William Hobart Hare (May 17, 1838 – October 23, 1909) was an American bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

[1] He preached in Philadelphia at St. Luke's Episcopal Church and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood until 1863, when he moved to Minnesota, hoping the climate change would help his wife's heath.

However, he returned to Philadelphia to take a position at the Church of the Ascension, then for three years, Hare served as the general agent of the foreign committee of the board of missions.

One of the leading missionaries in America, Hare earned the title "the Apostle of the West" for his dedicated work in the rural Dakotas among pioneers and Native Americans.

When Hare learned about General Philip Sheridan's plan to march into the Black Hills in 1874, territory reserved for the Sioux by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, Hare appealed directly to President Ulysses S. Grant that the operation be canceled.