Christian Hartmann Biography


	This biography appears on pages 731-733 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				CHRISTIAN HARTMANN.  

	Christian Hartmann is an extensive landowner living in 
Springfield, South Dakota, and his life shows what a boy left an orphan 
at an early age and without inherited resources may do if he but has 
the right character, industry and integrity. Christian Hartmann was 
born in the village of Oderlom, province of Hanover, Germany, on the 
12th of November, 1840. His parents, Conrad and Marie (Langekop) 
Hartmann, both died when he was quite young, the father when he was but 
eight years of age and the mother a year later. For the first few years 
after his parents, death Mr. Hartmann made his home with George 
Waesterman, who kept an inn in the village. At the age of fifteen he 
began work as a farm hand and so continued for three years. At the end 
of that time he was a lad of eighteen and. as it was customary in 
Germany for boys to begin learning a trade at eighteen, he apprenticed 
himself to a mason at Grotauzelsen for a term of three years. However, 
before the time had expired he was called upon to serve in the army. 
remaining in the service for eighteen months. He then returned to his 
preceptor and finished his apprenticeship, mastering all branches of 
the trade. In 1864, during the war between Prussia and Denmark, Hanover 
came to the defense of the weaker nation, and the regiment to which Mr. 
Hartmann belonged saw service in Holstein. After the close of that war 
he followed his trade until the spring of 1866, when Prussia invaded 
Hanover, Bavaria and several other allied kingdoms. He went to the 
front and participated as a sharpshooter in the battle Of Langansalser, 
which occurred on the 27th of June, 1866. It was the Prussian plan to 
attack the Hanoverian army from two sides simultaneously, but one of 
the attacking armies was a day late so the battle turned out 
differently than was expected. Mr. Hartmann conducted himself with 
great valor and was given a bronze medal for bravery by the King of 
Hanover in commemoration of his part in that battle. At the close of 
the war he was employed at his trade in building the King's palace in 
the city of Hanover until coming to the United States.  

	Herman Waesterman, with whom Mr. Hartmann had lived as a boy, was 
then a resident of old Niobrara, Nebraska, and was on a visit to his 
father in Germany. He told of the advantages of the new country in the 
western part of the United States and urged Mr. Hartmann to return with 
him to America. The latter finally decided to do so and the two sailed 
from Bremen on a North German Lloyd steamer on the 8th of March, 1869. 
They landed in New York after a voyage of eleven days and made their 
way without delay to St. Louis, where for a fortnight Mr. Hartmann 
visited with friends whom he had known in Germany but who had preceded 
him to America. Eight of these friends decided to cast their lot in the 
west and accompanied Mr. Hartmann on his journey up the Missouri river. 
For three weeks the steamboat upon which they were traveling wound its 
tortuous way up the muddy Missouri before it reached the party's 
destination-old Niobrara, Nebraska. The town was situated a mile below 
the mouth of the stream of that name, which pours out of the sand hills 
of Nebraska into the larger river. At early dawn on the 21st of April, 
1869, they were hustled out of bed and deposited on a sand bar among 
the willow trees and told that they were at Niobrara. As no town was in 
sight, while some of the party remained with their trunks, the 
remainder began scouting along the shore to find if possible some 
habitation. They eventually located the village which the shifting 
river had left some little distance from the main channel. The party 
then made their way to the settlement and began life upon the frontier.  

	Mr. Hartmann worked for a short time in the mills of Bazile 
Creek, then as now famous for its fine flour. For a time he was in the 
employ of Brons & Waesterman, well known traders at Niobrara who dealt 
extensively in furs. In the fall of 1873 he secured employment as a 
machinist on the Ponca Reservation, a few miles above Niobrara, running 
the saw and grist mills belonging to the reservation, building bridges 
and doing all kinds of mechanical work. While there he witnessed 
hostilities between the Poncas and the Sioux, saw them indulge in the 
scalp dance for weeks at a time, when they brought in those grim 
trophies of the warpath, and he knew how it felt to work for days in 
the hayfield with sentries on the tops of surrounding hills, whose 
business it was to warn of an attempted raid by the hostile Sioux. When 
the government decided to move the Poncas to the Indian Territory in 
the spring of 1877, Mr. Hartmann was chosen as one of the party to 
conduct them to the new reservation. The trip overland through Nebraska 
and Kansas was very long and tiresome and it was sixty days before the 
Indians reached the lands allotted them at Baxter Springs. Because of 
their proximity to civilization the Indians became dissatisfied and the 
following year were moved two hundred miles further west to the Salt 
fork of the Arkansas river. There Mr. Hartmann was retained in the 
Indian service to superintend the sawing of lumber for the Indians, 
dwellings and also to oversee the erection of the buildings. He 
performed his duties faithfully and saw his charges well settled in 
their new reservation before leaving in the fall of 1881. He had been 
married while in Indian Territory and his wife, foreseeing no 
advancement for a salaried man, insisted upon his resigning from the 
service in the fall of 1881.  

	Mr. Hartmann then came to Dakota, having taken up a half section 
of land in Bon Homme county in 1874. He has since added to his landed 
possessions and now owns two full sections of the finest farm land in 
Bon Homme county ,and nearly two sections in Knox county, Nebraska. Two 
of his children have proved up on claims in Meade county and two in 
Stanley county and have purchased additional land there.  

	Mr. Hartmann was married in Sumner county, Kansas, on the 31st of 
March, 1881, to Miss Lizzie knight, a native of Duquoin, Illinois. Her 
parents, Albert and Eliza (Williamson) knight, went from Illinois to 
Kansas in 1874, settling in Sumner county, that state. To Mr. and Mrs. 
Hartmann eight children were born, namely: Leona, the wife of James 
Stevens, a resident of Stanley county; William, who is farming the old 
homestead in Bon Homme county and who is married and has one daughter; 
Ella, who married John Fitch, farming a part of the Niobrara land in 
Nebraska and has two children; Carl, who is employed in a mercantile 
establishment at Springfield; Albert, who died when six months of age; 
Maude, the wife of Charles Taft, farming the remaining part of the 
Niobrara ranch and has one daughter; and Lassara and Grace, who are 
students of the State Normal School of Springfield. All of the other 
children are graduates of the Springfield Normal School. Mr. Hartmann 
was reared in the Lutheran church and has never departed from that 
belief. Politically he has always been a democrat.  

	Mr. Hartmann recounts a number of interesting reminiscences of 
the early days which give vividness to one,s conception of pioneer 
life, When he arrived in Niobrara, dour had to be hauled by ox teams 
from Omaha or from a mill twenty-five miles below Sioux City. One 
especially exciting incident occurred during his sojourn on the Ponca 
Reservation. He and William Miller were cutting hay near the agency 
when a war party of the Sioux swept down upon the Poncas. The attacking 
band rode to a hill overlooking the agency and were ready to close in 
on the defenders, and it was necessary to act quickly if the agency was 
to be saved. There was but little ammunition on hand, but as a bluff 
the last of the powder was loaded into an old cannon, a lot of boiler 
rivets were rammed down on top of the powder and the charge fired at 
the Sioux ranged along the hill crest. The clatter of the rivets was 
too much for the enemy, who turned and rode pellmell down the further 
side of the hill. At another time the Sioux came and stampeded all the 
Ponca ponies that were at pasture along the Niobrara river. The Poncas 
followed the fleeing Sioux, recovered their ponies and killed two of 
the enemy. Cutting off the hands and feet of their victims, besides 
scalping them, the victors rode back to the agency and for six months 
engaged in the scalp dance around the ghastly trophies which were 
suspended from poles in the center of their dancing ground. 

	At one time Mr. Hartmann had to fight prairie fires every spring, 
once for a period of twenty-four hours, and he also experienced the 
severity of a Dakota blizzard. He was out after cattle in the three 
days, storm from April 12 to 14, 1873, and in the worst of the 
blizzards, that of January 12, 1888, he was in the river bottoms three 
miles from home. He started to return, but, finding that his horses 
could not be driven against the storm, he sought the house of a 
ranchman nearby, who took him in but had no shelter for the team. Mr. 
Hartmann would not leave them exposed while he was warmly housed so, 
unhitching them, he led them two or three miles back to his own place, 
following the deeply worn trail he knew led to his own buildings. 
Without the guidance afforded by this trail he could never have found 
his way. Next morning he discovered a neighbor's team standing at his 
fence, and, following their tracks back less than forty rods, he found 
their owner face down in the snow in a ravine. He had perished within 
that short distance from shelter, which, however, could not have been 
seen even a rod away in the blinding storm. Such incidents as those 
recounted were not particularly unusual in pioneer days of South Dakota 
and such were the perils that confronted those who settled upon the 
wide and treeless plains, building through the years the present 
prosperous state of South Dakota.