Lexington Masonic Lodge No. 138

The lodge's first namesake was grand master of Texas Masons in the year it was chartered. Andrew Neill, born in Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1813, came to Texas in 1836 as captain of a volunteer company under Felix Huston, arriving after San Jacinto. A lawyer at Gonzales and Seguin, he was trying a case in San Antonio in 1842 when Adrián Woll's army took the town and carried him to Mexico; he escaped by way of Veracruz and New Orleans. He was grand master of the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1854 and later lived in Austin's Neill-Cochran House.

What the plaque says

Lexington Masonic Lodge No. 138 Chartered in 1854, when Lexington was part of Burleson County, the community's Masonic lodge was first named in honor of Andrew Neill, a Texas War for Independence veteran. The lodge's first officers were John M. Doak, Titus H. Mundine and John B. Nunn. Also in 1854, members helped build a lodge and school, chartered in 1860 as Lexington Male and Female Academy. The lodge changed its name in 1868 and in 1912 first sponsored an Order of the Eastern Star chapter. Today, lodge members continue to serve the Lexington community. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 20 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 21 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Bastrop State Park — 27 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 31 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.

More markers nearby

• Town of Lexington — steps away
• United Methodist Church of Lexington — steps away
• The First Baptist Church of Lexington — 0.2 mi
• Lexington Schools — 0.3 mi