AN ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY OF TEXAS AND FREEMASONRY IN TEXAS

 Stephen F. Austin, a member of Louisiana Lodge No. 111 at Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, sought to establish Freemasonry in Texas. Freemasonry was well established among the educated classes of Mexican society. It had been introduced among the aristocracy loyal to the House of Bourbon, and the conservatives had total control over the Order. By 1827, Americans living in Mexico City had introduced the United States York Rite of Freemasonry as a liberal alternative to the established European-style Scottish Rite. On February 11, 1828, Austin called a meeting of Freemasons at San Felipe to elect officers and petition the Masonic Grand Lodge in Mexico City for a charter to form a lodge. The first concerted effort to institute a Masonic lodge on Texas soil was begun by Stephen F. Austin, Ira Ingram, H. H. League, and four other Masons. On February 11, 1828, they prepared a petition addressed to the York Grand Lodge of Mexico, asking for a dispensation to form a lodge at San Felipe de Austin, to be known as the “Lodge of Union,” with the above named men as its principal officers. The York Masonic Lodge, however, was expelled from Mexico by a decree of the general government, and this first effort of Texas Masons was futile. Austin was elected Worshipful Master of the new lodge. Although the petition reached Matamoros, and was to be forwarded to Mexico City, nothing more was heard of it. By 1828, the ruling faction in Mexico was afraid the liberal elements in Texas might try to gain their independence. Fully aware of the political philosophies of American Freemasons, the Mexican government outlawed Freemasonry on October 25, 1828. In 1829, the following year, Austin called another meeting of Masons who, in an attempt to alleviate the fears of the Mexican government, decided it was “impolitic and imprudent, at this time, to form Masonic lodges in Texas.” 

FOUNDING OF MASONRY IN TEXAS & HOLLAND LODGE

 On March 1, 1835, five Master Masons met “in a little grove of peach or laurel” at the town of Brazoria, “near a place known as General John Austin’s,” and resolved to petition Grand Master John H. Holland of the Grand Lodge of Louisiana asking for a dispensation to form a lodge in Texas. Foremost among these five Masons was Anson Jones who would later serve as Grand Master, and as President of the Republic of Texas.  A record of the meeting was written by Anson Jones as follows: “The place of the meeting was back of the town of Brazoria, near the place known as General John Austin’s, in a little grove of wild peach or laurel, and which had been selected as a family burying-ground by that distinguished soldier and citizen. The spot was secluded and out of the way of ‘cowans and eavesdroppers’ and they felt they were alone. Here and under such circumstances, at 10 o’clock in the morning of a day in March, 1835, was held the first formal meeting in Texas as connected with the establishment and continuance of masonry in this county.” Anson Jones, John Wharton, Asa Brigham, James Phelps, and Alexander Russell, wishing to formally meet as an organized masonic lodge, met under the Masonic Oak near the burial ground of General John Austin and petitioned the Grand Lodge of Louisiana for dispensation to organize a lodge in the Texas territory. This live oak tree, though affected by the ravages of nature, is revered by Texas Masons for the part it played in Texas’ Masonic history.