Cedar Bayou Masonic Lodge No. 321, A. F. & A. M.

Cedar Bayou's first recorded burial dates from 1810, and as late as the 1930s the community shipped bricks and other goods to Galveston Bay. John Peter Sjolander arrived from Sweden in 1871, the year after the lodge was chartered. By 1890 there were 200 people, three general stores, several steam gristmills and gins and two brick makers, and in 1905 one school taught six Black students and another ninety White students. The town had 400 people, a boatbuilder and an undertaker in 1914, and Baytown annexed it in 1955.

What the plaque says

Cedar Bayou Masonic Lodge No. 321, A. F. & A. M. Chartered June 18, 1870, with 13 members. Opened its own hall July 7, 1876, donating quarters (1876-1911) to the first public school in east Harris County. On June 24, 1879, initiated an event that still continues-- the annual barbecue giving sense of community to area. In 100 years, Lodge has missed holding only one stated meeting. Through eras of great local expansion, this body has exerted stabilizing influence. Membership has grown steadily. Cedar Bayou sponsored organizing of lodges at Goose Creek (1922) and Anahuac (1948). (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 9.2 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 17 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 26 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 27 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.

More markers nearby

• Cedar Bayou United Methodist Church — steps away
• Near Home Site of John Peter Sjolander — 3.3 mi
• Bell Prairie — 3.9 mi
• Ashbel Smith, M. D. — 4.0 mi