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1851 — 1856
The degrees above the lodge: A Mason who wanted more ritual than the blue lodge's three degrees found it, in Fort Wayne, in three bodies chartered in the 1850s. Fort Wayne Chapter No. 19, Royal Arch Masons, was chartered May 24, 1851. Fort Wayne Commandery No. 4, Knights Templar — the uniformed, drill-and-parade arm of the fraternity, whose members styled their body an "encampment" in the newspapers of the day — received its dispensation on May 13, 1853, and its charter on September 19 of the same year; it stood among the commanderies that organized the Grand Commandery of Indiana in 1854, and its number, 4, still marks it as one of the oldest Templar bodies in the state. Fort Wayne Council No. 4, Royal and Select Masters, was chartered May 20, 1856. All three bodies were still meeting in the temple in the directories of 1915 and 1918 — the Chapter on Wednesday evenings, the Commandery on Thursdays, the Council monthly — and the Commandery's full-dress turnout was for decades a fixed feature of the city's public ceremonies. One dating conflict rides in the record: the 1872 city directory lists the Commandery as "instituted December, 1854," a year after the charter date the Masonic bodies' own roster gives; the likeliest reading is that the directory dated the body from the Grand Commandery's organization, but both dates stand in print and are carried here as they stand.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne News, "Eighty-Six Years of Lodge History" (1909) — Chapter, Council and Commandery charter dates.
- Roster of the Masonic Bodies in Allen County, Indiana (1898) — the Commandery's part in organizing the Grand Commandery.
- Dawson's Fort Wayne Daily Times, August 9, 1855 — "Fort Wayne Incampment No. 4" meeting notice.
- R. L. Polk & Co., Fort Wayne city directories, 1872, 1915, 1918 — the 1872 dating variant; the bodies' meeting nights.