Los
Angeles County
Biographies
LUCIUS K. CHASE
Lucius K. Chase, one of the
prominent members of the southern California bar, has been practicing attorney
of Los Angeles during the past thirty-six years, confining his attention to civil
and corporation law. He was born in
Madison, Wisconsin, July 29, 1871, a son of Ransom J. and Mary M. (Baker)
Chase. His grandfather, Jacob Chase, was
a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier in the War of 1812. Ransom J. Chase was a pioneer settler in
Wisconsin and as a young man enlisted in the Eighteenth Wisconsin Infantry for
service in the Union Army. He entered as
a private and for gallantry was promoted to lieutenant, and finally to captain,
being transferred to Company H of the Forty-second Wisconsin Infantry, with
which he served until the close of the war.
After the war he took up the law as his profession, and practiced in
Madison, Wisconsin, and Sioux City, Iowa, chiefly in the latter city, where he
was considered one of the leading members of his profession. When he finally retired from law practice he
moved to the state of Washington, where he died in 1911, aged seventy-one.
Lucius K. Chase attended the public
schools of Sioux City, Iowa, the Shattuck Military Academy at Faribault,
Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin, being graduated from the last named
institution on the completion of the law course in 1896. He was admitted to the bars of Wisconsin and
Iowa and for a brief period practiced with his father at Sioux City. He came to Los Angeles on the 1st
of January 1897, and was admitted to the California bar. A contemporary biographer wrote: “From the first he guided his practice into
corporation and civil law, and in later years his ability won him a large and
important volume of work in this field.
He has won a number of important cases involving large interests,
perhaps the most notable having been as representative of the actual settlers
on some fifty thousand acres of land in the Palo Verde Valley. As attorney for these settlers he resisted
the efforts of the state to claim the lands of this valley. It was one of the notable cases of land
litigation in California at that time.”
Mr. Chase owns several hundred acres in the Palo Verde Valley devoted to
the cultivation of cotton and alfalfa.
His outstanding service to southern
California has been along the line of water supply. He was one of the original movers in the
Boulder Dam project and has labored untiringly through the years toward its
successful fruition. He has been active
in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, serving as a director for ten years,
and for five years as chairman of the committee on power and reclamation. During the years 1925 and 1926 he was acting
chairman of the Citizens Committee of Fifteen appointed by the Chamber of
Commerce at the request of the Board of Public Service Commissioners to make
recommendations as to the water policy of the city of Los Angeles. He was a member of the Los Angeles board of
education at the time of the World War and served as chairman of its finance
committee from July, 1917, to June, 1919.
On the 1st of January,
1900 in Los Angeles, Mr. Chase was united in marriage to Miss Marie E. Watkins,
her father being the late Rev. D. F. Watkins, a Congregational minister, who
went as a missionary of his church to old Mexico in 1871. He was living retired at San Diego when he
died in 1913, and his wife, Mrs. Edna (Parker) Watkins, died in 1915. Mrs. Chase was born at Guadalajara, Mexico,
while her father was missionary there, and during some of her infant years it
was necessary for a guard to be kept over the family home. She acquired her educational training in
Mexico, in Canada and the United States, completing her studies at Oxford
College for Women in Ohio. Mrs. Chase is
a member of the Ebell Club of Los Angeles and active in social circles of the
city. Mr. and Mrs. Chase have three
sons, all natives of California: Lucius
F., Ransom W. and David P. Lucius F.
Chase, after attending Harvard Law School and receiving his J. D. degree from
the University of California in 1925, entered his father’s law office and in
1929, upon the organization of the firm of Chase, Barnes & Chase, became
the junior partner. Ransom attended Yale
University 1927-1928, graduated from California School of Jurisprudence, 1929,
and in 1933 became a member of the firm of Chase, Barnes & Chase with
offices at 715 Title Insurance Building.
David P. graduated from the University of California in 1929 and is
engaged in the real estate and insurance business.
Politically Mr. Chase is a
Republican. Fraternally he is a York
Rite Mason who has also attained the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite, and is a member of southern California Lodge, No. 278,
F. & A. M.; Los Angeles Commandery, No. 9, K. T.; and Al Malaikah Temple,
A. A. O. N. M. S., of Los Angeles. He is
a member of the Beta Theta Pi college fraternity, the Loyal Legion, the
California Club, which he joined in 1899, the Los Angeles Country Club, the
City Club, and the Los Angeles County, California State and American Bar
Associations.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: California of the South Vol.
IV, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 717-719,
Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
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BIOGRAPHIES