Orphans Friend Lodge No. 17 Ancient Free & Accepted Masons

The school the lodge handed to the Episcopal church opened in January 1852 under the Rev. Charles Gillette with 43 boys. By 1854 it had 100 students, and Gillette also ran a girls' school the lodge had asked him to start. Former president Anson Jones was a trustee, helped draft the 1853 charter and enrolled two sons. The charter let St. Paul's grant degrees, but only three pupils reached college work and it never awarded one. Debt, diocesan quarrels and rival schools closed it in 1856, and from 1861 to 1902 the buildings housed Patrick Academy for girls.

What the plaque says

Orphans Friend Lodge No. 17 Ancient Free & Accepted Masons Organized April 8, chartered June 30, 1842. Pioneered in education. Operated Masonic Collegiate Institute, 1846-1851. Reserving lodge room, gave school to St. Paul's Episcopal College, which was in operation until 1856. Later plant was used by various schools. In 1905 it was sold, and lodge relocated here. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 9.2 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 15 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 15 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• In Memory of Colonel Benjamin Fort Smith and All Other Pioneers — steps away
• Grimes County — steps away
• Grimes County, C.S.A. — steps away
• Fanthorp Inn — 0.4 mi