The Virginia Lodge No. 1 is one of the older existing lodges in the United States of America. The building before you was a part of the United States Armory complete but after the Civil War, it became a home to the Virginia Lodge No. 1. The lodge still exist here today and is very active having celebrated their 185th anniversary recently (2018). The building is bright yellow and hard to miss at the intersection of Storer College Place and Fillmore Street.
The following information was taken from Virginia Lodge No. 1's website:
By 1833 Odd Fellowship had taken root in nine states, plus the District of Columbia. Most of these states were in the northeast. Virginia (then including present-day West Virginia), with its proximity to Baltimore, was a natural site for expansion of the order, and Harpers Ferry, with an industrial base centered on one of the two national armories, and a population dominated by nonagricultural working men, was potentially fertile soil for just such a fraternity as the IOOF. On May 4 of that year the Grand Lodge of the United States, meeting in special session in Baltimore, granted the petition of five brothers for a charter for Virginia Lodge No. 1, to be located at Harpers Ferry.
In this early period no state grand lodge existed in the Old Dominion, a situation that led to Virginia No. 1 reporting directly to the national body in Baltimore. Efforts by Harpers Ferry and Wheeling to establish a Grand Lodge of Virginia headquartered in those places came to naught, and it was not until May 17, 1837 that such a body was finally chartered, with Richmond as the chosen site.
At first Virginia Lodge met in rented rooms in the Lower Town of Harpers Ferry, but at length it found a home in the Free Church of the town. The brothers became a notable presence on the local scene and in nearby towns and villages, parading with brass bands under the folds of a handsome silk banner which they obtained in 1834 from Brother Seth Pollard of Baltimore. This standard, which was taken to Connecticut by a Union soldier during the Civil War, is still on display in the lodge hall. It bears a painting of the great seal of the Old Dominion, and a motto from the Roman poet Virgil, "sic liar ad antra" ("Thus do we reach the stars") - ironically, now the motto of the city of Richmond. The prominence of the lodge increased in April 1844 with the ascension of one of its own, 'William H. Chapman, to the leadership of the state's Grand Lodge.
In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, there were 89 subordinate lodges in Virginia, with 5,217 contributing members. Virginia Lodge No. 1 was ensconced on the second floor of the Methodist Church in the Lower Town, in a hall that had cost the then-princely sum of $3,500, and boasted 88 members. In spite of the tumult and tension of the John
Brown Raid the previous year (curiously, Brown himself had been an Odd Fellow in early life), the lodge was in flourishing condition until disaster struck in the wave of internecine strife that engulfed the country.
Regular lodge meetings ceased after April 28, 1861, though some members met in homes, due to occupation of the hall by Confederate troops. The lodge was reorganized on March 16, 1864, but its building was destroyed in the course of the conflict.
When the guns finally fell silent, Virginia No. 1 petitioned the federal government to be allowed the use of armory building 23 at Jackson and Fillmore Streets on Camp Hill as a substitute, a request which was granted informally until the structure was sold to the order in 1869 for $130. The lodge has occupied this site ever since by virtue of a deed dated January 13, 1870.
The "new" lodge hall was in dilapidated condition at the end of the war, and bore the scars of the struggle. Graffiti by Union soldiers from the time it was used as a provost marshal's jail is preserved on its walls. Damage to the exterior is attributed to its having been struck by a cannonball. The building served as the backdrop for scores of photographs made by Mathew Brady's operatives of the soldiers of the 22"4 Regiment New York State Militia in 1862. Most intriguingly, the Federal Writers Project's highly regarded West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State (1941) declares unequivocally that the building was where Abraham Lincoln spent the night of his brief visit to the Army of the Potomac on October 1, 1862. Documentation to substantiate this claim has so far not come to light.
There is no doubt, however, about the new charter granted to Virginia Lodge No. 1 on December 5, 1865 by the fledgling Grand Lodge of West Virginia, since this document – addressed to Noble Grand Benjamin F. Leisenring, and signed by Grand Secretary Thomas G. Steele, is framed and on view in the lodge room.