Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Isabella Bradford Hazlett Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

ISABELLA BRADFORD HAZLETT

(Transcribed by Peg Luce)

The death of Mrs. Robert H. Hazlett removes from El Dorado one of its superior and most gifted women. For more than forty years she had been a resident of this town – pouring into it the essence of a gentle and forward-looking spirit to the end that it might become the citadel of her dreams. She came to Kansas as a young woman from the capital city of Illinois – even at that early date a flourishing center of culture and civilization. Kansas was raw and unrefined, just beginning to emerge from the wilderness, and walking unsteadily in its flush of adolescent statehood. It was a striking change of environment for any woman gently bred and accustomed to created comforts. But she bore any new and disturbing experiences uncomplainingly – indeed, with fortitude and good cheer. A few years later when her husband had mining interests in Leadville, Colorado, that demanded his personal attention, she went with him and for three years endured the privationsof a rough frontier camp.

Her mission – as she set up clearly for herself – was to be a true complement and helpmeet to her husband, who himself has been a man of extraordinary foresight and ability. In this she succeeded surpassingly well. She possessed a mind of native intelligence sharpened by liberal education, by contact with practical affairs and by a desire for knowledge that made her a devoted student all her life. She was wife, friend, counselor and sympathetic companion. She made of the Hazlett home a haven and a sanctuary. There she ruled benevolently with charity, unselfishness and love as her handmaidens. Independent and vigorous of outlook, she subjordinated self that her accomplishments might be wrought through the medium of others.

Isabella Bradford Hazlett brought to El Dorado forty-three years ago the endowment of a wise and hardy spirit. Here she spent it lavishly – and the substantial town that mourns her death today is ineffably worthier because of her faithful handiwork in its upbuilding . – February 18, 1928.