 As part of the commemoration of the centennial of Holly Springs Masonic Lodge #115 in 1947, a history of the lodge was written by Roy Shirlen, a past Master of the lodge. This history served as a ready reference for a number of years, but of course time passes and things happen! Fifty years have passed, and we are now in the process of celebrating the 150th anniversary of the lodge. It seems appropriate to bring this history up to date at this time. Rather than rewriting Roy Shirlen’s work I have elected to generally leave it alone, with a couple of exceptions. Spelling and typographical errors have been corrected, except in direct quotes from resolutions and other documents, and additional information from a history of Holly Springs written in 1976 has been included. This tells us a little more about the history of the schools in Holly Springs. Substantial changes by me are enclosed in brackets with my initials. The history of the lodge beginning in 1947 suffers from a major handicap, because I joined the lodge in 1994. I haven’t had the advantage of observing the history as it was happening, so I had to rely on the lodge minutes. Many things that were common knowledge at the time were too obvious to record, and have since been lost as our members have moved and passed on. I’ve tried to supplement the information in the minutes as much as possible by talking to members who were in the lodge, but primarily the events recorded come from the minutes and are arranged in chronological order. Presenting the history of a masonic lodge represents many challenges, among them presenting the information to the reader in an interesting way. The business of the lodge is a mass of details, a collection of budgets and motions and meetings and reports, all of which aren’t necessarily interesting to everybody. Accordingly, the history from 1947 to present is divided by subject. Many facts and figures of interest to the detail-minded have been collected into tables at the end. When I began this project in November, 1997 I naively thought that it would take me about two months to finish it. As I got into it, though, I realized it will never really be finished. There is a wealth of material in the old minutes and in the memories of our older members, and I have only really begun to scratch the surface. One has to stop somewhere, though, and hopefully I’ve stopped at the right place. Let’s begin the story of our lodge. Bob Dixon January, 1998 |