Lewiston's first school was chartered and built on this site in 1892, heated by wood stoves, and burned to the ground in 1894. The present structure was erected in 1896 as the second main school, while classes in the meantime met in the Congregational Church and the Town Hall. Other one-room schoolhouses stood north, east, and west of town in outlying areas for local residents, since children and teachers had to walk to attend. This second school had four rooms on two levels, with wide halls, a modern wood-fired furnace in the basement, a cloak room and laboratory on the first floor, and two classrooms on the second floor for all grades. A small kitchen on the upper floor let teachers cook a hot lunch every day for students, and a fence in the front yard kept out farm animals that grazed freely around town. Each morning opened with prayer, a Bible reading, and a patriotic or folk song, and each day ended with organ music playing a lively march as students filed out in uniform order; anyone who fell out of step was pulled from the line and made to wait while the others finished the drill. Students were mostly girls because boys were sent to work early on farms, in liveries, and in mills. In 1904, the school had 33 students, 26 girls and 7 boys, with two teachers teaching all grades. Sessions were held in spring and winter, while summer and fall were reserved for farming and harvesting, and in winter students often walked to school on homemade skis made from used barrel staves. Teachers were not required to have a secondary degree but instead took a short instructional course and passed an exam for a teaching certificate, and a county ordinance said they were not to be paid more than $35 per month. After the mills closed, the town sometimes lacked money to pay them at all, but they continued teaching rather than abandon their students. The school operated continuously until 1951, when a larger modern school was built as Lewiston Elementary school, and this building then passed to the Free Masons Fraternal Organization. In Lewiston's early years, Masons Lodge #418 was formed in 1893 by 13 Master Masons with dues of $2 per year, meeting upstairs in the Traver building on Friday nights closest to the full moon for safer nighttime travel. After the mill closed, lodge membership declined, and the lodge relinquished its charter in 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression. About 20 years later, the current Lodge #581 was formed in 1950 and purchased this building after the school moved in 1951.