Charles R. Teeters

CHARLES R. TEETERS, the present sheriff of Sherman County, has been a factor in Western Kansas from earliest pioneer times. He was first employed as a butcher for some of the army posts along the western border, but later engaged in the cattle business, and still has extensive interests in that line around Goodland.

Mr. Teeters represents a prominent and interesting old family of Stark County, Ohio. He was born at Alliance in that county March 5, 1852. His paternal ancestors came from Dresden, Germany, to Pennsylvania in colonial times, and his grandparents were John and Mary (Cook) Teeters, who were married May 29, 1805, in Ohio. John Teeters served with the rank of colonel in the War of 1812, was for many years a farmer in Columbiana County and after 1859 lived in Stark County, Ohio, where he died in 1867.

Elisha Teeters, father of Charles R., was the real founder of the now thriving City of Alliance, Ohio. He was born January 11, 1814, and died June 15, 1899. On July 15, 1835, he married Eliza Webb. He then settled on a tract of wild land in Stark County, two miles northwest of the present City of Alliance. He had 172 acres and developed it into a splendid farm. When the railroad was built across the land about 1851 he laid out a town, since known as Alliance. He held the first public sale in September of that year, and he proved his liberality in many ways in promoting and building up the village. In 1863 he and his associates erected a block which was used for a bank and which stood for fifty years. Elisha Teeters founded the first bank in Alliance. He was also identified with many other local business enterprises. He was a county commissioner of Stark County and was in the store and warehouse business during Civil war times. He was a member of the Christian Church and nominally a democrat in politics. His first wife died in January, 1866, and he married for his second wife Sarah Hester. His ten children were all by his first wife. All but one of them reached mature years.

A brief record of Elisha Teeter's children follows: Jesse W., a prominent citizen of Alliance; Susan, who died at Canton, married John Shimp, one of the early railroad agents at Canton and now ticket agent for the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad; Richard, who was a banker at Alliance and died there in 1898; Rachel, living in Alliance, widow of James Amerman, an attorney; Rosa, who resides in Kansas City, Kansas, wife of C. C. Edson, a real estate man; Frank, who became a successful Kansas stockman and died at Oakley in 1900; Prentice, a resident of Cleveland, Ohio; Laura, wife of W. K. Fogg, a resident of Pasadena, California, and in the supply and produce business there; and Charles R., of Goodland.

From the above record it will be seen that Charles R. Teeters was born just about the time the Town of Alliance was brought into being through the enterprise of his father. He grew up in the new village, attended the public schools, including the high school, and for a time was a student in Alliance College when it was under the direction of Isaac Ehret as president. He finished his education in Mount Union College at Mount Union, also in Stark County.

Mr. Teeters left college liberally educated in 1876 and came out to the Kansas frontier. For a time he followed the trade of a butcher with the army camps in Wallace County. In 1882 he homesteaded a quarter section in Logan County, Kansas, also took a timber claim and a pre-emption, and with those three quarter sections made some progress as a farmer and stockman and lived there until 1888. Selling his Logan County holdings, he moved to Goodland and was thus one of the first settlers of the town. He opened the first meat market and conducted it as the chief center of supply for fresh meat and provisions over all that part of Sherman County for nine years. On leaving the meat business he was a carpenter for eight years, and after that was an employe of the Rock Island Railroad until he consented to enter politics, and in the fall of 1918 was elected sheriff of the county. He entered upon his official duties in January, 1919.

Sheriff Teeters owns a good modern home on Eleventh Street in Goodland. He also has a farm of 160 acres at Winona. In politics he is a democrat, and is affiliated with the Goodland branches of the Modern Woodmen of America and the Knights of Pythias.

In 1891, at Goodland, Mr. Teeters married Miss Sarah Sloop, a native of Missouri. They had five children: Jesse, the oldest, enlisted in the army December 6, 1917, and has been in France since March 4, 1918; Frankie is the wife of William Bell, a Topeka druggist; Leland is a resident of Chicago and in 1918 was a member of the Students Army Training Corps in one of the colleges of that city; Hazel, the youngest child, is in the public schools of Goodland. A daughter died in infancy.

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