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By 1907 — present
The other Grand Lodge's lodge: American Masonry ran two grand lodges in Indiana, divided by race, and South Bend had a lodge in each. St. Peter's Lodge No. 31, A. F. & A. M., appears in Howard's 1907 roster of the city's Masonic bodies, listed separately at the end of the temple lodges with Odessa Chapter No. 28 of the Eastern Star and Anderson Commandery of the United Rite of Memphis — the Black Masonic family, carried in the county history in its own paragraph and its own hall. By 1921 the directory gives that family its address: Masonic Hall, 228 North Emerick Street, where St. Peter's Lodge met the first and third Tuesdays with Henry L. Coker as worthy master and O. W. Roberts as secretary; Odessa Chapter met there the first and third Mondays, and Anderson Commandery — No. 4 in Howard's 1907 listing, No. 17 in the directory of 1921, the two numbers printed here as the record gives them — the fourth Tuesday.
The lodge is of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Indiana, as its members' own published records state it, and it produced officers of statewide and national standing: Algie S. Oldham Jr., principal of Riley High School, was a member of St. Peter's Lodge, its Worshipful Master in 1965 and 1966, then Right Worshipful Grand Junior Warden of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge in 1975, and in 2005 became Sovereign Grand Commander of the United Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Prince Hall Affiliation, Northern Jurisdiction — the head of Prince Hall Scottish Rite Masonry in the northern United States, from a lodge room in South Bend. The lodge's public life runs in the city's own records into the present century: in September 2011 the city's Board of Public Works approved St. Peter's Lodge No. 31's procession for Prince Hall Day, west on Howard Street from Eddy to 719 Notre Dame Avenue. Members' obituaries in the Tribune record the lodge's masters and its honors across the decades between — a working lodge, in print, from 1907 to the present day.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), societies chapter — St. Peter's Lodge No. 31, Odessa Chapter No. 28, Anderson Commandery No. 4, U. R. of M., listed after the temple bodies.
- Polk (1921), "Masonic (Colored)" — 228 N. Emerick; St. Peter's No. 31 officers; Anderson Commandery No. 17.
- Obituary of Algie S. Oldham Jr., South Bend Tribune, 19 Jan. 2011 — St. Peter's membership, master 1965–66, Grand Junior Warden 1975, Sovereign Grand Commander 2005.
- City of South Bend, Board of Public Works agenda, 8 Sept. 2011 — St. Peter's Lodge #31 P.H.A., Prince Hall Day procession approved.