Cleveland Dear, Beauregard-Rapides Parish Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: September 24, 2006 



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Cleveland Dear 
August 22, 1888 

Author: Henry E Chambers 

Cleveland Dear, for a decade has practiced law as a member of the Alexandria bar, 
is serving as district attorney, and his practice has brought him a rapidly 
increasing place of useful service and prominence in his community. 

Mr. Dear was born in Beauregard Parish, Louisiana, August 22, 1888, son of James 
M. and Sarah Jane (Harper) Dear. His parents were born in Mississippi and after 
establishing their home in Beauregard Parish were planters, their home being a 
small farm, while the father became a prominent timber operator, operating a saw 
mill. His home for several years past has been on a small farm near Alexandria. 
He was a soldier in the war between the states, entering the struggle at the 
beginning and doing his part for the Southern cause until the end. He is a 
democrat and has served for many years as a deacon in the Baptist Church. 

Cleveland Dear was the youngest son in a family of four boys and six girls. He 
attended country schools, but for his higher advantages attended Louisiana State 
University at Baton Rouge, where he was graduated with the Bachelor of Arts degree 
in 1910 and finished the law course and received his law degree in 1914. In the 
same year he engaged in practice at Alexandria, at first alone, and subsequently 
formed a partnership with Frank H. Peterman in the firm of Peterman & Dear. 
Subsequently Mr. Peterman's father, V. H. Peterman, joined the firm, and it is now 
Peterman, Dear & Peterman. This firm handles a large amount of corporation work, 
representing the local interests of the Texas & Pacific Railway and the Louisiana 
Railway and Navigation Company and several other industries. On April 8, 1917, he 
entered the officers' training camp at Fort Logan H. Roots, Arkansas, and was made 
lieutenant in the field artillery. He was then put in the Eighty-seventh Division, 
located at Camp Pike, Arkansas, and when that division moved overseas he was 
transferred to the One Hundred Eleventh Division, at Camp Meade, Maryland, at 
Baltimore, and was there when the armistice was signed and received his discharge 
on December 14, 1918. Since then he has been a captain in the A. G. D. department 
of the Organized Reserve Corps. He is a member of George M. Simmons Post No. 3 of 
the American Legion. 

Mr. Dear married in April, 1921, Marion S. Anderson, who was born in Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin, and reared and educated in that state. They have one child, Marion Dear. 
Mrs. Dear is a member of the Episcopal Church, and he attends the Baptist Church. 
He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, a member of the 
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon college fraternity, 
and is a democrat in politics. In 1920 Mr. Dear was elected district attorney, and 
in 1924 became a candidate for re-election and was re-elected without opposition. 
To the duties of his office and to his law practice he has given all his time and 
is an attorney who has risen rapidly to distinction from an early life in which he 
had to depend entirely upon his own efforts and resources. 

Additional Comments: 
NOTE: The referenced source contains a black and white photograph of the subject 
with his/her autograph. 
A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 217-218, by Henry E. Chambers. 
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.