Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Robert H. Hazlett Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

ROBERT H. HAZLETT

(Transcribed by Peg Luce)

Robert H. Hazlett, banker, lawyer, petroleum producer and refiner, president of the El Dorado National Bank, a director, past-president and member of the executive committee of the American Hereford Cattle Breeders Association, a director and past-president of the American Royal Livestock Show, holder in fee of more than 10,000 acres of Butler County land, owner of the world’s greatest Hereford herd and known throughout the Central West as one of the most distinguished men of Kansas, was born in Christian County, Illinois, in 1847. He came to Kansas in April 1885 and for nearly a half century, has been an El Dorado resident.

Mr. Hazlett, upon whom recently was conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Kansas State College, Manhattan, has for many years had the honor of being known as an ideal citizen by his neighbors and his hundreds of friends and acquaintances. He is a fitting exemplar for every boy and young man – modest, progressive, philanthropic and successful. He has prospered through sheer force of work, perseverance, uncompromising integrity and prudent living. Mr. Hazlett is a close personal friend of that group of younger business men who, in the natural course of time, must assume the responsibilities of the community’s development and whenever called upon, which he often is, may be counted upon to give interested, sympathetic and practical help. Few local movements, church, industrial, educational and even sports, are begun in which he is not identified, either directly or in an advisory capacity.

Mr. Hazlett was brought up on a farm and received his early education in the public schools of Christian County. Later, he attended high school in Springfield, Illinois, and in 1868-69, he was a student in the State University, in Champaign. The following two winters, he taught a country school. During this period, he studied law, finishing with a course in the law department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with the LL B. degree, cum laude, in 1872. He began practice in Springfield and by 1876 had risen to a prominence that caused him to be selected as state’s attorney of Sangamon County, and to which office he was re-elected in 1880. In April 1885 having previously purchased lands in Kansas and Nebraska, he definitely decided to remove to El Dorado, central point from which these properties might be developed. He continued his law practice here, until 1889, when he gave up that profession to go to Colorado where he had acquired mining interests in the famous Leadville district. He personally supervised the development of these mines and remained in El Dorado the greater portion of the time. He disposed of the mines in January, 1894 and from that time directed his entire attention to his interests in El Dorado.

It was about this period that Mr. Hazlett entered the banking business, acquiring a large block of stock in the Farmers & Merchants Bank, of which he was elected president and which institution, he promptly converted into a National bank. In June, 1909, he disposed of his stock in the Farmers & Merchants and, in July, that same year, he bought the controlling stock of the El Dorado National, became its president, and since has directed its management, until now it is the largest in the county and easily among the strongest in the entire state. In 1898, Mr. Hazlett bought his first herd of registered Hereford cattle, a purchase which was destined to make history, in that this herd during the succeeding thirty years has been developed into concededly the finest Hereford herd in the entire world.

Mr. Hazlett’s accomplishments in the development of Hazford Place, the home of his 600 head of purebread Herefords, are too extensive and too notable for extended inclusion in this sketch. This phase of Mr. Hazlett’s success is given in detail in a special chapter in this volume. Suffice at this time to state that the herd has captured prizes by the score, grand championships galore, has sealed with blue and purple ribbons against world competition in a record perhaps never equaled in any department of the livestock industry. And upon this herd he has builded his fame as one of the greatest stock breeders of modern times and largely because of his trait of becoming a student of every enterprise he enters and by strict adherence to that splendid principle that ‘any animal that is not good enough to be used by himself, is not good enough to be sold to someone else for breeding purposes.” It is because of his remarkably high standing in and the incalculable services he has given to the industry that there recently was placed a specially executed portrait of Mr. Hazlett upon the walls of the Saddle and Sirloin Club, of Chicago. This is a distinction rarely attained – to receive this compliment from the directors of that famous organization is a recognition reserved only for those who have accomplished something genuinely worthwhile; something really constructive; something of the highest achievement. Hazford Place, incidentally was named by taking the first part of the name Hazlett and the last of the name Bradford, the latter being the family name of Mrs. Hazlett.

This sketch has briefly reviewed Mr. Hazlett’s career as a body, working on his father’s farm; as a high school and university student; as a lawyer, banker, mine owner, developer of purebred cattle, extensive landowner and as a citizen. His early financial successes were made as a lawyer, banker and mine owner; his greatest accomplishments, however, have been as a Hereford cattle breeder and his practice of the highest ideals of citizenship. His greatest wealth, though – a wealth that has placed him among the rich men of the country – has been attained by reason of his oil developments. Some of his Butler County acreage was underlaid with petroleum, and, individually and by companies, he has become one of the big producers of the Mid-Continent field. He helped organize and was a director for many years of the Inland Oil and the Midland Refining companies (now the Skelly Oil Company), and at present is, with Robert H. Bradford, reared in the Hazlett home, principal owner of the El Dorado Refining Company, which next to the Skelly company is the largest employing concern of the city. He also has oil and gas interests in other sections.

One would be expected to conclude that his enormous business interests would require every minute of Mr. Hazlett’s time. But they do not. He aids in every enterprise in the city. He is not content with a single membership in the Chamber of Commerce, but his bank and other companies take groups of memberships. He is a charter member of the Country Club, El Dorado; Saddle and Sirloin Club, Chicago; and the Kansas City Club, Kansas City, Mo. He is a director of the American Royal Livestock Show (Kansas City) and has acted both as president and treasurer of that famous exposition. He also is a director of the International Livestock Show, Chicago; president of the Mutual farm Insurance Company, El Dorado; president of the El Dorado National Bank; vice president El Dorado Refining Company; and identified with a half score of other business and social organizations. Politically, he is Democrat.

Mr. Hazlett is of Holland Dutch descent and his American ancestry traces back into Colonial North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia. The original American Hazletts followed the tide of emigration northward into Maryland and, later, crossed into Virginia. Robert Hazlett, great grandfather of Robert H. Hazlett, came from Ireland and settled in North Carolina. He left there and after a short residence in Maryland, moved into Virginia. Robert Hazlett, grandfather of Robert H. Hazlett and for whom he is named, was born in Virginia, but responding to the pioneer spirit of which his father seems to have been generously endowed, he removed to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1828, not far, as distances now are reckoned, from New Salem, where Abraham Lincoln spent his gangling young manhood, but nearer Springfield, where the same immortal Lincoln was practicing law when R. H. Hazlett, the subject of this sketch, was about to enroll as a high school student. One of the sons of Robert Hazlett, pioneer Illinois settler was William Phe Hazlett, father of Robert H. Hazlett. William Phe Hazlett was born in Virginia, on a farm just south of the Ohio river and near the present site of Wheeling, West Virginia. He, like his father was a farmer. He married Zerelda Haggard, native of Christian County, Kentucky, whose parents, Harmon and Betty (Steele) Haggard were Kentuckians of English ancestry. Both William Phe and Zerelda (Haggard) Hazlett died in Springfield. They were members of the Baptist Church, belonging to the Southern division of that denomination, and the husband (R. H. Hazlatt’s father) was active in the Democratic party councils of Sangamon county for many years.

On January 7, 1884, Mr. Hazlett was united in marriage to Miss Isabella Bradford, of Springfield, Illinois. Mrs. Hazlett was born in Springfield, Illinois, and died in El Dorado, February 17, 1928. She was the daughter of Col. James and Arsenath (Talbott) Bradford, both natives of Kentucky, but who moved to Illinois prior to the Civil War. The Bradford family lineage extends back through the Revolution and into early Colonial times.

No children were born of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Hazlett, but Robert H. Bradford, son of James Bradford, cousin of Mrs. Hazlett and strong personal friend of Mr. Hazlett, became a member of the home when a child, six years of age.