Moulton Lodge No. 298, A.F. & A.M.

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm passing it along to you. Way out in Lavaca County, there's a lodge with a story that goes back to just after the dust of the Civil War was still settling. Moulton Lodge Number 298, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.

Now, a story like this one starts not with a grand hall, not with columns and cornerstone, but with a meeting. One meeting. July 20, 1866.

A handful of men, getting together and deciding that something worth building was worth starting. And they were right. It took nearly a year of proving that out, but on June 15, 1867, the lodge received its charter.

Eighteen members. That's what you had to work with. Eighteen men and a charter and the kind of stubborn intention that tends to outlast almost everything else in Texas.

For a while, the lodge made do without a building of its own. But in 1874, they put one up, and they didn't do it alone. They built it in cooperation with Live Oak Church.

Shared ground, shared effort, shared walls. And that spirit of sharing, well, it didn't stop there. Through the years, the lodge opened that building to other groups too.

That's just how they operated. Then came 1894, and the lodge picked up and moved to New Moulton. New place, same charter, same eighteen-member legacy at its back.

And when the time came to do it right, they built a new hall entirely, in 1910. From one meeting in 1866 to a proper hall standing in the twentieth century. Eighteen members planted something in Lavaca County that kept right on growing.

What the marker says

First meeting held July 20, 1866. Chartered June 15, 1867, with 18 members. First building erected in cooperation with Live Oak Church, in 1874. Through the years, this Lodge has shared its building with other groups. It moved in 1894 to New Moulton. A new hall was built in 1910.