The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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The lodges and clubs of Avon Park

Summary

Before Avon Park had a town government it had a Board of Trade, and for a century after it had the lodges, clubs and associations through which a small town governs its own leisure and its own memory. The Masons chartered Poinciana Lodge No. 227 in January 1914, eight months after a visitor reported the aprons already sewn. The Woman’s Club was organized in 1919 and by 1933 was host to the state federation’s annual convention. American Legion Highlands Post No. 69 of 1923 furnished the town’s volunteer firemen and, after the Second World War, its honor roll on the Mall. The Rotary Club came in 1924, the Winter Guest Club in 1937, the Garden Club in 1946. And on 9 October 1945 the town’s pioneer families formed the Old Settlers Association that became, between 1975 and 1981, the Historical Society that keeps this record.

The Board of Trade

The oldest civic body was commercial. Oliver Crosby’s Board of Trade existed by 1891, when, back from London, he had its secretary, Charles H. Smith, draw up the charter of the Florida Development Company.[maxwell-1976] After the freeze it was refounded: “In 1922 the Town’s affairs were still managed by a Board of Trade which had been organized by Mr. King in 1897. Their meetings were called ‘smokers’ which makes one suspect that all the men smoked. These meetings were first held in the club house or Sargent’s Hall, later in the old post office, the Wray home, and the Brickel auditorium and in the Jacaranda Hotel when it was finished, until the new City Hall was completed in 1929.” When the town became a city in 1926 the Board took the name Chamber of Commerce; in 1930 it staged a parade “Ushering in Prosperity,” and in 1939 it was revived and given the old Spinks building on Main Street for its office.[maxwell-1976]

Evidence: contested. The Chamber’s own founding date is given four ways. The 1976 history says the Board of Trade “had been in existence since the town was organized in 1886” in one place and was “organized by Mr. King in 1897” in another;[maxwell-1976] the Chamber’s website says “established in 1904”;[apcc-who-we-are] and the Depot Museum’s own columnist has written that the Board of Trade “formed” on 1 January 1926.[newssun-charm] A body that met in a hotel parlor and kept no minutes can be founded as often as its members remember, and no record has been found to choose among them.

The Masons

Evidence: corroborated.

In the spring of 1913 a Connecticut man back from a visit told his home paper that near the store in Avon Park “they have erected a $5,000 business block in which a Masonic lodge is soon to be started and the wives of the members have already made 10 Masonic aprons.”[nhu-1913-05-04] The Grand Lodge of Florida’s own record gives the result: Poinciana Lodge No. 227, Avon Park, chartered on 21 January 1914.[glfl-lodge-227] The lodge took over Perry Haines’s Avonian Block of 1893 beside the Verona Hotel, which “became known as The Masonic Temple in later years,” and kept it until the building was sold, made into apartments and finally demolished in 1961, when the lodge built a new temple on West Main Street.[maxwell-1976] It meets there still, at 939 West Main Street.[masonic-district-21] On 1 August 1928 the city council authorized the lodge to lay the cornerstone of the new City Hall.[maxwell-1976]

The higher bodies followed. Holy Rood Commandery No. 27 of the Knights Templar was organized in 1920, and a Highlands Chapter of Royal Arch Masons met in the town, though by 1976 the history said the chapter and commandery had “merged with the Winter Haven Chapters.”[maxwell-1976] The Royal Arch chapter outlived that report: the Grand Chapter’s directory of 2011 still lists “Highlands No. 64” at Avon Park, meeting on the fourth Tuesday.[gyr-2011]

The town’s Order of the Eastern Star chapter was organized shortly after Poinciana Lodge, named Leigh Chapter in honor of the Leigh family, whose winter estate and Masonic connections were noted during the 1913 lodge-founding effort.[nhu-1913-05-04] The chapter met regularly on Friday evenings in the Masonic hall by January 1915.[desoto-1915-01-14] Designated Leigh Chapter No. 85 under the Grand Chapter of Florida, it sent Mrs. Nathan Smith, Mrs. J. F. Caulfield, and Mrs. DeForest Canfield as delegates to the 1916 Grand Chapter assembly in Jacksonville, continuing sessions in the Masonic hall with socials in its library.[desoto-1916-04-20] Leigh Chapter operated alongside Poinciana Lodge through the twentieth century, moving with it in 1961 to the temple at 939 West Main Street.[maxwell-1976][irs-990-leigh-85]

Other fraternal orders included the Odd Fellows’ Highlands Lodge No. 74 and the Rebekahs’ Eleanor Seaverns Lodge No. 65, named for the wife of the town’s first elected mayor.[maxwell-1976]

The Woman’s Club, 1919

Evidence: corroborated.

“The Woman’s Club of Avon Park was organized and federated in 1919 when the Mothers Congress divided. The Congress later became the PTA. Mrs. Mae Walden, Mrs. W. M. Reck and Mrs. Cora Wray were among the founding members.” In 1935 the club bought one of the first houses built in the town, at the corner of South Verona Avenue and East Pine Street, the house in which the town’s first indoor flush toilet had been installed, and made it its clubhouse.[maxwell-1976] Its standing in the state showed in 1933, when the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs held its thirty-ninth annual convention at Avon Park on 14 to 17 March, the federation’s president having toured the district’s clubs the month before, and adopted there a resolution on the funding of the schools.[gct-1933-03-23][gct-1933-02-16] A Business Woman’s Club and a Junior Woman’s Club followed.[maxwell-1976]

The Legion, 1923

American Legion Highlands Post No. 69 was instituted in 1923 with Mark W. Lance as commander, Judge D. V. Rouse vice-commander, John H. Hood adjutant, H. M. Wiggins finance officer, Harry Davis chaplain and W. L. Skipper historian. Its members were the town’s volunteer firemen of 1927 (see The Avon Park Fire Department), and at the close of the Second World War the post put up the “Honor Roll” on the Mall near the flagpole, eight feet of white marble in the shape of a star, carrying the names of every man of the district who had served, promoted by its commander W. M. Hetherington, editor of the Avon Park Sun, and designed without charge by the architect W. J. Heim.[maxwell-1976] The post is at 1301 West Bell Street.[floridalegion-post69]

Rotary, 1924

The Rotary Club of Avon Park was organized in 1924; Edward G. Todd, its first sergeant-at-arms, was its last surviving charter member in 1976, and the flags on the Mall’s flagpole have always been the club’s gift.[maxwell-1976] A Rotary history of the district records the club’s admission on 22 August 1924, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Lakeland, under Governor Will Lanier.[rghf-district-6960] The club’s own account today begins with the Bluegrass and Blueberry Festival, first held at the Rotary Building “to introduce blueberries as a local crop.”[rotary-avon-park]

Winter guests, gardeners and the rest

Avon Park had been a winter resort since the Verona opened, and in 1937 the winter residents organized a Winter Guest Club, for which the city provided a clubhouse and built “the finest shuffle board courts in the State of Florida”; by 1976 the club had about eight hundred members.[maxwell-1976]

The Avon Park Garden Club was organized on 15 January 1946, with Mrs. W. H. Kempton president, and federated in 1947, the year the state federation’s own list gives for the “Founders GC of Avon Park.”[maxwell-1976][ffgc-dates] Its Hibiscus Circle of 1948 planted the beds around the bandstand and the roadside park on Highway 27 south of town; the club set the marker to Dr. C. S. Donaldson, “the founder of the Mall,” opposite the Hotel Jacaranda, and in 1965 a marker at the Mall’s west end making Highway 27 a Blue Star Memorial Highway in honor of the town’s Gold Star Mothers.[maxwell-1976]

Kiwanis, Lions and Grange No. 203 were all active in 1976, and scouting for boys and girls had been kept up “since the early Twenties.”[maxwell-1976] The corporate record gives the later shape of some of them: a Kiwanis Club of Avon Park incorporated in March 1965 and dissolved in January 1999, an Avon Park Grange No. 203 incorporated in 1987 and dissolved in 1993, and the Rotary Club incorporated in September 1977.[sunbiz-kiwanis] The Lions of Avon Park and Sebring are today one club, chartered at Sebring in 1973.[newssun-lions-2021]

The Old Settlers Association

Evidence: corroborated.

The body that produced the town’s history was formed at the close of the Second World War. Although the 1976 history says in one place that the Old Settlers Association of Avon Park was started “ninety years” after the Florida Historical Society of 1856 (1946) and in another that it “was organized in 1947,” contemporary reports in The Avon Park Sun fix its organizational meeting to 9 October 1945, with May Walden of the Woman’s Club serving as acting chairman and writing the bylaws and Articles of Incorporation.[aps-1950-09-29][aps-1957-10-10][aps-1977-11-03][maxwell-1976] In November 1945, five founding executive committee members—May Walden, Cora Gray Wray, Byrum Shockley (first historian), Clara Davidson, and Alice Davidson—signed the charter first, followed by sixty-three pioneers at the inaugural covered-dish picnic.[aps-1957-10-10] Open without dues to anyone who had lived in the Avon Park area for twenty or more years, the club met each October at Donaldson Park, heard historical papers by Byrum Shockley and other early settlers, and in October 1951 secured space for lockers inside the new fireproof Avon Park Public Library to store its growing collection of papers and photographs.[aps-1950-09-29][aps-1951-10-19][aps-1957-10-10]

Cora Wray, charter treasurer and longtime historian, gathered the family albums and records of the Kings, Marshalls, Pabors, Putneys, Nettletons and Shockleys on which the 1976 history was built; she attended her last meeting on her 87th birthday, 23 October 1971 (misdated as 9 October 1971 in the 1976 book’s caption), and entrusted her pioneer archives to Secretary Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell.[aps-1971-10-28][aps-1978-10-12][maxwell-1976] In 1970–1971 the Association urged the city to save the neglected bandstand on the Mall, and W. Cliff Thomas and Treasurer Grace Boney raised the money to restore it.[aps-1971-10-28][maxwell-1976] In 1975 the club changed its name to the Old Settlers Historical Society and dropped the twenty-year residency requirement; in 1976, as The Historical Society of the Old Settlers Association, Inc. under the Rev. H. D. Graetz and then Robert W. Burkhart as presidents, it published Maxwell’s The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida; in 1978 it dropped “Old Settlers” to become The Historical Society of Avon Park; on 4 January 1979 it acquired the 1926 Seaboard depot through the city for a museum; and on 25 June 1981 it incorporated with the State of Florida as The Historical Society of Avon Park, Inc. (Document No. 758915).[aps-1977-11-03][aps-1978-10-12][maxwell-1976][sunbiz-758915] The full institutional history is in The Old Settlers Association and the Historical Society of Avon Park (1945–Present), The Avon Park Historical Society, Cora Gray Wray, Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, and Origins and Formation of the Old Settlers Association and the Historical Society of Avon Park.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (Held at the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum, Avon Park, Florida) (1976) · book
  2. Avon Park Chamber of Commerce, Who We Are, Avon Park Chamber of Commerce (2026) · secondary
  3. Elaine Levey, Highlands News-Sun, From The Archives, History of the 'City of Charm' (2026) · newspaper
  4. The New Haven Union, The New Haven Union (New Haven, Conn.), 4 May 1913, City Edition Part Two, page 23: a New Haven man's account of Avon Park (1913) · newspaper
  5. Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Florida, Poinciana Lodge No. 227, Avon Park: lodge record, Grand Lodge of Florida Secretaries Portal (2026) · official
  6. 21st Masonic District Association, Poinciana Lodge No. 227, 21st Masonic District (2026) · secondary
  7. Grand York Rite of Florida, Proceedings of the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of Florida, 2011, page 49: chapter directory (2011) · official
  8. Gadsden County Times, Gadsden County Times (Quincy, Fla.), 23 March 1933, page 3: resolution of the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs at Avon Park (1933) · newspaper
  9. Gadsden County Times, Gadsden County Times (Quincy, Fla.), 16 February 1933, page 3 (1933) · newspaper
  10. The American Legion, Department of Florida, Highlands Post 69, Avon Park, The American Legion Department of Florida (2026) · secondary
  11. Rotary Global History Fellowship, The First 100 Years: Rotary District 6960 club admissions (2026) · secondary
  12. Rotary Club of Avon Park, Rotary Club of Avon Park (2026) · secondary
  13. Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, Dates of Federation, Florida Federation of Garden Clubs (2026) · secondary
  14. Highlands News-Sun, February 2021, Lions Club continues in service (2021) · newspaper
  15. Florida Division of Corporations, Kiwanis Club of Avon Park, Florida, Inc., document 708622; Avon Park Grange #203 Inc., document N20731; Rotary Club of Avon Park, Inc., document 740111 (2026) · official
  16. The De Soto County News, The De Soto County News (Arcadia, Fla.), 14 January 1915, page 14 (1915) · newspaper
  17. The De Soto County News, The De Soto County News (Arcadia, Fla.), 20 April 1916, page 5 (1916) · newspaper
  18. Internal Revenue Service, Order Of The Eastern Star Of Florida, 85 Leigh (EIN 59-6213794) (2024) · official
  19. The Avon Park Sun, Old Settlers Plan Annual Picnic Oct. 11 (Avon Park Historical Society Newspaper Archive (1950-10-11 reel)) (1950) · newspaper
  20. The Avon Park Sun, Old Settlers Enjoy 7th Annual Picnic; Vote Donation to Library Fund (Avon Park Historical Society Newspaper Archive (1953-09-28 reel)) (1951) · newspaper
  21. The Avon Park Sun, Old Settlers Plan 13th Annual Picnic Wednesday, Oct. 16 (Avon Park Historical Society Newspaper Archive (1957-10-10 reel)) (1957) · newspaper
  22. The Avon Park Sun, Old Settlers Association Holds Annual Covered Dish Dinner and Meeting (Avon Park Historical Society Newspaper Archive (1971-10-28 reel)) (1971) · newspaper
  23. Lew Miller and Betty Amburn (The Avon Park Sun), Old Settlers Work For Museum / Your Ideas Needed (Avon Park Historical Society Newspaper Archive (1977-11-03 reel)) (1977) · newspaper
  24. Betty Amburn and Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell (The Avon Park Sun), Leoma Maxwell Helps To Organize City's History (Avon Park Historical Society Newspaper Archive (1979-10-11 reel)) (1978) · newspaper
  25. Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations, Florida Division of Corporations Filing: THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF AVON PARK, INC. (Document No. 758915) (1981) · archival

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