Burkburnett Masonic Lodge 1027

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most towns take a good while to find their footing. You know how it goes, people trickle in, a few buildings go up, somebody starts a general store, and maybe a decade or two later somebody gets around to organizing something civic and lasting.

Burkburnett didn't have that kind of patience. The city was founded, and three years later, in 1910, the Burkburnett Masonic Lodge number 1027 AF and AM was already chartered. Three years.

The ink on the city's founding was barely dry. Among the founders were J.A.D. Smith, W.O.

Willingham, and S. Hawkins, and whatever those men had in mind when they signed that charter, they were building something meant to last. Then Eastern Star formed in 1921, and the lodge kept on growin'.

Now here is where the story gets interesting, and I want you to hold this picture in your mind. By the 1930s, Burkburnett was a town of thirty-two hundred people. Thirty-two hundred.

That's not a big town, friends. That's everybody knowing everybody's business and probably their dog's name too. And yet the Burkburnett Masonic Lodge could claim four hundred members.

Four hundred, out of thirty-two hundred. You do the math on what that means for a Sunday afternoon in that town. But numbers only tell part of it.

Out of this one lodge in this one small Texas town came eight District Deputy Grand Masters, and one imperial potentate of the shrine. An imperial potentate. From Burkburnett.

The lodge also laid cornerstones at six buildings right there in town, including the First United Methodist Church, the Burkburnett Library, and Burkburnett Schools. When those cornerstones went down, Lodge 1027 was there. And the lodge didn't stop.

The marker says it continues a tradition of community service through education and charitable activities, locally and statewide. Some institutions fade when the big years pass. This one just kept layin' cornerstones.

What the marker says

The Burkburnett Masonic Lodge no. 1027 AF & AM was chartered in 1910, only three years after the city's founding. J.A.D. Smith, W.O. Willingham and S. Hawkins were among the founders. Eastern Star formed in 1921. By the 1930s, it could claim 400 members in a town of only 3200. Eight District Deputy Grand Masters and an imperial potentate of the shrine came from the Burkburnett Lodge. The lodge continues a tradition of community service through education and charitable activities locally and statewide. It laid cornerstones at six buildings in Burkburnett, including First United Methodist Church, Burkburnett Library and Burkburnett Schools.