At 3.00 pm on Tuesday 23 November 1909, the Brethren who had spent the previous months establishing a new Lodge at Frankton Junction assembled with their visitors in the Oddfellows’ Hall in Hamilton. Their permanent home in Kent Street had yet to be built, so the hall had been prepared for the occasion and furnished with the new Lodge furniture manufactured by W C Davies and Co. Tawhiri’s history records the gathering as the largest attendance seen at a Masonic meeting in the Waikato up to that time.
Twenty members and eighty-seven visitors were present when MW Bro Oliver Nicholson ProGM, MW Bro Malcolm Niccol PGM G Sec and eleven Grand Lodge officers were received. The months of meetings in the Stationmaster’s house, the selection of the name Tawhiri, the petition to Grand Lodge and the Warrant dated 8 November had all led to this afternoon. Lodge Tawhiri No. 166 was formally constituted and dedicated.
The Lodge was called off at 4.30 pm and resumed at 7.00 pm for the Installation of its officers. RW Bro George Barclay P DepGM, the Frankton Junction Stationmaster who had chaired the first meeting at his home in July, was installed as Tawhiri’s first Master. Bro C N Flyger became Senior Warden and Bro George Watts Junior Warden, together with the other officers who would guide the Lodge through its first year.
The ceremony was fully choral, with Bro G Wharton Thompson presiding at the organ. W Bro C L MacDiarmid presented the Third Degree Working Tools. He would later become the first Provincial Grand Master for the Waikato District and the first Brother from the district to serve as Grand Master. A collection for the Widows and Orphans Fund realised £8 14s.
At 9.30 pm the Lodge closed and the Brethren moved to the Volunteer Hall, where Bro W Burns-Smith had provided the banquet. Loyal and Masonic toasts followed, and an occasion which had begun at three in the afternoon finally drew to a close at about 11.30 that night.
Tawhiri’s history preserves an especially fitting description of the occasion, recording that Lodge Tawhiri had been “set going in a manner which augurs well for its future success.”
The prediction was quickly borne out. During its first year Tawhiri held twenty-six meetings and twenty-five candidates were proposed, nine of them railway employees. Before long its own lodge room would rise on the Kent Street section immediately opposite Frankton Junction railway station, establishing a permanent home for the Lodge in the community from which it had emerged.
The first discussions had taken place in July, the name Tawhiri had been proposed on 18 July, and the Warrant was dated 8 November. Each was an important step, but 23 November 1909 was different: it was the day Lodge Tawhiri No. 166 was formally constituted and dedicated.
It is our birthday.