Site of First Bellville Masonic Lodge Building

Bellville's lodge began with a petition from Masons at Chappell Hill, a cotton town in Washington County to the north. Mary Hargrove Haller bought 100 acres there, opened a post office in 1847 and sold town lots in 1849, naming the place for her grandfather, Robert Wooding Chappell. Methodists made it a school town, with an institute in 1852 and Soule University from 1856 to 1888. Its Masons chartered a lodge in 1851, which the Handbook calls Hubert Lodge, still meeting in 1988. The yellow fever of 1867 killed so many that many survivors moved away.

What the plaque says

Site of First Bellville Masonic Lodge Building The petition to form a Masonic lodge in Bellville was initiated by members of Chappell Hill Lodge No. 67. Bellville Lodge No. 223 was chartered in 1858. Zimri Hunt, an early Bellville lawyer, served as first Worshipful Master. In 1858, lodge members erected a two-story building at this site. Meetings were held on the upper floor, and the first floor was used for church and school purposes until 1881. Early members of the Bellville Masonic Lodge were active in political, business, educational, and religious affairs of the community. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 14 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 20 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Stafford Opera House — 24 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 27 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

• Original Site of St. Mary's Episcopal Church — steps away
• Bellville — steps away
• First National Bank of Bellville — steps away
• Bellville General Hospital — 0.2 mi