Past Masters
Albert Pike Lodge No. 303
1900’s
Bruce Griffith
1909
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Charles H Hatton
1908
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Gifford M Booth
1907
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Paul Brown
1906
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Richard E Bird
1905
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Julius E Luling
1904
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James F Bennett
1903
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John H Reynolds
1902
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S Grant
1901
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W Pearce
1900
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Bruce Griffith
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Griffith was minister of the Reformed Lutheran Church. In his year the lodge moved into its new home in the Consistory Temple, and the emphasis on letter-perfect ritual grew.
Charles H Hatton
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Hatton was in the life insurance business. The lodge met all year in Wichita Lodge No. 99’s hall while its new quarters were prepared.
Gifford M Booth
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Booth owned the Grit Printing Co., incorporated during his year as Master. That May, while the Consistory Building was remodeled, the lodge began meeting in the hall of Wichita Lodge No. 99. J. Giles Smith, Julius Luling and Richard Bird arranged the lodge’s new quarters, and the illuminated letter G was moved to the new hall. In 1916 he was among the Masons who worked through the night of the Masonic Home fire to account for every resident.
Paul Brown
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Brown was an attorney with the firm of Brown and Brown. He was regarded as the Master with the deepest knowledge of Masonic fundamentals.
Richard E Bird
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Bird (1878–1955) was born in Cincinnati and came to Wichita with his parents in 1887. Admitted to the bar in 1901, he was about 26 when he served as Master, a year in which 33 men were raised and the lodge reached 386 members. He served on the 1907 building committee for the lodge’s new quarters.
He went on to serve as judge of the 18th Judicial District, as U.S. Representative for Kansas’s 8th district from 1921 to 1923, and as Grand Master of Kansas in 1923. He retired to Long Beach, California, and is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Wichita.
Julius E Luling
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Luling (1869–1929) was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to German immigrants. His father died when he was young, and his widowed mother raised six children. He came to Wichita around age 20 and worked at the Wichita Steam Laundry before founding his own business. In 1924 he opened Luling’s City Laundry at Kansas and Douglas, a building now on the National Register of Historic Places.
He was remembered as one of the handsomest and most dignified young men in Wichita. He served on the 1907 building committee for the lodge’s new quarters in the Consistory Temple, was a 33rd-degree Mason and served as Potentate of Midian Shrine.
James F Bennett
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Bennett was a bookkeeper for the F. D. Trekel Lumber Co. He was known for his humor and for brotherly kindness extended to everyone, Mason or not.
John H Reynolds
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Reynolds worked for the Imboden Milling Co., the steam roller mill pioneer Wichita miller Hiram Imboden built at English and Fifth Avenue in 1897. He was described as a kindred spirit to his predecessor, W. S. Grant.
S Grant
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Grant headed the Grant-Billingsley Fruit Co., a produce wholesaler. Two of his company’s warehouses still stand in Wichita’s Old Town, the Grant-Billingsley Warehouse (1923) and the W. S. Grant Building (1925), both marked with historical markers. He was remembered as big-hearted, a good ritualist and discreet in word and deed.
W Pearce
Past Master, Albert Pike Masonic Lodge
Brother Pearce, one of the original petitioners, owned the Pearce Jewelry Store and later founded the Pearce Dental Supply Co. His son, Ira T. Pearce, served as the lodge’s Secretary. He brought a businessman’s standards to the office, and the lodge had grown to about 200 members by the end of his year.