Alfred Andrew van Hovenberg was born on April 20, 1855, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the second child of Martin Henry van Hovenberg and Mary Theresa O'Connor. His birthdate is confirmed by the unpublished transcript of baptisms at Trinity Church in New York City, where he was baptized May 7, 1870. He moved with his family to Manchester Township just off the intersection of the Godwinville Turnpike (present day Goffle Road) and the Passaic River in 1862. Educated privately, he read law, and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1878. His legal duties were varied and demanding.
Alfred was also a prominent businessman in Paterson, being one of the original stockholders in the Paterson Evening News and several other companies, was involved in a singing choir, a warder of the Episcopal Church, a member of the National Guard, and helped found the first public library in Paterson.
At about the time of his father's death in 1899, Alfred left Paterson and moved to California, establishing a law practice in San Francisco. He married Ruth Honor Lasette on Easter Monday 1905; Ruth was born in 1885 and died in August, 1955. They had three daughters: Ruth, who died in 1918 at the age of 12, Juliette Marie (1916-1951), who died from diabetes while pursuing a doctorate in Gaelic literature and who also pursued the genealogy of the family, and Jane Elizabeth (b. 1920), who married Edward Frederick Radke II.
Originally, Alfred and Ruth lived in San Francisco but after the earthquake and fire in April, 1906 -- about the time of their first anniversary and right around his birthday -- they were compelled to leave, and settled in Fruitvale in the outskirts of Oakland.
Alfred is variously remembered. The records in Passaic County indicate that he was perhaps the most enterprising, active, and successful of all of the van Hovenberg brothers. His niece, Gwendolyn, remembers him as a lively raconteur, but also as at times amusingly prudish: he was supposed to have told his wife not to cook with wine, which she was wont to do being of French descent, and to have taken the dice away from his daughters' Parcheesi game so as to discourage their involvement in games of chance.
On the other hand, his daughter Jane remembers other things. She says that
Alfred often spoke of the time Abraham Lincoln, who was campaigning for the
presidential election, rode by the family home in Baltimore and because they
were not members of his party, tomatoes where thrown at their house by the
people with Lincoln. The location of this particular story is perhaps misplaced, because Lincoln was only nominated in May of 1860; and the family is listed as residing in New York in June of that year. On the other hand, the census could have been taken later in the year, and certainly such an episode would have provided sufficient impetus to move the family out of Baltimore. Further research should clarify the point.
Another story involving Alfred, from his boyhood, concerns the time his brothers played a trick on him. It seems that when Alfred was a boy he enjoyed peanut butter and sugar sandwiches, so his brothers as a prank switched salt for sugar in the sugar bowl and watched as
he put heaps of salt on his sandwich. Alfred realized what they had done
and so for spite he ate the whole thing in front of them as if he hadn't
noticed.
A more touching story concerns the time of his first daughter's birth. The day Ruthie was born the doctor came in and mentioned to Alfred a patient he had; a 15 year old girl from Armenia who had no money or family and who had just had her leg amputated, he wasn't sure what to do with her. Alfred not only paid her medical expenses but brought the girl home with them where she lived until she married and moved on to work for the Levi Strauss family in San Francisco. Her name is remembered as "Ella Athanasis".
In his later years, Alfred continued his practice of the law, raised his daughters, and made frequent trips back to Paterson in order to visit his brothers and sister. He died August 16, 1938 in Oakland, California.
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