Our Story
It Began with Two Brothers and a Promise.
On August 11, 1886, Brothers Marcus B. Toney and William H. Bumpus chartered what was then called the Masonic Widows' and Orphans' Home Fund. Toney, orphaned himself by age eleven, knew firsthand the loneliness their work would answer. Bumpus, a physician barred from practice by his own poor health, found his calling instead in service.
Within two years, 2,000 Tennessee Masons had answered their call. By 1892, the first family, a widow and her three young daughters, walked through the doors of a new home in East Nashville. Over the decades that followed, the Home cared for thousands. Today, though the buildings are gone, the promise endures through the Endowment Fund their generation built for ours.
Continue Their Work
The Masonic Home · East Nashville, c. 1892