George Burton Rose

GEORGE BURTON ROSE. Near the close of the first decade of the present century there appeared upon the threshold of Dodge City a young man seeking an opportunity to make a place for himself in some channel of its business life. He was wholly a stranger to its citizenship and he came without other resource than a somewhat varied business experience of a few years and a personality which exhibited a frankness and earnestness that served as his passport to the hearts of community leaders and men-of-affairs on every hand. In adding himself to this historic spot on the old Trail he guessed right, for the opportunity he was seeking was here and it manifested itself anew whenever he met the requirements for a place higher up in his steady and continuous rise. After ten years of effort among new friends, now old ones, the trusted employe of Fred Harvey's dining-car service has reached a place in the business life of the city which few men attain after a lifetime of service and has won a position as a citizen and as a man to excite the envy of the most ambitious host. In this recent citizen, this capable and trusted townsman we refer to George Burton Rose, the cashier and active vice president of the Kansas State bank.

It was in July, 1908, that Mr. Rose cast his fortunes with Dodge City to engage in some new business. His recent employment had given him an experience in accounts and clerical work and it was natural that he should turn his face toward some commercial or financial opening. Before he passed many months here we find him a bookkeeper in the Kansas State Bank. October 8, 1909, he entered the service of that bank, three months later he was made assistant cashier, in 1911 he became its cashier and two years later he was chosen vice president of the institution. He owned a single share of the bank's stock when he took service permanently with it, became a member of its board of directors when made assistant cashier and he is now the second largest stockholder of the bank.

Referring more particularly to the Kansas State Bank, it was organized in 1907 with a capital stock of $25,000 and opened for business, November 18 of that year. In 1916 its capital was increased to $35,000 and June 1st of that year it occupied the new white enameled brick and terra cotta home at the corner of Second Avenue and Walnut Street, one of the most beautiful bank buildings along the Arkansas and the construction of which Mr. Rose superintended and the cost of which, complete with furnishings and fixtures, was $40,000.

Besides his relationship to this community as a banker Mr. Rose sustains many active connections with its other affairs. He helped organize the Dodge City Building and Loan Association and was several years a director of it; is vice president and a director of the McCarty Realty Company; is treasurer and a director of the Kansas State Bank Realty Company; is also a land owner and indulges his tastes and inclinations as a farmer and a livestock man.

Adverting to his early life, Mr. Rose was born at Roseville, Warren County, Illinois, January 28, 1874, and is a son of the venerable Rev. W. E. Rose, a retired Methodist minister of Dodge City. The Reverend Rose was likewise born in Illinois, January 29, 1847, began his life as a railroad man in the employ of the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad Company, but after some years he left the service and became a carpenter and carriage painter. At the age of thirty-seven he engaged in church work as a Methodist pastor and served the churches of Roseville, Cuba and Quincy, Illinois, and spent a quarter of a century as a preacher and expounder of the gospel, retiring then and establishing himself in Dodge City in 1907.

Reverend Rose married Angelina A. Anderson, whose father was James M. Anderson and whose mother was Eliza Elizabeth Ward. The result of their union are three sons and a daughter, viz: Fred E., a merchant of Dodge City, where his brother John W. also resides; George B., the immediate subject of this notice, and Ethel, wife of Clarence Buchrig, of Tuscola, Illinois.

Owing to the character of his father's professional work, if it may be termed such, George B. Rose's school work was done in the several towns where the family resided while he was growing up. He was only seventeen years of age when he secured his first employment, as a wage-earner in a store in Quincy, Illinois. He subsequently became a clerk in the Weems Laundry and Dye Works of that city and when he left that service he went to Chicago and secured employment with Fred Harvey's dining-car service. This connection furnished him an opportunity for travel and he crossed the United States over various railroad lines before his assignment to the eating-house department of the Harvey Company at San Francisco. He was the purchasing agent of the company there, as well as its employing agent, and abandoned the work altogether, after a service of six year's and started a new career in business with his advent to Dodge City, as already noted.

While George B. Rose has strenuously adhered to business, the secret of his success, his ear has been open to the rumblings of political movements and to the demands of local situations as well. His maiden vote went into the ballotbox for the republican ticket and he has held to that political conviction since. For a number of years he served his voting precinct as its committeeman and as treasurer of the county central committee of Ford County. A delegate to the American Bankers Association in Boston in 1913, he was made a member of the nominating committee of the association. In the matter of our national defense, he has ever been an ardent and active supporter of the principle of "preparedness" and is a member of the executive committee of the local Red Cross, also chairman of the Young Men's Christian Association organization of the county, and he has given active support to the churches and other benevolent societies and movements. His is a familiar face at all public gatherings and he participates in them pleasingly as a speaker, and on patriotic occasions he has delivered some addresses full of fire and effectiveness. As a toastmaster banqueters recognize in him a happy combination of wit and seriousness.

Mr. Rose became a Mason in Dodge City and, besides the Blue Lodge, he is a member of the Chapter and Commandery here, is a Scottish Rite of the Wichita Consistory and is a member of Midian Council of the Mystic Shrine at Wichita.

January 7, 1909, Mr. Rose married in Dodge City, Mrs. Clarissa Churchill, only surviving child of the late pioneer Frederick C. Zimmermann, one of the big brave and earnest men of Southwestern Kansas mentioned elsewhere in this work. The issue of Mr. and Mrs. Rose is a daughter, Eleanor, born August 6, 1910.

George B. Rose's is a life but half spent and has been given to service, the keynote of his being and the badge of his citizenship and, if we are permitted a proverb in conclusion, he who serves best is loved most.