Grove Hill Masonic Lodge

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out here in Fannin County, there's a story that starts three and a half miles to the northeast, in a place called Grove Hill. The year was 1873, and fifteen men put their names to a charter and called a Masonic Lodge into being.

Fifteen. Not a hundred, not fifty. Fifteen men deciding that this community was worth the trouble of building something lasting.

And build they did. They put up a meetinghouse on property they purchased together with the Grove Hill School District, which means on certain days that same building rang with lodge ritual, and on others it rang with the voices of children learning to read. One roof, two purposes.

That's the kind of resourceful arrangement you get when a community is still finding its feet. Now, Grove Hill sat three and a half miles to the northeast of where you're standing, and for a while that was just fine. But then Leonard came along.

The town was founded, and shortly after, in 1882, the Lodge picked up and moved right along with the future. They held their meetings in the city hall to start, which you have to imagine had a certain no-nonsense dignity to it, civic business by day and brotherly ritual by night. That arrangement held until 1890, when the Lodge built its own dedicated hall right on the square.

A place of their own, at last. Over the years, other buildings would serve the Lodge's needs, as communities tend to shift and grow, but the thread never broke. From those fifteen founding members in 1873 to the prominent leaders of both Grove Hill and Leonard who filled its rolls across the generations, this Lodge kept the compact.

Fifteen men made a promise in 1873, and Fannin County has been keeping it ever since.

What the marker says

Chartered in 1873 with fifteen members, this Masonic Lodge was organized in the Grove Hill community (3.5 mi. NE). The first meetinghouse was constructed there on property purchased in conjunction with the Grove Hill School District, which used the facility for classes. The Lodge moved to Leonard in 1882, shortly after the town was founded. Meetings were conducted in the city hall until a separate Lodge hall was built on the square in 1890. Other buildings later served the Lodge, which has included many prominent leaders of Grove Hill and Leonard. (1981)