ODD FELLOWS PACIFIC LODGE #86 WASHINGTON, MISSOURI

Visiting the sick . Relieving the distressed . Burying the dead . Educating the orphan

Serving the Washington community since 1855

PACIFIC LODGE #86 HISTORY

 

Pacific Lodge #86 was organized in Washington, Missouri, in April of 1855 by eight to ten men working for the railroad which had just arrived at Washington that same year. Pacific was chosen as the name of the Lodge in honor of the Pacific Railroad and keep in mind that the nearby town of Pacific was known then as Franklin. The early records of the Lodge were destroyed in a fire in October of 1868 at the Louis Wehrmann building on Jefferson Street, where the Lodge had met on the third floor. Because of this, we do not know the names of the men who organized the Lodge here.

 

Interestingly, a great-grandson of one of the original founders of Odd Fellowship at Baltimore, Maryland, George D. Barnes, is buried at Wildey Cemetery.

 

October 1, 1866, Pacific Lodge 86 purchased property near downtown which was never built upon and also purchased four acres of ground that was to become the Wildey Cemetery.

 

The Odd Fellows Memorial pagoda on the cemetery grounds was built in 1912. The iron gates and concrete driveway were completed at about the same time.

 

Wildey Rebekah Lodge, an auxiliary to the Odd Fellows, started circa 1912 and dissolved circa 1940.

 

Sometime in the early twentieth century, the Lodge moved its quarters to the hall on the third floor of the Voss building, later Kruel’s store, on Main Street.

 

In about the 1940s, the Lodge again moved, this time to the Elks Lodge building at Jefferson and Third Streets, where it remained until erecting their own building on the grounds of the cemetery in the late 1980s. The Defiance, Missouri Lodge merged with Pacific Lodge in 1959, they having been founded in 1906.

 

A complete set of Lodge meeting minutes exists from 1868 to the present. Membership rosters bear the names of many of Washington’s leading citizens and prominent businessmen.

 

Warrenton, Missouri Lodge #256 merged with Pacific Lodge in 2012.

 

Current projects include an annual cemetery tour, Memorial Day Service, and the columbarium for unclaimed cremated human remains. We contribute annually to arthritis and vision research charities, Loving Hearts, as well as offer college scholarships for children or grandchildren of members.

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