Page 225 - PGM Compendium

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Of
M⸫W⸫ James H. Begg

1920-1921

Most Worshipful Brother James Howarth Begg, the fifty-eighth
brother to occupy the exalted station of Grand Master in this Grand
Jurisdiction, was a native of Scotland, born October 8, 1865. While
still a young man, he decided to cast his lot in the New World, and
in the late '88 or the early '89 came to Victoria, B. C, where he lived
three and a half years. He then came to the city of Tacoma, where,
in 1892, he declared his intention of becoming a citizen of the United
States. Though honoring the land of his birth, he paid due respect
and obedience and loyal devotion to the land of his choice and
adoption. He would relocate to Seattle where he made his home for the rest of his life.

He was an accomplished draftsman and he found employment with the engineering service of
public utility concerns and later in public employment in the office of the County Assessor of King
County. Interesting as it is to mention these incidents of his civic life, it was in his labors in the
quarries of Freemasonry that he found his chief delight, and for it he literally gave up all else and
made it the great purpose of his life.

James Howarth Begg knocked at the door of St. John's Lodge No. 9, and was initiated as an Entered
Apprentice Mason, August 27, 1898; passed to the Degree of Fellowcraft Mason, September 10,
1898; and raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason, September 24, 1898. He served as its
Worshipful Master during the year 1903.

From the first, he seemed to be inspired with a desire to make his mark among his brethren. Who
knows but that he received that inspiration from his association with such illustrious brethren as
Past Grand Masters John Arthur, Daniel Bagley, James R. Hayden, Joseph M. Taylor, and William
H. White, all of whom then bore membership in St. John's

But he was not content alone to have served his Mother Lodge in official capacity. He desired, and
was destined, to be something more of a builder. In less than a year after he had surrendered the
gavel to his successor, he had gathered about him twenty-eight brethren who joined him in a
petition for a dispensation to form a new Lodge in the University District of Seattle. On October
20, 1904, the then Grand Master, Most Worshipful Brother Edwin H. Van Patten, granted this
request, and University Lodge, U. D., now No. 141, came into existence, with James H. Begg as
its first Worshipful Master.