Morton Lodge No. 72, A. F. & A. M.

William Morton voted in the colony election of April 1824, and Austin recommended him as a regidor in January 1828. In 1829 the ayuntamiento put him on a committee planning an academy at San Felipe, and in 1830 it granted him a town lot on condition that he build a brickyard there, named him to help lay out a road from his home to Harrisburg and set him to superintend the building of the San Felipe jail. Randal Jones was the last person to see him alive before the 1833 flood, and a lodge took his name in 1850.

What the plaque says

Morton Lodge No. 72, A. F. & A. M. Organized in 1850, the Morton Masonic Lodge was chartered on January 24, 1851. Named for "Old 300" colonist and Mason william Morton, the Lodge began with twenty charter members. The first lodge hall, located on Jackson street, was replaced in 1855 by a larger building on the corner of 3rd and Morton streets. The three-story brick structure also housed the county courthouse, and was destroyed by fire in 1887. A third facility, built at this site, was replaced by this building in 1913. Over the years the Lodge has sponsored many charitable activities. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 17 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• The Menil Collection — 24 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 24 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Rothko Chapel — 24 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

• Jane Long Boarding House — steps away
• Constantine W. Buckley — steps away
• Early Courthouse Square — steps away
• Site of the Home of Randal Jones — 0.2 mi