Page 216 - 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.

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