John Hartzler

JOHN HARTZLER first came to Sherman County as a homesteader and a poor young man seeking opportunity for a life of effective purpose and ideals. He later studied law, and has long been prominent at the bar and in civic and in business affairs at Goodland and vicinity.

Mr. Hartzler was born in Wayne County, Ohio, May 11, 1863. The family records trace the removal of the Hartzlers from their original seat in Switzerland to France. There, on account of religious persecution, being Protestants and allied with the Huguenots, they later fled to Holland and in 1747 came to Pennsylvania. They were Mennonites, closely allied to the Quakers, and in Pennsylvania they bought land from the heirs of William Penn and were granted a site for a church and a schoolhouse.

John Hartzler's grandfather, Joseph Hartzler, was born in Pennsylvania and was an early settler in Wayne County, Ohio, where he followed farming and where he died in 1869. Enos Hartzler, father of the Goodland attorney, was born in Pennsylvania in 1824. He was a boy when the family moved to Northern Ohio, grew up and married there, and became a farmer and sawmill operator. In 1872 he moved to Davis County, Iowa, where he continued farming, and in 1892 removed to Sherman County Kansas, where he died in 1899. He was identified with the republican party and was faithful in the observance of the religious faith in which he was roared, the Mennonite Church.

Enos Hartzler married Nancy Burkholder. She was born in Wayne County, Ohio, in 1829, and died in Sherman County, Kansas, in 1915. They became the parents of five children: Catherine, wife of George Starkey, a farmer in Kiowa County, Kansas; A. J. Hartzler, a farmer at Flagler, Colorado; John; Peter J., a farmer in Osborne County, Kansas; and L. E., a merchant in Smith County, Kansas.

John Hartzler was educated in the public schools of Davis County, Iowa. He graduated from the Southern Iowa Normal School at Bloomfield, and for six years was a teacher in that state. He came to Kansas in 1886 and was one of the early settlers in Sherman County. Here he homesteaded 160 acres, proved up his claim, and continued farming and teaching in the winter until 1894. In the meantime his name was coming to have a special value and significance among the people of the county and in 1894 he was elected to the office of county attorney, being re-elected in 1896 and serving four years altogether. He was formally admitted to the bar in 1896, and for over twenty years has conducted a general law practice at Goodland. His offices are in the Keeran Building. He is a member of the Commercial Law League of America, is a republican, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is past noble grand of Goodland Lodge of Odd Fellows and has been a delegate to the Grand Lodge several times. He is also affiliated with Goodland Camp of Modern Woodmen of America.

Mr. Hartzler owns a modern home at Broadway and Thirteenth Street, built in 1905. He married in Sherman County, Kansas, in 1889, Miss Libbie Kellogg. Her mother, Mrs. Susan V. Kellogg, is still living at Goodland. Mr. and Mrs. Hartzler have two sons, Findley E. and Ray K. The former was when the World war closed in the Officers' Training Camp at Camp Taylor, Kentucky. The younger son is employed in the Rock Island Railway shops at Goodland.

Pages 2235-2236.