Iverson L. Harris, Sr.

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Iverson L. Harris, Sr. was an attorney associated with the Point Loma community.

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography of 1926 provides this information:

НАRRIS, Iverson Louis, theosophist, was born at Macon, Ga., Nov. 25, 1860, son of Charles Jenkins and Mary Clopton (Wiley) Harris, of Huguenot stock. His father was а well-known lawyer of Macon, was solicitor-general and a judge of the city court. In the civil war he organized the 3rd Ga. reserves, of which he was colonel. To the same family belonged Isham Green Harris (q.v.), U. S. Senator and governor of Tennessee. Iverson Harris was the youngest student ever admitted to Mercer University. He left before graduating in order to help support the large family, made necessary by the devastations of the war and the failing health of his father. After teaching school for a period he studied law under his father, was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of his profession in his native City. He joined the theosophical movement in the early nineties and from the beginning took a conspicuous part in defense of theosophical principles, the promulgation of which he made his life work. He was President of the Macon branch of the theosophical society up to the time of his removal to California. In 1899 he settled at the International Theosophical Headquarters, Point Loma, chiefly for the purpose of educating his children in the Raja-Yoga School, which was about to be established by Мme. Katherine Tingley (q.v.) In the year previous he had become a mеmЬег of Мme. Tingley’s cabinet and was active in the formation of the Universal Brotherhood when it was organized by Мme. Tingley in 1898. He was personal counsel for Мme. Tingley, and professor and dean of law at the Theosophical University until his death. He was admitted to the California bar in 1900, and he had been identified with much important litigation in Southern California courts. He was member of various bar associations and of the Masonic fraternity. He was also a dominant factor in the Peacе Congress held by Mme. Tingley in Sweden in 1913. He was universally beloved for his sterling qualities as a man, his generosity, his integrity, his broad view of life, and his unswerving devotion to principle. He was an orator of rare gifts, a ripe scholar with an unusual knowledge of philosophy, history and the classics and a profound grasp of the principles of modern jurisprudence. He was a man to whom the bickerings of the law were as naught, but whose mind was of such fineness of caliber that only the great, underlying principles appealed to him, and the philosophy that only the great, underlying principles appealed to him, and the philosophy of the law rather than its technical aspects was his joyous pursuit. He was courteous, thoughtful, high-minded, and possessed of that high sense of honor so characteristic of a real southerner. As a lawyer he had the mental poise so essential in a good counsellor. He earned and maintained to the last the respect of both bench and bar. He was married Oct. 31, 1883, to Mary, daughter of James. I. Snider and Eliza R. Snider of Macon, GA. She survived him. He had four children: two of whom died in infancy; his surviving children are: Annie Mitchell, wife of Frederick Nelson, Miami, Ariz.; and Iverson L. Harris, Jr., Point Loma. He died at Point Loma, Calif., Sept. 13, 1921.[1]

Notes

  1. "Harris, Iverson Louis" The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: J. T. White and Co., 1926), 324-325. From typed copy in Walter A. Carrithers Papers, Theosophical Society in America Archives.