Moulton Lodge No. 298, A.F. & A.M.
Moulton, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First meeting held July 20, 1866. Chartered June 15, 1867, with 18 members. First building erected in cooperation with Live Oak Church, in 1874. Through the years, this Lodge has shared its building with other groups. It moved in 1894 to New Moulton. A new hall was built in 1910.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Meeting first in July 1866 and chartered the next year with eighteen members, this Masonic lodge grew alongside the German- and Czech-settled country of Lavaca County in the years just after the Civil War. Its early members built their first hall in cooperation with a local church and, over the decades, shared their quarters with other community groups before following the town to New Moulton and raising a new hall in 1910. The lodge's story tracks the resettling and shifting of a central Texas farm town across the late nineteenth century.
Why it matters
It shows how fraternal and religious institutions cooperated to build civic life in Reconstruction-era Texas, providing shared meeting halls that held small immigrant farming communities together.
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Themes & tags
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