Grand Officers

Dakota's first lodges worked under charters from Iowa. By an 1892 Masonic history's account, five of them, St. John's, Vermillion's Incense, Elk Point, Minnehaha and Silver Star, convened at Elk Point in June 1875, voted to form a grand lodge and elected T. H. Brown Grand Master, and Theodore S. Parvin of Iowa installed the officers after the brethren adjourned to the Baptist church. Three holdouts, two chartered from Minnesota, joined later. By 1889 there were 73 lodges in the south and 26 in the north, and the northern lodges withdrew at Mitchell to form their own.

What the plaque says

This stone marks the place where, on the twenty first day of July A.D.1875, A.L.5875, the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Dakota, was constituted and the officers installed. Grand Officers Thos. H. Brown, M. W. Grand Master F. J. Dewitt, R.W.D. Grand Master C. G. Shaw, R.W.Sr. Grand Warden H. H. Blair, R.W.Jr. Grand Warden Geo. H. Hand, R.W.Grand Treasurer Mark W. Bailey, R.W.Grand Secretary The First Baptist Church erected in the Territory of Dakota it stood on this site, and was the building in which the Grand Lodge was constituted.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Music Museum — 0.6 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 6.8 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• Ponca State Park — 17 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.

More markers nearby

• First Permanent Schoolhouse in Dakota Territory — steps away
• Andrew Lee — 0.3 mi
• Vermillion — 0.8 mi
• Bruyer Church — 4.2 mi