San Francisco County
Biographies
CARLTON
DUNFIELD DETHLEFSEN
Carlton Dunfield Dethlefsen, whose offices are situated at 881 Mills building in San Francisco, has acquired a most substantial success in the practice of law in this city within the comparatively short period of nine years. He is a native of this city, his birth occurred June 7, 1891, and he is a son of Nicholai Frederick and Emma Elizabeth (Dunfield) Dethlefsen.
Nicholai F. Dethlefsen came to California in the year 1885, and here he married Emma Elizabeth Dunfield, who was born in Seattle, Washington, of pioneer stock. For a number of years, they conducted a hotel “south of Market street.” Both of the parents are yet living, the father having attained the age of seventy-seven and the mother sixty-five. Carlton D. Dethlefsen’s maternal great-grandfather, Samuel Dunfield, was one of the prominent pioneers of the northwest, and his grandmother was the first white woman to be carried by natives across the Isthmus of Panama, en route to California.
Carlton D. Dethlefsen, who was the only child born to his parents, attended the old Lincoln school of San Francisco, his class having been one of the last to graduate from this institution so fondly remembered by San Francisco citizens. He also attended the Edison public school, and in 1906 graduated from the Horace Mann high school. From September, 1911, until September, 1913, he studied at the University of California, and then entered Washington and Lee University of Lexington, Virginia, for a year’s course. Having decided to make the practice of law his life’s work, Mr. Dethlefsen took up the study of law in the office of John F. Peck and William Bunker in Oakland, California, and in 1915 passed the state bar examination and was duly admitted to practice.
After the United States declared war against Germany in 1917, Mr. Dethlefsen enlisted in the United States Navy as a second-class seaman. He served for a period of two years and three months, at the end of which time he was honorably discharged with the rank of ensign. He then returned to the office in Oakland which he had left, that of Peck, Bunker & Cole, and remained from 1919 until 1922. In the latter year, he opened his office in San Francisco, and here he has met with constantly increasing success, and has conducted litigation for a very large clientele. He is a member of the American, the California State, and the San Francisco Bar Associations. In business affairs, he has taken an interested part in his capacity as an attorney, and is now a member of the advisory board of the Broadway and Grand avenue branch of the Bank of America.
In San Diego, California, November 29, 1919, occurred the marriage of Mr. Dethlefsen and Miss Frances Adele Harmon of Cincinnati, Ohio, the latter a daughter of Dr. Frank W. Harmon and a niece of the Hon. Judson Harmon, former governor of Ohio, eminent judge, and attorney-general of the United States under President Cleveland. Mr. and Mrs. Dethlefsen are the parents of three children: Elizabeth Harmon, who is eleven years of age; Carlton D., Jr., a lad of five years; and John Frederick, who is in his first year.
Mr. Dethlefsen is a thirty-second degree member of the Masonic fraternity, and belongs to the Mystic Shrine, the Masonic Club, the Order of Sciots, the American Legion, the South of Market Boys, the Commonwealth Club, the California Golf Club, and the Phi Delta Theta and Gamma Eta Kappa fraternities. In the companionship of his family and in the atmosphere of his own home, he has found his greatest relaxation and diversion from his arduous professional duties, and he has also been a devotee of golf.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Byington, Lewis Francis, “History of
San Francisco 3 Vols”, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1931. Vol. 3 Pages 27-29.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S SAN
FRANCISCO BIOGRAPIES