ALFRED JAMES HARWOOD

San Francisco County

Biographies

ALFRED JAMES HARWOOD

HARWOOD, ALFRED JAMES, Attorney at Law, San Francisco, California, was born in that city, April 30-1881, the son of Henry Harwood and Jane (McNerney) Harwood. His father was a well known mining man of the early days of California, who came to the State in 1850 and tried his luck with varying success, along the American River, subsequently shifting his operations to the Fraser river of British Columbia. Mr. Harwood comes of a very sturdy English stock, with a liberal graft, in the botanical meaning of the term, of distinguished forbears. Among the latter his great-uncle, Sir Robert John Coghan, was a general, under Wellington, and won glory by his bravery in the battles of Salamanca and Talavera; while his great grandfather, Sir Owen Pell, was an admiral in the British Navy. A paternal grandfather, a native of England, went to Canada in the early part of the last century and was a magistrate of Halton County, Ontario, for many years; while a maternal grandfather was a prominent architect of Dublin, Ireland. The force of heredity is in strong evidence here, and A. J. Harwood has all the physical, and many of the mental, characteristics of a pure-blooded Englishman, even to the point of deferring marriage longer than is the wont of Americans, for he is still a bachelor.

His education has been exceptional, if not unique. Until he was eighteen he received most of his schooling at home, largely under the direction of his mother, a highly cultivated woman, who seems to have instilled in him a genuine thirst for knowledge. With this incentive, probably the most essential stimulus to rapid progress, he was able to profit much by the private instruction subsequently given him by various professors. At the age of twenty-one he began to study law, of his own initiative, adopting the case system which the Harvard Law School at Cambridge had the honor of originating. This method of study still further developed the independence of thought and reliance upon self which his previous education had fostered. With as excellent an equipment as he could have obtained from a process with which he was in less perfect sympathy he was admitted to the Bar in 1905, and soon thereafter began the practice of his profession.

Mr. Harwood’s legal beginnings were somewhat unusually fortunate, for as assistant to the firm of Bishop, Wheeler & Hoefler, the predecessor of the present partnership, he had the advantage of valuable associations and a large business. On the retirement of Mr. Wheeler in 1905 his duties and experience were materially increased, and in the following year he was admitted to partnership, the title becoming Bishop, Hoefler, Cook & Harwood.

His practice has been entirely of a civil nature, largely in corporation law, wherein a knowledge of commercial theory and practice is an essential of success. In this connection he has become attorney for a number of important concerns, such as The San Francisco Breweries Ltd., the City Street Improvement Company, and others. He is one of those men who have sufficient versatility to be at one time a little uncertain of their proper sphere of action, but whose adaptability enables them to find success and contentment in the field they finally choose. Mr. Harwood formerly fluctuated between medicine and law as a choice of professions, but he has evidently “found himself” in the latter. His English inheritance again appears in his wholesome, breezy, affable personality as well as in his fondness for outdoor life and he relaxes variously, on horseback, on the tennis courts and on the golf links.

His club activity is confined to the following organizations: Bohemian, Olympic Athletic, Presidio Golf, California Lawn Tennis.

Transcribed by Betty Vickroy.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 284, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.

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San Francisco County

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