Cass County ND Archives Biographies.....Haggart, John E. 1846 - 1905
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 July 14, 2008, 10:40 pm

Author: Joseph Carhart

JOHN E. HAGGART. 
By Frank A. Ball.

  Born on a farm in St. Lawrence county, New York, April 10th, 1846, a son of
John and Mable (Northrup) Haggart, the early boyhood of John E. Haggart was
spent in a manner similar to that of most boys raised on a farm in those days.
Living at home and attending the country schools until about seventeen years of
age, in 1863 he entered the employ of the government in coast construction work,
and spent a year and a half with the army of the Potomac, after which he
returned to the home of his parents where he stayed until 1867, when he came
west, starting on his trip across the plains from Leavenworth, Kansas. The
following winter he spent in Colorado and New Mexico, going from there to what
is now Wyoming, where he conducted a lumber yard for the Union Pacific railroad
until 1870. In 1871 he landed in the territory of Dakota and took up a claim on
the Sheyenne river about six miles west of the present city of Fargo, which
claim he owned until his death, having added to it until for many years he had
been operating a farm of two thousand acres.

  In 1875 he was married to Miss Betsy J. Hertsgaard and to them were born nine
children—Gilbert W., Mable E., Maggie I., John C., Estella M., Alexander M.,
George E., William H. R., and Daniel.

  Mr. Haggart was the first man to be made a Mason in what is now the state of
North Dakota, being initiated into the order in 1S73, since which time he has
been made a Royal Arch Mason, a Knight Templar, a thirty-second degree Scottish
Rite Mason, and a member of the A. A. O. of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

  A life-long republican, Mr. Haggart held many offices of honor and trust. He
was elected the first sheriff of Cass county in 1874, which office he held with
conspicuous ability for twelve years. In 18S9 he was elected to the state
senate, of which body he was a prominent and influential member until 1898 when
he resigned to accept an appointment as United States marshal for the state of
North Dakota, which office he held to the time of his death.

  During his long residence in the state John E. Haggart was called upon to fill
many other public positions, particularly during the formative period in the
history of the state just after its admission into the union, to all of which he
brought the same sterling qualities of honest ability that characterized his
private life and made him a man honored and trusted by his friends and business
associates.

  No sketch of the life of John E. Haggart would be complete without mention of
the Agricultural College. Himself a farmer, he early saw the benefits of such an
institution to the state, and of all the men in the senate who took a deep
interest in the Agricultural College there was not one who felt more closely
associated with the institution than he did. As senator from the third judicial
district he wielded an influence that secured its location at Fargo, and from
that time on, during his long service in the senate, he bent every energy to the
up-building of an institution which he himself had fathered and which he lived
to see become the benefit to the agricultural interests of the state that he had
prophesied it would.

  A man of the strictest integrity and honesty, and of unusual ability, John E.
Haggart was, withal, a man of so kindly and generous a disposition that to meet
him was to know him and to know him was to love him.

  Dying suddenly in the early morning of Sept. 22, 1905, John E. Haggart passed
from a busy life of care to that rest so long, and so well earned, leaving
behind a multitude of friends heart broken and sorrowing at what seemed, in that
first hot grief, his untimely taking.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

COLLECTIONS OF THE State Historical Society OF NORTH DAKOTA
VOL. I

BEING FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH DAKOTA TO THE
GOVERNOR OF NORTH DAKOTA FOR YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1906.

BISMARCK, N. D.
TRIBUNE, STATE PRINTERS AND BINDERS 
1906


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