Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204: the lodge that took the prairie's name

NO. 204, GRAND LODGE OF INDIANA · seat at 54522 Timothy Road, as listed November 2026

The town's one fully documented fraternal body named itself for the ground: Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204, Free and Accepted Masons, under the Grand Lodge of Indiana — Terre Coupee, the "cut land," being the prairie and the township's old French name, carried whole in this build's Land and Religion sections (the Catholic parish of the same prairie is St. Stanislaus's at Terre Coupee). The lodge's seat as listed stands at 54522 Timothy Road, New Carlisle — township ground south of town, on the Bendix Woods side of Olive Township, under the town's postal address; the lodge is printed here at township strength, as the register's rule prints the ground a body actually sits on. The lodge's documentary trace in the record reached is one bright line: two independent Masonic compilations print the same entry — Frederick Peters (1836–1937), founder of Peters' Ice Cream, was initiated into Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204, Grand Lodge of Indiana, on 27 December 1890 — a New Carlisle lodge initiating, in 1890, a man the compilations follow to Australia and an ice-cream firm; the entry is the lodge's, and Peters's own course is the People leg's at pointer only. The lodge's charter date does not stand in the record reached: the Grand Lodge's chronological charter list is its settler, and the date stands as a named gap (GAP-NC5-CIV-2) beside the lodge's nineteenth-century officers, its earlier hall in town, and its Eastern Star chapter — none of which the sources read supply.

Sources:

1. Masonic compilations (mason33.org, Lodge Devotion's famous-masons list; freemasonsburnie.com) — "Terre Coupee Lodge No 204, Grand Lodge of Indiana," and the initiation of Frederick Peters, 27 December 1890, printed identically in both.
2. Lodge directory listings, read November 2026 — Terre Coupee Lodge at 54522 Timothy Road, New Carlisle.
3. The Land and Religion sections of this build (Terre Coupee prairie; St. Stanislaus parish) — the name's ground, at pointer.
4. The searches run for the lodge's charter and the town's other orders, November 2026 — results and settlers as printed.