Los Angeles-Alameda-San Francisco County CA Archives Biographies.....Hare, Alfred Waldron July 23, 1871 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com October 31, 2010, 7:05 pm Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Page s 107 - 109 Author: The Lewis Publishing Company ALFRED WALDRON HARE has proved his ability and resourcefulness in each of two professions, the ministry and the law, and has shown in his constructive service and his high ethical ideals that there need be no inconsistency in following two vocations that might be viewed as somewhat antagonistic in their functioning. Mr. Hare is talented and earnest both as a clergyman and as a successful member of the Los Angeles bar, and his powers make possible his effective service in both capacities. He is pastor of the Park Congregational Church, the second oldest church of this denomination in Los Angeles, and in the practice of law he is senior member of the firm of Hare & Walden, with offices in the Black Building. Alfred Waldron Hare was born in New York City, July 23, 1871. He is a son of George and Sarah (Hewitt) Hare, both of whom were born in Ireland, Mr. Hare of English parentage, and who were young folk when they came to the United States. They were married in Brooklyn, New York, and continued their residence in the State of New York until 1881. They then came to California and established the family home in the City of Oakland, where they remained until the spring of 1888, when they removed to Los Angeles, the remainder of their lives having been passed in Southern California. George Hare was a mere boy at the inception of the Civil war, but his youthful patriotism was not to be curbed and found expression by his enlisting in the Seventh Connecticut Volunteer Infantry when he was a lad of fifteen years. Under a second enlistment he served with the Fifth United States Cavalry, and it is a matter of record that he participated in many engagements, including a number of major battles, and proved a loyal and gallant young soldier of the Union. In later years he perpetuated his association with his former comrades by maintaining affiliation with the Grand Army of the Republic. The original religious faith of the Hare family was that of the Established Church of England, and the parents of George Hare retained the faith by becoming communicants of the Protestant Episcopal Church after coming to the United States. An uncle of Mr. Hare was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church in New York City. Alfred W. Hare was a lad of about ten years when the family home was established in Oakland, California, and there he profited by the advantages of the public schools, as did he later those of Los Angeles. He studied law under private preceptorship in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in the former city his studies were carried forward in the law office of Brewton A. Haynes, who, after the passing of about forty-five years, now is in office association with Mr. Hare in Los Angeles. Mr. Hare was for some time a student in the University of Southern California, and his admission to the bar occurred in the year 1912. In 1901 he received the degree of Bachelor of Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion, at Berkeley. In his law practice Mr. Hare gives major attention to corporation and probate law, in which he has made a record of marked success, and his firm controls a large and important law business in the metropolis of Southern California. He has membership in the Los Angeles County Bar Association and the California State Bar Association, in politics he is a Republican, with somewhat independent proclivities, and in each of his two professions he finds a medium for giving expression to his broad-minded civic loyalty and progressiveness. Mr. Hare was ordained a clergyman of the Congregation Church in the year 1896, and his pastoral service has included that in churches of this denomination at Oakland, Fresno and Santa Cruz, as well as Los Angeles, where he is now pastor of the Park Congregational Church. He has held this charge somewhat more than a decade and has been able to expand greatly both the spiritual and material interests of the church. He is a strong and eloquent pulpit orator and vigorous church executive, and as the head of one of the representative churches in his home city he ranks as one of the leading clergymen of Los Angeles — a man whose communal service has been along many avenues of usefulness and whose consecrated zeal has been crowned with successful service in behalf of humanity. Mr. Hare gives five days each week to his law business, but from Friday evening of each week until the following Monday morning his time, thought and service are given to his pastoral work. His is a deep and abiding human sympathy and tolerance, and each of his professional affiliations has tended to broaden both his intellectual and spiritual outlooks. He is one of the influential members of the Santa Clara Valley Association of Congregational Churches and Ministers, and he has been a staunch supporter of the prohibition laws of the state and the nation. In the World war period Mr. Hare was instant in patriotic service of communal order, was a four-minute speaker in behalf of Government war loans, Red Cross service, etc., and was a supporter of the Near East Relief work and other humane agencies working during and after the war. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and in all the relations of his earnest and serviceful life he has commanded inviolable place in popular confidence, esteem and affection. It is interesting to recall that in his student days Mr. Hare was a valued member of the old Alliance football team, which played in the first intercollegiate football game in Los Angeles, and that among the other members of this team at the time were Samuel Haskins, a leading lawyer of Los Angeles, where he is president of the California Club, in 1931; W. L. Stewart, president of the Union Oil Company of California; and Hon. Curtis D. Wilbur, former Secretary of the United States Navy, former chief justice of the California Supreme Court, and now judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals in this state. On the 24th of February, 1903, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Hare to Miss Grace Olive Dunsmoor, of Oakland, California. Mrs. Hare is a daughter of the late Charles H. Dunsmoor, who was for many years county clerk of Los Angeles County and who later served as state bank commissioner. Mrs. Hare was graduated in the State Normal School in San Francisco and prior to her marriage had been a successful and popular teacher in the Oakland public schools. She is a gracious figure in the church, cultural and social circles of Los Angeles, is a talented pianist and organist, and is known for her earnest zeal in assisting young folk to obtain proper educational advantages. At the time of this writing, in 1931, Mrs. Hare is chairman of the scholarship committee of the Philanthropic and Civic Club of Los Angeles. 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