John A. Burt. An old and honored resident of Montgomery County was the late John A. Burt, who came to that section of Kansas in the early days and who died at Tyro November 26, 1905. Mrs. Burt and some of her children are still living in the vicinity of Tyro.
Born at Fort Wayne, Indiana, October 24, 1845, John A. Burt was a son of Silas Burt, who was born in Indiana in 1818 and represented a very early family in the settlement of that state. He was a farmer, and died at Fort Wayne in 1850. John A. Burt, after growing up and receiving his early education at Fort Wayne, adopted a career as a farmer and blacksmith, but in March, 1881, moved his family to Southern Kansas and located on a farm three miles east and one mile south of Tyro. There he lived out his active and useful career until September, 1904, when he retired from the farm and during the remaining months of his life was employed by the Tyro Supply Company.
Mr. Burt, though a very young man at the time, was drafted in 1864 from Fort Wayne for service in the Thirty-third Indiana Regiment of Volunteer Infantry, and was in the ranks of the Union army until the close of the war. He afterwards became a member of the Grand Army Post at Coffeyville. Politically he was a democrat, and was affiliated with the Lodge of Odd Fellows at Tyro and the encampment at Coffeyville.
On April 3, 1865, John A. Burt was married at Fort Wayne to Charity E. Cartwright. Mrs. Burt was born at Pickaway, Ohio, where she received her early education, and her parents afterwards moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she was married. Mrs. Burt is an active member of the United Brethren Church, belongs to the Rebekahs, to the Woman’s Relief Corps and the Royal Neighbors. She is a woman much beloved not only in her home but in her wide circle of friends and acquaintances.
The children of Mr. and Mrs. Burt have the following brief record: John, who was employed in a mill at Dodge City, Kansas, and was burned to death there April 13, 1914; Mary, who married Hiram Rayl, who now resides in Oregon, and she died in 1894 on their farm three miles west of Tyro; Valancia, who married Wilbur Burt, and resides seven miles north of Coffeyville on a farm; Mattie, who died in 1905 near Tyro, the wife of Ephraim Messersmith, who has a farm four miles east of Tyro; Viola, wife of William Norton, an oil worker, their home being two miles east and one mile south of Tyro; Hettie, wife of Henry Tuggle, they occupying the old home farm three miles east and one mile south of Tyro; Willie, who died in infancy; and Susie, who died September 14, 1910, at Tyro, the wife of John Patchen, who lives at Tyro, and is an oil pumper.
Mrs. Burt’s ancestors were Germans who settled in colonial days in old Virginia. Her grandfather, James Cartwright, was born in Virginia in 1793, was a farmer and died in Pickaway, Ohio, about 1853. Her father, James Cartwright, was born in Virginia in 1823, and died at Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1904. When he was eighteen years of age he moved to Pickaway, Ohio, and followed the occupation of farming and brick manufacture. He was a democrat. James Cartwright married Elizabeth Schivell, who was born in 1838 in Pickaway, Ohio, and died at Fort Wayne in 1910. Of their large family of children Mrs. Burt was the oldest. A brief record of the others is as follows: John, deceased; Armeda, deceased; William, a farmer at Granola, Oklahoma; Minerva, deceased; James, who is employed in a brickyard at Fort Wayne, Indiana; Mattie, who lives at Fort Wayne, widow of Leonard Gaskell, who is employed on city construction work; Emma, wife of Lima Kaler, who is on city construction work at Fort Wayne; Samuel, connected with the brickyard at Fort Wayne; Robert and Thomas, both of whom died in childhood; and Ada, deceased.