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Organized 26 May 1852 · meeting still
The institution: A Masonic lodge was organized in Mishawaka on 26 May 1852, and Howard prints its first officers whole: R. S. Alden, Worshipful Master; D. H. Smith, Senior Warden; J. Holdridge, Junior Warden; J. E. Hollister, treasurer; T. S. Cowles, secretary; A. C. Foot, Senior Deacon; W. M. Wood, Junior Deacon; A. L. Brimsmaid, Tyler. The lodge took the number it carries still, No. 130, and the order's local family grew around it — a Royal Arch chapter, Mishawaka Chapter No. 83, and an Eastern Star chapter, Mishawaka Chapter No. 26, stand beside it in the 1907 roster. The lodge stands here as an institution — its charter line, its temples, its present state; the rite and lore of the order belong to the Secret Societies leg, and that division is held here as throughout this build.
The temple and the present: In 1921 the directory places the Masonic Temple at 110½ North Main, in the upstairs-hall geography the whole lodge city shared. The lodge works in the modern record: its officers were installed in public ceremonies reported in the Tribune in the 2000s, and the Grand Commandery's newsletter of August 2015 records Mishawaka Lodge No. 130 at a Went Avenue address in the city — the street name is garbled in that source's text and is printed here at that caution — and notes the lodge keeping the 105th birthday of its oldest living Past Master, a man raised in the lodge on 7 January 1942 and its Master in 1950. The man's course belongs to the People section; here the fact is the institution's: a lodge organized in 1852 whose temple stands and whose chairs are filled, a closing line and no more.
Sources:
- Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana, Vol. I (1907), p. 344 — the organization of 26 May 1852 and the first officers, read first-hand; the Royal Arch and Eastern Star chapters from his roster, p. 345.
- R. L. Polk & Co., South Bend City Directory, 1921 — Masonic Temple, 110½ N. Main.
- South Bend Tribune, December 2006 — the lodge's public installation of officers; Grand Commandery Knights Templar of Indiana newsletter, August 2015 — Mishawaka Lodge No. 130, its address as printed there (street name garbled in the source), and the Past Master's birthday.