Harm Rosenkrans

HARM ROSENKRANS. Many of the ablest public officials are those to whom politics are only an incident and in fact an interruption to an an otherwise busy career. This is true of the present sheriff of Sheridan County, Harm Rosenkrans, who has won much praise and commendation for his work as sheriff, but his real forte is managing a big farm and cattle ranch and the business with which he has been familiar since early boyhood.

Sheriff Rosenkrans was born in Sheridan County November 8, 1881. His parents were C. L. and Anale Rosenkrans, the former born in Michigan in 1858 and the latter in the same state in 1860. The mother is still living in Salina, Kansas. C. L. Rosenkrans, who died at Hoxie in 1911, was a well-known farmer and stockman of Western Kansas. He came to Kansas in 1872, after his marriage, and first established his home in Decatur County just across the line from Sheridan County. However, he did not prove up his homestead of a quarter section there, since in the following year, 1873, he homesteaded 160 acres in Sheridan County. He also developed a tree claim of 160 acres, giving him 320 acres, which was the nucleus of his extensive farm and stock ranch activities. He was a member of the Modern Woodmen of America and a democrat in politics. Harm Rosenkrans is the oldest of his parents' children. Viola is the wife of William Kerr, a butcher employed by the Butzer Packing Company at Salina. Dot married Albert Mitchell, a farmer at Brush, Colorado. Isabelle is the wife of James Kerr, also connected with the Butzer Packing Company at Salina.

Harm Rosenkrans received all his education in the rural schools of Sheridan County. At the age of sixteen he began an active outdoor life, though really a continuation of his experience up to that time on his father's farm. However, it took him far afield and during the next twelve years he became acquainted with the principal cattle ranches in Colorado, Wyoming and Western Kansas, and did every form of work and had every experience common to the typical cowboy. He helped drive and range cattle from one water hole to another, and there was not a single phase of the experience of the ranch and range which escaped him. The illness of his father called him home about two years before the father died. He at once assumed the active management of the home ranch of 1,500 acres and continued it five years after his father's death. He still leases the ranch and lives on the original 320 acres homestead, improved by his father. Mr. Rosenkrans is one of the leading cattlemen of Sheridan County, his ranch being located 2 1/2 miles south of Hoxie.

He was first elected sheriff of the county in November, 1916, and re-elected in 1918. In the latter year his election was made unanimous by the absence of any opponent. His offices are in the courthouse. He has also been very influential in promoting all forms of war work and has served as chairman of the Sheridan County Draft Board. He is also president of the Farmers' Telephone Company, is a republican, and a man of genial good fellowship, and as such well known and liked all ever Sheridan County.

In 1900, at Hoxie, Mr. Rosenkrans married Miss Ida Montgomery, daughter of C. L. and Phoebe Montgomery, the former a hotel proprietor, now deceased. Her mother lives with Mr. and Mrs. Rosenkrans. The latter have three children: Clarence, born May 3, 1901; Dorrance, born November 10, 1906, and Maxine, born February 11, 1916.

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