History from 1856 to 1902

This compilation of the early days of the lodge was put together by Wor. Bro. Charles Chapman, Past Master of Mankato Lodge #12, A.F. & A.M. of Minnesota.  It is a fascinating read, giving a brief glimpse into life in frontier Minnesota, beginning before Mankato was a city and before Minnesota was a state.

Of particular interest to Scottish Rite Masons is the casual mention (on page 46) of the visit to the lodge in 1879 by Ill. Bro. Albert Pike, who delivered a lecture in the lodge room and conferred degrees of the Scottish Rite on attending brethren.

Those looking for information on ancestors would do well to look to pages 55-72, listing the officers of the lodge and the dates of initiation, passing, and raising of the brethren during that time period.

History from 1902 to 1956

This file is less of a flowing narrative style than that of the earlier history.  It is a brief, year by year summation of the minutes of the communications of those years, compiled by Wor. Bro. Adolph Rindelaub (Sr. Warden at the time of compilation.)  It is nonetheless an interesting read, as it covers the two World Wars and a boom period in Freemasonry after the Second World War.  In some years following WWII, the Lodge held 50 to 60 stated and special communications per year due to all of the activity!

NOTE: Both of these Acrobat files have now been "updated" to make them key-word searchable to the extent that the Optical Character Recognition was able to read the scanned documents.  This made the files larger, but should make them of greater use to those looking for specific events or people.

I hope to add more recent historical information in the near future.