Every Order, Lodge by Lodge

Row 2 — the private orders of New Carlisle run order by order: what stands, what the register carries, and the four orders tested and not found, as of November 2026

The Masons, whole at register strength: Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204, F. & A.M., is the town's senior order and its one continuously standing lodge. It was organized on 24 July 1856, over T. L. Borden's store, as Chapman prints it — organization, in Masonic usage, being the lodge's working beginning under dispensation. Its charter date stands as GAP-NC5-CIV-2 in the build: organization and charter are distinct instruments, the charter is the Grand Lodge's warrant that follows organization, and the Grand Lodge record is the settler for that date; this section does not print a charter date it has not read. The lodge stands today at 54522 Timothy Road, returned as an operating Masonic lodge in the place record read, and a member record of the order corroborates the lodge in its own terms — a man "initiated into Terre Coupee Lodge No 204, Grand Lodge of Indiana, on 27 Dec 1890." In the federal register the Masonic seat appears not under the lodge's name but under the grand body's: FREE & ACCEPTED MASONS OF INDIANA, PO Box 455, New Carlisle, classed Domestic Fraternal Societies and Associations, exempt 02/1957 — the group-ruling form by which a grand lodge's exemption covers its subordinate lodges. The lodge's story is told at length elsewhere in the build; here it stands at register strength: organized 1856, chartered on a date the Grand Lodge record will settle, exempt on its grand body's line from 1957, and still seated.

The Good Templars stand beside them. Olive Branch Lodge No. 149 of the Good Templars — the temperance order — was organized on 4 January 1875, with its first officers named in the telling, and by August 1880 it counted 143 members and stood "second in size in the State." That telling stands whole in the crime file's dry-years article, and the lodge is carried here at register strength from it: a lodge of 143 members in a town of this size was, for its decade, the second great order of the place. The lodge holds no line in the modern federal register — the Good Templars' American order did not survive to be ruled exempt in this town — and its absence from the 68 is the expected shape for an order of the 1870s, printed here so the two old lodges' different paper fates are plain: the Masons in the register, the Templars in the record of the dry years.

The register's remaining Masonic-family line is the women's side of the house: ORDER OF EASTERN STAR OF INDIANA, classed with the Masons as Domestic Fraternal Societies and Associations, exempt 09/1972, carried in the register at a rural address on N 750 E. The Eastern Star is worked in the women's-clubs article of this section; here it stands as the register's second fraternal line. With the Polish National Alliance — worked whole in this section's ethnic-societies article — those three lines, 1940, 1957 and 1972, are the whole fraternal presence the federal register carries for this town.

Then the four untested orders, run as explicit tests. The Elks: no Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks lodge stands in the register for New Carlisle, and the order's own locator record returned seats the county's Elks in South Bend. The Eagles: no Fraternal Order of Eagles aerie stands in the register, and no aerie of New Carlisle was returned's directory searches. The Moose: no Loyal Order of Moose lodge stands in the register, and none was returned for this town. The Knights of Columbus: no council stands in the register — this in a township with a Polish Catholic parish, the one fact that makes the test worth running in print — and no New Carlisle council was returned in the order's published record as reached. Four orders, four negatives, each at the same strength: absent from the whole-read register of 68, and absent from the orders' published locators as searched on 11 November 2026.

Sources:

1. Banked build facts: Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204, F. & A.M., organized 24 July 1856 over T. L. Borden's store, per Chapman; its charter date stands as GAP-NC5-CIV-2, the Grand Lodge record being the settler. Olive Branch Lodge No. 149 of the Good Templars, organized 4 January 1875, first officers named, 143 members in August 1880 and "second in size in the State," as told whole in the crime file's dry-years article.
2. IRS exempt-organizations register for New Carlisle, IN 46552, read whole November 2026 and re-read 11 November 2026 (TaxExemptWorld publication of the IRS list): FREE & ACCEPTED MASONS OF INDIANA, PO Box 455, Domestic Fraternal Societies and Associations, 02/1957; ORDER OF EASTERN STAR OF INDIANA (c/o Nancy Wickizer), 8822 N 750 E, Domestic Fraternal Societies and Associations, 09/1972; and the whole-68 scan — no Elks, Eagles, Moose or Knights of Columbus line.
3. Place record for Terre Coupee Masonic lodge, read via search 11 November 2026: 54522 Timothy Rd, New Carlisle, IN, operating status active, category Masonic Lodge / Private Members Club. Burnie Masonic Lodge, "Famous Freemasons" (freemasonsburnie.com), read via search 11 November 2026: "Initiated into Terre Coupee Lodge No 204 Grand Lodge of Indiana on 27 Dec 1890."
4. Elks locator record read via search 11 November 2026 (elks.org / South Bend Elks Lodge, southbendelks.org): the county's Elks lodge seated at 3535 W McKinley Ave, South Bend, IN; no New Carlisle lodge returned. Eagles, Moose and Knights of Columbus: directory and locator searches run 11 November 2026 for New Carlisle, IN returned no lodge, aerie or council of the town.