Travis Lodge No. 117, A. F. & A. M.
Sherman, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1852, only six years after Sherman was designated the county seat, this Masonic Lodge is one of the oldest continuing institutions in the community. Local Attorney Burrell Smith and fifteen other Masonic brothers petitioned for a dispensation to organize a Masonic Lodge in Sherman on February 10, 1852. On August 28, 1852, Travis Lodge No. 117 was organized and officers were installed. Over the course of its history, the lodge has shared facilities with a Union church, other lodges, and several businesses in commercial buildings. A major fire destroyed most of the business section of Sherman on October 30, 1875, and lodge records, furniture, and equipment were lost in the blaze. A duplicate charter was issued June 10, 1876. The lodge built a classical revival style temple on the northeast corner of Lamar and Walnut streets in 1924. It remained the lodge headquarters until 1985, and was designated a recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1988. Through the years Travis Lodge members have been prominent community leaders and the lodge has supported various Masonic charitable endeavors such as hospitals, orphanages, and retirement homes.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Chartered in 1852, just six years after Sherman became the Grayson County seat, Travis Lodge No. 117 is among the town's oldest continuous institutions. It weathered the great 1875 fire that destroyed its records and required a duplicate charter, later built a classical-revival temple in 1924, and long counted community leaders among its members while supporting Masonic hospitals, orphanages, and homes.
Why it matters
The lodge reflects the central role fraternal orders played in nineteenth-century American town life, binding civic leadership to charitable works.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1852, Sherman was still a young town on the North Texas frontier. Grayson County had been carved out in 1846, and the town, named for Texas Revolution hero Sidney Sherman, had been made its county seat only six years before. The Red River lay just to the north, and beyond it was Indian Territory. It was a place of settlers, surveyors, lawyers and land claims, where very little had been in place long enough to count as tradition.
In towns like this, fraternal orders did work that nobody else was set up to do. Freemasonry had come to Texas with Anglo-American settlers, and a Grand Lodge of Texas was organized during the days of the Republic. By the 1850s, starting a lodge was one of the first things a group of established men did to give a raw settlement some structure: a place to meet, a code of conduct, and a network of mutual obligation.
The decades that followed tested every institution in the region. The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the arrival of railroads and new commerce changed North Texas completely. A lodge that came through all of that still meeting, as this one did, became part of the town's own story.
People & events
The story starts with a local attorney named Burrell Smith. In February 1852, he and fifteen fellow Masons petitioned for permission to organize a lodge in Sherman. By late August the request had become reality: Travis Lodge No. 117 was organized and its first officers were installed. The marker does not explain the name, but in Texas at the time it would almost certainly have called to mind William B. Travis, the commander at the Alamo.
For much of its early life the lodge had no permanent home of its own. It shared space with a Union church, with other lodges, and with businesses in commercial buildings. Congregations, fraternal orders and merchants in frontier towns often shared rooms like this, stretching scarce buildings as far as they would go.
Then came disaster. On October 30, 1875, a great fire swept through Sherman's business district, and the lodge lost its records, furniture and equipment. Its founding paper trail went up in smoke. The members rebuilt anyway, and a duplicate charter arrived the following June. In 1924 the lodge finally built a home of its own: a classical revival temple at the northeast corner of Lamar and Walnut streets. It served as headquarters for more than sixty years, and the state recognized it as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1988.
Its place in the American story
Travis Lodge is a small, local example of something that happened all over nineteenth-century America. As the country spread west, fraternal organizations like the Masons helped turn strangers into communities. Lodges were places where lawyers, merchants and farmers met as equals under shared rituals. Many of the men who led a town's churches, businesses and government knew one another first as lodge brothers.
These orders also carried much of the country's charitable work in the era before government social programs. The marker notes the lodge's support for Masonic hospitals, orphanages and retirement homes. Causes like these, funded through dues and member generosity, were an important safety net for many American families.
The lodge's resilience is part of the story too. Fire destroyed records in town after town across America. An institution that could lose everything and simply ask for a duplicate charter was showing a kind of civic stubbornness that helped frontier towns become permanent places.
If you visit
Head for the intersection of Lamar and Walnut streets in Sherman and look for the 1924 temple on the northeast corner. Classical revival buildings are made to look dignified and permanent, so watch for the formal symmetry and columned details typical of the style. The fraternal buildings of that era were built to impress.
While you're there, picture the Sherman of 1875, when flames tore through the business section around you. Much of what you see downtown today was built after that fire and after the prosperity that followed, which makes the square a good place to read how a Texas county seat rebuilt itself.
Sherman is an easy stop on a North Texas road trip near the Red River. Pair this marker with a walk around the courthouse square and nearby historic streets, and give yourself time to look up. The upper floors of old commercial buildings often keep the details that street-level renovations have erased.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Burrell Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fred Douglass School
Sherman, TX
Established in 1879 as one of Sherman's first three public schools and named for the great abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass, this school educated the city's African American children—first in two rented houses, then in successive buildings repeatedly rebuilt after fires. Enrollment grew from about 85 students to 350 by 1907, and by the 1940s the curriculum had expanded to include African American history and vocational courses. After Sherman's schools fully integrated in 1967, the building became the district's special education facility.
Park of Old Settlers Association of Grayson County
Sherman, TX
In 1879 the old settlers of Grayson County began traveling by wagon to camp near Sherman and reminisce about the days of the Republic of Texas, the frontier, and the Confederacy. Their association, incorporated in 1898, bought this park in 1899 as a permanent home despite setbacks from bad weather, smallpox, and streetcar breakdowns, paying it off by 1909. Its Jesse Loving auditorium, built in 1923, hosted orators from Sam Rayburn to Governor James Hogg.
Austin College
Sherman, TX
Chartered in 1849 by the Presbytery of Brazos, Austin College opened in Huntsville during the days of the young Texas state, its early trustees drawn from the founding generation of statesmen who had shaped the Republic. A rigorous classical curriculum, the state's first law school, and Texas's first graduate degrees marked its early ambition. After the Civil War, epidemics and hard times prompted the 1876 move to Sherman, where the college matured into a modern liberal arts institution.
Sherman Little Theater (The Sherman Community Players)
Sherman, TX
As the Little Theater movement spread across Texas in the 1920s, Sherman citizens formed their own community theater in December 1925, led by architect Rollin M. Rolfe and other local figures. Their first production came in 1926, and that same year they won first place in Texas's inaugural Little Theater competition in Dallas. Incorporated in 1950 as the Sherman Community Players, the group built the Finley Playhouse in 1954 and has remained a fixture of the city's cultural life.