On February 8, 1878, 17 members of this lodge were set to work under dispensation of the Grand Master of Texas. The lodge was chartered at the annual communication in Houston on December 15, 1879, with a membership of 48, and J.R. Rutherford served as the first worshipful master. Its early Masons included prominent business and professional men and civic leaders, among them William Jesse McDonald, a merchant who became deputy city marshall, Wood County sheriff, and finally a Texas Ranger, and J.H. Newsom, a city alderman and county commissioner who owned the lodge's first meeting place at Broad and Line streets. That building burned on August 10, 1880, destroying the original lodge records. Other groups associated with the lodge included the Mineola Council of Royal Arch Masons, chartered in March 1910, and an Eastern Star chapter that was active even before its official charter date of 1923. The lodge occupied several meeting places before moving to its present location, and two other Masonic lodges, Golden and Albia, consolidated with it in 1938 and 1944.