Bethel Lodge No. 134 A. F. & A. M.

Bethel Lodge began under a dispensation of June 3, 1853 granted to Masons living at Gordon's Stand in Hunt County, according to the lodge's own history by Leroy Byers. Early stated meetings fell on the Saturday night after the full moon so members could ride home by moonlight; that changed in 1897 to the first Saturday of each month. A fire in 1896 destroyed the lodge's property and records, and members rented rooms from C. W. T. Weldon at $120 a year until they bought his building on March 11, 1912, for $1,200.

What the plaque says

Bethel Lodge No. 134 A. F. & A. M. Operating under a dispensation issued in 1853, this organization was formally chartered by the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1854. Wesley C. Walker served as the first worshipful master. The membership, like the general population of the area, was comprised of pioneer settlers, many of whom migrated to the new state of Texas from the older states of the South. Early meetings were conducted in a lodge hall at the Rehobeth community (6 mi. SW) in Fannin County. Bethel Lodge relocated to Ladonia in the 1870s. Meetings were first held on the west side of town but were moved here after a fire destroyed the early lodge hall. The group leased meeting space at this location from 1896 until 1912 when it purchased the structure. The building served the organization until members voted to have it razed and replaced with a new hall in 1957. Four years later, Yowell Lodge No. 858 merged with Bethel. Since the ante bellum days of Fannin County, Bethel Lodge No. 134 has played an important role in the development of the area. Its members have included leaders in civic activities and in regional and state Masonic programs. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 17 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 22 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 27 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.

More markers nearby

• Ladonia — steps away
• Ladonia Cemetery — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Ladonia — 0.2 mi
• Little Bethel Baptist Church — 0.6 mi