Jasper F. Massey

Jasper F. Massey was born on September 13, 1866, at Canton, Mississippi, and was only two years old when his family moved to Texas. He came to Houston in 1885 and worked as a carpenter. In time he founded the Massey Manufacturing Company, a sash and door manufacturer, and served as its president for many years before retiring into the real estate business.

He received his degrees in Gray Lodge: the Entered Apprentice on December 6, 1895, the Fellowcraft on January 31, 1896, and the Master Mason degree on March 4, 1896. He served as Senior Steward, Junior and Senior Deacon, and Junior and Senior Warden. When the Galveston storm struck in September 1900, he was one of the Brethren named to the lodge’s relief committee.

He was installed as the 31st Master in 1901 by Grand Master Nat M. Washer, assisted by Past Grand Master John Watson. At the same ceremony the Grand Master presented a Past Grand Master’s jewel to Mrs. Anson Jones, widow of the first Grand Master of Texas. The history records that “the bent form of the aged widow quivered with emotion” as she tried to express her thanks. His year was also the one in which the Grand Lodge voted to leave Houston for Waco. Gray Lodge had sent a committee to Corsicana to argue against the move, and it shared the cost of printing 4,000 copies of an address by Brother A. C. Gray of Holland Lodge setting out Houston’s case. The lodge also explored securing a floor for Masonic use in the new Kirby Building at Main and Rusk.

He was a Royal Arch Mason and a member of Washington Chapter No. 2. For decades he was a living link to the lodge’s early years. On Lambskin Apron Night in the early 1930s his apron, dated March 4, 1896, was the oldest in the room three years running. On behalf of the Past Masters he presented the lodge with a Texas flag in 1936, and in 1943 he donated his Gray-Temple Masonic Corporation certificates to the lodge, an example many Brethren followed. In 1949 Gray Lodge honored him with one of six chairs it gave to the new Grand Lodge Temple at Waco.

He died in December 1950 at the age of 84, the oldest Past Master of Gray Lodge. He was survived by two daughters and five sons, was a member of the Cedar Bayou Methodist Church, and was buried with Masonic honors by Gray Lodge in the Cedar Bayou Cemetery at Baytown.