Zorah Temple


On Sunday morning, December 16th, 1888, a group of seventeen members of Murat Temple, residing in Terre Haute, met in the Asylum of the Terre Haute Commandery No. 16 Knights Templar, then located at 7th and Wabash on the third floor of the McKeen building and formed an organization known as the Terre Haute Shrine Club. This club became very active in Shrinedom for twenty years.

In the year 1907, the Shrine Club decided to petition the Imperial Council for a Temple in Terre Haute. The name ZORAH was submitted by Noble Charles Balch and was selected and entered on the petition to the Imperial Council. Zorah is the name of a town fourteen miles from Jerusalem and was known in the early days of the religious wars as a place of Hornets.

The petition was prepared and presented at the Imperial
Council Session at St. Paul, Minnesota in 1908. The petition was denied. The petition was again presented in 1909, at the Imperial Council Session at Louisville, Ky., and a dispensation was granted on June 9th for the creation of Zorah Temple.
The following year 1910 April 13th, at New Orleans, the Imperial Council granted a charter and Zorah Temple became the 120th Temple.

                                          The following officers were named in the dispensation by the
                      Imperial  Council  in  the charter in 1910:


                                       Potentate ..............................................Fred C. Goldsmith
                                 Chief Rabban .............. ..........................Will W. Adamson
                            Assistant Rabban ................................... …..Ed F. Leever
                      Treasurer ............ .......................................Nicholas A. Smith
                 Recorder .....................................,.......... .......Jay O. Shultz
 
Zorah Temple was instituted, however, on July 1, 1909 under the dispensation. The ceremonies took place in the Asylum of the Terre Haute Commandery in the afternoon and was con­ducted by several Imperial Council Officers. The first ceremonial was held immediately afterward in the Knights of Columbus Hall at 9th and Ohio Streets. The ritualistic work was conducted by the Divan from Murat Temple together with Zorah's newly creat­ed Divan. Following the ceremonial an elaborate dinner was served in the banquet room of the Terre Haute Commandery.

After the charter was granted in 1910 and Zorah actually and legally became a Temple, the old Christian Church property on Mulberry Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets was purchased and remodeled to meet the needs of the organization. Zorah Temple continued to grow by leaps and bounds and soon outgrew the capacity of the building in 1925 with a membership of 1343.

Plans were started for a new Temple and the buildings on the site of the present Temple were purchased for $35,000. In 1926 construction of the present Temple was started and com­pleted the following year and was officially dedicated in May 1927 by representatives of the Imperial Council. The cost of the Temple and furnishings was approximately $350,000.