MOGMGWhitcomb
GEORGE WHITCOMB 1814-1872
Grand Master, 1862-1863
BIOGRAPHY
From Biographies of Past Grand Masters, 1821-1901, by the Grand Lodge of Missouri:
Most Worshipful Brother George Whitcomb appears from the imperfect annals of the Grand Lodge of that date to have first appeared in 1854 as Worshipful Master of Constantine Lodge No. 129, located at Charleston, Missouri. He was Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Correspondence, and rendered exceptionally good reports, in 1855, 1856, 1857 and 1859. He was also Chairman of Committee on the Masonic College in 1856. At the sessions of the Grand Lodge in 1858 and 1859 Brother Whitcomb submitted an excellent report as District Deputy Grand Master of District No. 21. At the annual election in 1861 Brother Whitcomb was elected Senior Grand Warden, and in 1862 Most Worshipful Grand Master. He was succeeded at the expiration of his term of one year, in 1863, by Brother John H. Turner.
Brother Whitcomb was born in Keene, New Hampshire, in 1814; at an early age moved to Leominster, Massachusetts, where he engaged in a comb manufactory. When about twenty-three years of age he left for the West; traveling all through the South, finally settled at Baldwinsville, now Belmont, Scott County, Missouri, in 1837, and engaged in the practice of law. Ere long Mississippi County was organized, taken from Scott County, and Charleston was made the county seat, when Brother Whitcomb removed there. He was appointed Deputy Circuit and County Clerk, and in 1847 was elected to both offices, and re-elected continuously until January 1, 1867, when he declined re-election.
Brother Whitcomb was a good lawyer and practiced in the Probate and Common Pleas Court of Mississippi County. He established the first paper ever published in that county, the Charleston Courier, in 1857, and was both editor and owner.
Information relative to Brother Whitcomb's association with constituent bodies of Masonry has been difficult to obtain, only that he was made a Mason in Constantine Lodge No. 129, at Charleston, Missouri, in September 1850, and exalted in Charleston R. A. Chapter No. 19, and its first Excellent High Priest.
His death occurred in Charleston, Missouri, July 10, 1872. His remains were conveyed to St. Louis and interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery. M. W. Brother Thomas K. Garrett, who was then Grand Master, conducted the Masonic burial ceremonv.
