Humble Lodge No. 979, A.F. & A.M.

Sterling was born near Anahuac in February 1875 and farmed until about 1896, then opened a feed store at Sour Lake in 1903 and began buying small-town banks. He sold his Humble interests in 1925, combined the Houston Dispatch and the Houston Post, and chaired the Texas Highway Commission in 1930. Inaugurated governor on January 20, 1931, he placed four East Texas counties under martial law and shut down oil production when Railroad Commission proration rulings were ignored, and the courts later held that he had exceeded his authority. Miriam A. Ferguson defeated him for a second term.

What the plaque says

Humble Lodge No. 979, A.F. & A.M. Near the turn of the century, the town of Humble was home to many Masons who were members of lodges located in nearby towns. With the help of local Justice of the Peace F. K. Wise, Humble area Masons organized their own lodge in 1908. Humble State Bank president and future Texas Governor Ross Sterling (1875-1949) provided meeting facilities in the bank building which formerly stood at this site. After the bank burned in 1912, the Masons bought the property and built a new lodge hall. The Masons have been active in civic programs over the years. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 18 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.
• Emancipation Park — 19 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.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 19 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 20 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• City of Humble — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Humble — 0.4 mi
• Moonshine Hill — 1.9 mi
• Saint Paul A. M. E. Church — 12 mi