His father, James Urquhart, left Scotland in 1851, taking a ship to New York City, and traveling on foot to New Orleans and by boat up the Mississippi River to Iowa, before joining a wagon train and heading west on the Oregon Trail.

As the Urquhart family continued to grow in size, they added additional acreage to their holdings and tended to a variety of crops and animals for their own use and for the markets of Olympia on the Puget Sound.

When Urquhart was eighteen years old, his father added to the family's real estate holdings when he purchased a large tract of land that included a small store and its merchandise.

James Urquhart opened a general store which he ran with his son, John, and .aid out a town which he named Napavine.

He joined a group of businessmen who formed the National Bank of Chehalis (later Coffman & Dobson) and built a large brick building to house it.

In 1895, Urquhart and his siblings prevented his 75-year old father from marrying 15-year old Myrtle Blanchard, who filed a breach of promise lawsuit on what was to be the wedding day.

[6] He served for many years as a trustee at the Westminster Presbyterian Church[7] in Chehalis as well as a number of other civic and fraternal organizations.

His wife, Anna, died suddenly on February 16, 1920 at their home in the Pennsylvania Avenue-West Side Historic District in Chehalis.