DUANE
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Duane's take
The way the official marker tells it, here's the story of Floydada Lodge Number Seven Twelve. April of 1891, eighteen charter members came together out on the South Plains and organized a Masonic Lodge. Now, eighteen is not a crowd.
Eighteen is a committee with conviction. And that conviction paid off, because on December eleventh of that same year, the Grand Lodge of Texas came back with a charter. Official.
Done. Lodge Number Seven Twelve was open for business. They didn't have a grand hall to meet in, not at first.
Early meetings were held in rented quarters up above a general store. Think about that a moment. Men climbing a staircase over bolts of dry goods and sacks of flour, conducting their business by lamplight.
There is something quietly fitting about that image. Now, the town itself had only just been named the Floyd County seat the year before the lodge was organized. Floyd City, they called it then, before it was renamed Floydada.
So the lodge and the community were, in a very real sense, growing up together, finding their footing on the same flat stretch of Texas ground. And grow they did. Lodge members went on to serve in civic organizations across the area.
A number of them were elected to county office. When you look at the history of Floyd County, you keep finding Masons in the mix, not in the shadows, but out front, doing the work of the community. Eighteen men on a spring day in 1891.
That is how a lodge, and maybe something larger, gets built.
What the marker says
Organized by eighteen charter members in April 1891, this Masonic Lodge was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Texas on December 11th that year. Formed just one year after the town of Floyd City (later renamed Floydada) became Floyd County seat, the lodge has grown with the community. Early meetings were held in rented quarters over a general store. Lodge members have been active in numerous civic organizations, and a number of Floydada Lodge Masons have served as elected county officials. (1991)