"Portrait & Biographical Record of the Willamette Valley Oregon." Chicago: Chapman Publishing Company, 1903. p. 1266. GUS A. HURLEY The real estate, law and insurance business of Cooper & Hurley, though established but two years ago, has the distinction of being the only enterprise of its kind in Independence, and has already worked up a trade in keeping with the high character and unquestioned ability of the men directing its affairs. The financial, commercial and agricultural opportunities of Polk County contribute to the principal business of the firm, and it is their intention to boom these important departments, and thus enhance the value of lands whose sale has been placed in their hands. At their well equipped offices on the east side of Main Street, information is forthcoming regarding almost all of the inducements held out to home-seekers. Loans are also negotiated, property rented and collections made. Gus A. Hurley, of the firm of Cooper & Hurley, is a native son of Oregon, and was born at La Fayette, Yamhill county, June 14, 1877. His father, Andrew, from whom he inherited a liking for law, was born in the state of Maine, and was one of the sterling western pioneers whose successful career was of his own fashioning. He removed at an early day to Oshkosh, Wis., and finally became interested in the steamboat business on the Mississippi river, becoming in time an officer on the boats. After crossing the plains in the early '50's, he located at Salem and engaged as a plasterer and mason, in the meantime spending his spare moments in mastering the intricacies of legal science. About 1873 he began to practice his profession, and was thus engaged up to the time of his death in 1895, at the age of fifty-six years. He was an active Republican, and. as indicated by his various interests, a man of marked ability and indefatigable energy. He married Almira Smith, who was born in Yamhill county, and is the mother of two children, of whom Gus A. is the oldest. Almira Smith was a daughter of Sidney Smith, without doubt one of the very first to cross the plains to Oregon, for he came with a delegation of home-seekers as early as 1839, locating in the Chehalem valley, where he died at an advanced age. From the public schools Gus A. Hurley entered the state normal school at Monmouth, from which he was graduated in 1896, and thereafter he studied law under W. H. Holmes, of Salem, Ore. He was admitted to the bar June 12, 1899, and conducted a general law practice until associating himself with Mr. Cooper, under the firm name of Cooper & Hurley. He has a profound knowledge of law and general business, his occupation embracing more lines of activity than falls to the lot of the average legal practitioner. He is interested in the building up of Independence, and is secretary of the Independence Improvement Company. He is also fraternally inclined, and is identified with the Masons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. Although one of the youngest, he is also one of the most promising of the professional and business men of this county, and his friends and associates predict for him a career of more than ordinary usefulness. ******************* Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in October 2010 by Kimberly Nesbitt. For more information on the individuals in this biography, please contact Kimberly by email: kanesbitt -at- msn.com.