Adam L. Sturtz

ADAM L. STURTZ. - One of the prominent and important concerns engaged in the real estate and loan business in Kansas City, Kansas, is the Grand View Realty Company, whose extensive and well directed operations have had potent influence in furthering the development and upbuilding of the city and its environs. Of the business of this company Mr. Sturtz is manager, and he has handled its affairs with marked ability and circumspection, the while he has gained secure prestige as one of the alert and progressive citizens of Wyandotte county, where he is well known and distinctively popular.

Mr. Sturtz claims the fine old Buckeye state as the place of his nativity, though he has been a resident of Kansas from the days of his youth. He was born at Coshocton, Ohio, the judicial center of the county of the same name, and the date of his nativity was January 19, 1862. He is a son of Adam and Jane (Wiggins) Sturtz, the former of whom was born in Pennsylvania, of stanch German lineage, and the latter of whom was a native of Ohio. Of the ten children seven are living, and he whose name initiates this review was the ninth in order of birth. The father was a millwright by trade and followed this vocation until about 1881, when he removed with his family to Kansas and numbered himself among the pioneers of Stafford county, where he secured a homestead claim of government land and developed a productive farm. Both he and his wife lived up to the tension of the pioneer epoch in the history of this state, but he eventually reaped generous rewards from his efforts in connection with the development of the agricultural resources of the county in which he thus early established his home and in which he was an honored and influential citizen. He was a stanch Republican in politics and both he and his wife were earnest and consistent members of the United Brethren church. He was seventy-four years of age at the time of his death and his devoted wife was summoned to the land of the leal when seventy-five years of age.

Adam L. Sturtz gained his early education in the public schools of his native state and was about seventeen years of age at the time of the family removal to Kansas. At Stafford, this state, in the station office of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, he learned the art of telegraphy, and he continued in the employ of this railway company for sixteen and one-half years, during the major portion of which period he was station agent and telegraph operator at Anthony, the county seat of Harper county.

In 1897 Mr. Sturtz came to Kansas City, and somewhat later he formed a partnership with S. A. Darrough and engaged in the real estate business. With this line of enterprise he has since continued to be actively and successfully identified and he has been concerned with the development of many additions and sub-divisions of the metropolis of Wyandotte county. In 1903 he platted thirty acres in West Armourdale, this county; in 1906 he platted the attractive Wallace Place, in which he erected ninety houses; in 1908 he platted and improved the subdivision of Grandview Park, known as the Jacob Dodd property; and he has been identified with the development of other eligible and attractive subdivisions in which most desirable investments have been offered for residence purposes. Mr. Sturtz is an authority in the matter of real estate values in this section of the state and has never lacked the courage to exploit his various enterprises and bring them to successful issue. He is manager and owner of the Grandview Realty Company, which handles fine properties in Grandview and other sections of the county and which also makes a specialty of rentals and insurance. Its offices are located at Tenth street and Central avenue, Kansas City, and the business of the concern has been signally prosperous under the effective executive direction of Mr. Sturtz. In politics he is a stalwart supporter of the cause of the Republican party and is well fortified in his opinions as to matters of public importance. In the spring of 1904 he was elected a member of the city council of Armourdale, a suburb of Kansas City, and while serving in this office he did effective work in favor of the granting of the gas franchise, the construction of the intercity viaduct and other progressive measures. He is thoroughly loyal to his home city and county and is ever ready to lend his aid in support of measures and enterprises tending to conserve civic and material progress. He is a vice president, director and examiner of loans of the Fidelity State Bank, and has other local interests of substantial order.

On the 8th of April, 1883, Mr. Sturtz was united in marriage to Miss Mary T. Crecraft, who was born in Ohio but who was a child at the time of her parents' removal to Indiana, where she was reared and educated. In that state her father, Enoch Crecraft, passed the remainder of his life. Mr. and Mrs. Sturtz have three daughters, concerning whom the following brief data is given: Fern, is the wife of F. W. Brown, assistant cashier in the Kansas City offices of the Missouri Pacific Railroad; Orpha, is the wife of Clyde R. Clift, agent for the same railroad in Kansas City, Kansas; and Indina, remains at the parental home, all of the daughters having been afforded excellent educational advantages and all are popular in the social circles with which they are identified.