Chester E. Hunsaker
CHESTER E. HUNSAKER is editor of the Everest Enterprise at Everest in Brown County. The Enterprise is now in its twenty-ninth volume. It was first published on March 9, 1888, having been founded in that year by T. A. H. Lowe. It is a weekly paper and has a large and influential circulation in that section of Brown County.
Mr. Hunsaker is one of the younger editors of Kansas, and has spent most of his life in this state. He was born at Tarkio in Northwest Missouri July 4, 1891. His ancestors were Colonial settlers from England in New York. His grandfather, Abraham Hunsaker, was born in 1827, lived in Kansas during pioneer times, but was chiefly identified with farming in Northwest Missouri. He died at Westboro, Missouri, in 1898. P. R. Hunsaker, father of the editor of the Enterprise, was born in Western Kansas in 1872 and during the '80s the family removed to Tarkio, Missouri. He was in business at Tarkio, and afterwards lived in Western Nebraska for fourteen years, being engaged in farming and in 1912 removed to Baker, Kansas, where he is now living retired. He is a democrat and has served two years as road overseer of Mission Township at Baker. He is also a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. P. R. Hunsaker married Miss Etta Catuska, who was born near Hiawatha, Kansas, in 1874. They have nine children, Chester E. being the oldest. Hazel is the wife of Leslie Finney and they live on a ranch at Marsland, Nebraska; Orvill is editor of a paper at Fairfield, Nebraska; Edith died at the age of seventeen; and the younger children, all at home with their parents, are Helen, Lawrence, Wayne, Ray and Alfred.
Chester E. Hunsaker was educated partly in the public schools of Missouri and partly in Kansas. At the age of sixteen he left school and began earning his own way in the world. He followed different lines of employment at Alliance, Nebraska, and in Baker, Kansas, and his first independent newspaper experience was as editor of the Huron Herald in 1915. In 1916 he bought the Everest Enterprise and has continued the vigorous enterprising policy of that paper in matters of politics and as a strong supporter of everything for the good of the community. The offices and plant are in the Everest State Bank Building.
Mr. Hunsaker is himself independent in politics. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. On March 29, 1916, at Atchison, Kansas, he married Miss Eva Stahl, daughter of J. W. and Abbie Stahl, who now live at Willis, Kansas.
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; transcribed 1997.