DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Ashley Lodge Number Six Eighty-One, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, out of Bailey in Fannin County. Now, this wasn't the first Masonic lodge to put down roots in that county, or the second, or even the sixth.
It was the seventh. But don't let that number fool you into thinkin' they came late to anything. They came ready.
Chartered on December 12, 1889, they were organized and official before the year was even out. The first official meeting came in January of 1890, and they didn't have a place all their own just yet. They shared a two-story frame building with the Baptist church.
Two organizations, one roof, keepin' their own counsel on their own floors. There's a whole Texas story in that arrangement right there. They made it work.
For years, they made it work. Then came 1912. The lodge purchased a separate building, right there in downtown Bailey.
The second floor was reserved for lodge meetings, a dedicated space at last, while the first floor was leased out to a variety of retail businesses. A lodge that paid its own way. That building stood, and served, and stood some more.
And then, in 1950, it burned. Just like that, a structure that had housed decades of meetings and commerce was gone. But Ashley Lodge didn't dissolve with the smoke.
The members traveled to Leonard and met in the Grove Hill Lodge, guests in a brother lodge's hall, keepin' the work alive. And they kept at it until 1952, when a new building was completed and Ashley Lodge came home. The seventh lodge in Fannin County.
Still standing.
What the marker says
Chartered on December 12, 1889, this was the seventh Masonic lodge organized in Fannin County. The first official meeting occurred in January 1890, in a two-story frame building which the lodge shared with the Baptist church. In 1912 the lodge purchased a separate building in downtown Bailey. The second floor was reserved for lodge meetings, while the first floor was leased to a variety of retail businesses. That structure burned in 1950, and Ashley Lodge members met in the Grove Hill Lodge in Leonard until a new building was completed in 1952.