in 1875. Grover faded in the 1920s and its school and church were gone by 1930, leaving the burial ground as the settlement's last physical trace.
Early Teague Home
Longview, TX
This house is one of the few surviving structures of Earpville, the early settlement that grew into Longview, standing along William T. Brooks's stagecoach line running from Monroe, Louisiana, to Tyler, Texas. Built before 1882 and bought that year by Alabama natives Latimus and Mary Teague, it became a schoolhouse in 1890 when their daughters Molly and Sarah taught classes and music here until the school moved in 1905.