Claude E. Burtch

CLAUDE E. BURTCH, M. D. A physician and surgeon of high standing whose work has brought him steadily growing favor since he located at Portis, Doctor Burtch is all but a native Kansan and a considerable share of his professional work has been done among the communities and people where he grew up as a boy.

Doctor Burtch was born at Indianola, Iowa, November 8, 1874. His grandfather, Irwin Burtch, was born in New York State in 1811, and at an early day moved to a farm in Indiana and from there to Indianola, Iowa. In 1897, after retiring, he moved to Kansas and bought land at Athol, where he lived until his death in 1907.

John G. Burtch, father of Doctor Burtch, was born in Indiana in 1842. In early youth he moved to Iowa, and when the Civil war came on he enlisted in the infantry from that state and saw active service until the close of hostilities. His regiment was on the border in Missouri and Arkansas, and he saw some of the warfare in that region. After the war he followed the trade of painter, lived at Indianola and married there, but in 1874 came to Kansas and took up a quarter section homestead near Athol. He still owns that homestead, now a well developed and valuable farm. He is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and a republican in politics. John G. Burtch married Laura Wilson, born in Ohio in 1852. They had nine children: Ida is the wife of Henry Edmonds, a farmer at Kensington, Kansas; Abbie married Clarence Cochran, of Sharon Springs, Kansas, where he is a railroad section foreman; Claude, the third in the family; Seth, a ranchman in Montana; Frank, who died at the age of eighteen years; Irwin, also a Montana ranchman; Eva, unmarried, and a teacher in the schools of Athol; Laura, wife of Mr. Cameron, who went with the American Expeditionary Forces to France from Smith Center, Kansas; Ruth, wife of Doctor Scott, a resident of Athol, who is now a captain in the Medical Reserve Corps of the United States army.

Dr. Claude E. Burtch lived from earliest infancy to the age of nineteen on his father's farm in Smith County. He attended the rural schools there, and for four years was a teacher in that county. He received his medical training in the University Medical College of Kansas City, from which he graduated M. D. in 1904, and the same year began practice at Athol. He practiced in that old home community for six years, was then located at Paradise, Kansas, for one year, and in 1911 moved to Portis and has attained a reputation among the leading physicians and surgeons of Osborne County. He is a member of the Osborne County and State Medical societies and the American Medical Association and is the owner of a modern home in Portis. In 1908, at Omaha, Nebraska, Doctor Burtch married Mrs. Mary (Dillon) Cummings, a native of Illinois.

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