Rising Star Lodge No. 429, A.F. & A.M.
Center Point, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Chartered on June 5, 1875, this lodge was first located in a building which was destroyed by fire in 1900, along with all the lodge records. Meetings were held in the Guadalupe Valley Bank building from 1902 until the lodge moved to this site in 1964. Charter members of the lodge were: Miles A. Lowrance, Joshua D. Brown, William D. C. Burney, H. B. Dollahite, Alonzo Rees, A. S. Moore, John F. Moore, Sidney B. Rees, Theodore Wiedenfeld, Stephen G. Wray, George W. Wools, James M. Witt, Samuel H. Wellborn, F. M. Moore, and Thomas C. North. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered in 1875, this Hill Country Masonic lodge lost its first home, along with all its records, to a fire in 1900. For decades afterward its members met in the local bank building before moving to the present site in 1964. Its founding charter carried the names of fifteen early settlers of the Center Point area, including Joshua D. Brown, an early figure in the settlement of Kerr County.
Why it matters
Fraternal lodges were central to the social fabric of frontier Texas towns, and this one's roster preserves the names of the pioneers who built the Guadalupe valley community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years after the Civil War, the Texas Hill Country was still a place of new beginnings. Families were pushing up the valleys of the Guadalupe River, clearing land, raising stock, and building the small communities that would become the towns you drive through today. Center Point, set along the river in Kerr County, was one of those young settlements, and its people were looking for ways to turn a scattering of homesteads into a real community.
One of the most common ways frontier Texans did that was by organizing a Masonic lodge. Freemasonry had deep roots in Texas, reaching back to the days of the Republic, and by the 1870s lodges were springing up in towns large and small across the state. A lodge offered fellowship, mutual aid, a code of conduct, and a regular reason for neighbors spread across miles of rough country to gather under one roof.
This lodge received its charter in the summer of 1875, during the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era, when Texas was rebuilding its institutions and its economy after the war. Nationally, fraternal organizations of every kind were flourishing, and small-town lodges like this one became part of the backbone of American civic life.
People & events
Fifteen men signed on as charter members, and their names read like a roll call of the early Center Point community. Among them were Miles A. Lowrance and Joshua D. Brown, the latter a figure tied to the early settlement of Kerr County, along with members of the Moore and Rees families and neighbors such as Theodore Wiedenfeld, Stephen G. Wray, and Thomas C. North. Several shared surnames hint at how closely knit these frontier families were: brothers, cousins, and in-laws working the same valley.
For its first quarter-century, the lodge met in its original building. Then, in 1900, disaster struck: fire destroyed the building and, with it, every one of the lodge's records. For any organization that loss is painful, but for a lodge, whose minutes and rolls are its memory, it was a blow to its very history. Much of what we might have known about those early meetings simply went up in smoke.
The members carried on. By 1902 they were meeting in the Guadalupe Valley Bank building, a fitting home in a town where the lodge and local business were woven together. They stayed there for more than six decades before moving to the present site in 1964, and the lodge's story was honored with this marker during the Texas Sesquicentennial of 1986.
Its place in the American story
Across nineteenth-century America, fraternal lodges did work that governments and churches alone could not. In places without many public institutions, a lodge could offer a meeting hall, help for a widow or an injured member, and a sense of belonging that bound newcomers to a place. Rising Star Lodge is one small thread in that very large national fabric.
Its story also speaks to something every historian wrestles with: how fragile the record can be. The 1900 fire is a reminder that much of small-town history survives only because people took the trouble to reconstruct it and set it down again. The list of charter members on this marker is exactly that kind of rescued memory.
Finally, the lodge's long life, stretching from the frontier era into the late twentieth century, shows how such organizations helped carry rural communities through enormous change, from horseback and wagon roads to the modern Hill Country you see today.
If you visit
Center Point is a quiet, easygoing stop in the Guadalupe valley, the kind of place where you can slow down and imagine how the settlement looked when these fifteen men first gathered. Take a moment at the marker to read through the charter names; you may spot some of the same family names on local streets, businesses, or headstones nearby.
Keep in mind that this is an active or historic lodge site, not a museum, so enjoy it respectfully from outside unless you know it is open to visitors.
The marker fits naturally into a Hill Country road trip. The Guadalupe River corridor links Center Point with Kerrville and other small towns, and the drive itself, with its limestone hills and river crossings, is a big part of the experience. Pair a stop here with a picnic by the river and a look at other historic markers along the way to build a picture of how this valley was settled.
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
- · Joshua D. Brown
- · Miles A. Lowrance
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Woolls Building
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Built of limestone in 1873–75 by stonemason Sam H. Wellborn, the Woolls Building housed George W. Woolls's mercantile business and is one of Center Point's oldest surviving commercial structures. Its full-width balcony and exterior staircase led to an upper floor where fraternal groups gathered, including a Masonic lodge that counted several Texas Rangers among its members. For most of its life the ground floor kept up the town's retail trade.
Center Point United Methodist Church
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Methodism reached this Hill Country spot before the town did: in 1852 Mrs. Henrietta Rees arrived from Tennessee and arranged for circuit riders to preach in the area. A congregation bought land in 1872, built an early church house around 1876, and after a storm toppled one building under construction, the men of the congregation completed the present structure in 1911. The church's story runs parallel to the founding of Center Point itself.
Center Point Christian Church
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Founded in 1879 by traveling Kentucky minister Green L. Surber, this Disciples of Christ congregation grew alongside the frontier settlement of Center Point during a broader campaign to strengthen faith across a growing Texas. After the first building burned in 1888, the community rebuilt in 1892 with materials hauled from San Antonio and Kerrville. In the 1920s its members helped establish the Guadalupe River retreat known as Camp Christian, later shared with a Jewish youth camp and other groups.
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The land around Center Point drew its first settlers in the 1850s, including Dr. Charles Ganahl, who named the early community Zanzenberg after his Austrian hometown before it became Center Point in 1872. That same year land was set aside here for a church and cemetery, which grew over the decades to more than five acres and some 1,452 graves. Among the pioneers and community leaders buried here rest 32 Texas Rangers, an unusually dense gathering of the frontier lawmen.