Whitewright Masonic Lodge No. 167

The lodge's own centennial in 1956, reported in the Whitewright Sun, supplies its earliest dates. A dispensation for a lodge at Kentucky Town was granted February 19, 1855. The Grand Lodge of Texas issued the charter on January 25, 1856, and the first meeting under it came April 5, 1856. The hundredth anniversary was marked with a dinner in the school lunchroom and a special meeting in the high school gymnasium. Grand Master W. W. Boothe presented a fifty-year button to W. H. Stedham, and Grand Junior Warden Randall Briscoe was the main speaker.

What the plaque says

Whitewright Masonic Lodge No. 167 Whitewright Masonic Lodge No. 167 In 1855, men in Kentucky Town organized a Masonic lodge, receiving their charter the following year as the Kentucky Town Masonic Lodge No. 167. More than 20 years later, in 1878, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad bypassed Kentucky Town, running three miles east in the newly established town of Whitewright. Many residents of Kentucky Town, Orangeville and Pilot Grove moved their homes and businesses to Whitewright. The Masonic Lodge moved in 1883, and in 1893, members changed the name to Whitewright Lodge No. 167 but kept the original Kentucky Town charter. The lodge has occupied several buildings since its founding. It has also served several affiliate Masonic orders, including Whitewright Chapter No. 198 of Royal Arch Masons, which merged with a Denison chapter in 1949, Whitewright Council No. 136, which merged with a Denison group in 1971, and the local Order of the Eastern Star, which received its charter in 1948. The Order of the Eastern Star, comprised of men and women, continues to support the work of the lodge. Several lodge members have been leaders in government and in the Masonic order. These men include Dan Scott McMillin, grand master of Texas Masons in 1915, who served as both a state representative and state senator; James J. Gallaher, grand high priest of the Royal Arch Chapter of Texas, who served as grand treasurer of Texas Masons for 20 years; and John Thomas Bean, grand master of Texas Masons in 1959, who chaired the Conference of Grand Masters of Masonry in North America in 1960. Lodge membership has also included other prominent leaders. Today the lodge is the second oldest Masonic group in Grayson County with continuous service. The history of the lodge and its members reflects the formation of Whitewright and the county. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 24 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Whitewright — 0.2 mi
• Whitewright — 0.5 mi
• Vittitoe Cemetery — 2.5 mi
• Kentucky Town — 2.7 mi