Odd Fellow and Rebekah Children's Home

The Grand Lodge of Texas calls the Corsicana home one of the pioneer Odd Fellows orphanages. A 1927 album listed 72 such homes worldwide, 62 of them in the United States, and the first had opened in Pennsylvania in 1872. The Texas home's first child through the door was a boy named T. H. Streich, and a later resident counted himself the 1,520th. At its peak, over 400 children lived here in the 1930s, and the home fielded its own football and baseball teams and a band.

What the plaque says

Odd Fellow and Rebekah Children's Home In 1885 the Grand Lodge of Texas, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, founded the I. O. O. F. Widows and Orphans Home, one of the first fraternal orphanages in the state. Corsicana Lodge No. 63 and other local citizens gave 200 acres as a site for the facility. On April 26, 1886, the cornerstone for the first permanent building was laid. Only one child was residing here in 1891, but enrollment and financial support soon increased. The home became a self-contained community with its own independent school district, farm and dairy, power plant, and water supply. Abel Rice Auditorium, built in 1911 when enrollment was over 300, contained a swimming pool and gym, and housed the fine arts department sponsored by the Rebekah lodges. This institution also served as a home for the aged from 1905 until a separate facility opened in Ennis in 1928. After peaking at nearly 400 in the 1920s, enrollment dropped sharply in the 1930s and 1940s. The school closed in 1943, and students began attending Corsicana public schools. Campus buildings were modernized in a 1945 "reconversion program." Renamed in 1948, the Odd Fellow and Rebekah Children's Home has provided care for over 5500 persons. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 2.6 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 29 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Corsicana State Home — 0.2 mi
• 15th Texas Infantry Companies E and G — 0.5 mi
• Navarro Rifles — 0.5 mi
• James Clinton Neill — 1.6 mi