York Alton Hartman

HARTMAN RITTER ODONNELL

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 8/26/2010 at 22:20:20

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

Y A Hartman
By Margaret Koster

York Alton Hartman was born around 1857 in Napoleon, Ohio, and died around 1939 in Sioux City, Iowa. His father, Nate or Nathan Hartman of Napoleon, Ohio, was possibly a farmer. He served in the Union Army in the Civil War, in the Ohio Volunteers, and was wounded. The story is that when he died, partially due to his wounds, he knew he would go to heaven because he fought on the right side. His father (Y A’s grandfather) was named Nathanial Hartman. The story is that he was a captain of a clipper ship that went around the ‘Horn’ to China. He brought back difference things from China, some of which we still have.

Y A Hartman’s mother was Lydia Ritter. Not much is known except that she was probably Pennsylvania-Dutch and may have come from around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Y A also was a cousin (2nd, I think) to Carl (Rube) Hay of Vermillion, South Dakota, who was athletic director and basketball coach at USD in Vermillion. Hay was well-known and a charter inductees in the Coyote Hall of fame. He is married Hazel Bergeson at Mankato, Minnesota. She is a sister to the Bergesons who ran a livestock commission in the Stockyards, ‘Midwest Commission’. Hay was at USD for fifty-two years.

Y A Hartman had one brother, Hoadly Hartman, who married Evelyn, and three sisters: Winifred Hartman; Nell Christianson; and Care ‘Carrie’ Belnap, who had a daughter and a son. Care’s son, Nathaniel Belnap, was editor of the ‘Henry County Signal’ newspaper ( I think this was in Napoleon, Ohio). Care’s granson’s wife was named Montana Hoops.

York married Margaret O’Donnell in Chicago (I Think). She was Irish and probably came from Limerick County in Ireland. She died of pneumonia when their sons, Alton Charles and Harold O’Donnell, were very young. She is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Chicago. Her sisters were Hannah Brennan and Celia Shea. I believe they lived in Wisconsin.

Margaret’s brother, Charlie O’Donnell, was a policeman on the Chicago police force. That was the family vocation; he had a son on the police force, also. My father swore tht he was the policeman in the following story: An Irish policeman was walking his beat one day and came across a dead horse on Certonia Avenue near the corner of 7th Street. He took out his report book and began to note the location down. He was a poor speller and after several attemps to spell ‘Certonia’, failed. He shook his head in disgust, put his book In his pocket, grabbed the horse by its hooves, and dragged it around the corner of 7th Street. He wrote in his book he found a dead horse on 7th Street! My father said it was a favorite story his aunt ued to tell him about his uncle.

Y A Hartman owned the ‘Sioux City Live Stock Record’ or ‘Daily Livestock Record’, a small newspaper printed at the Exchanged Building in the livestock area. We think he was originally a lawyer who turned newspaperman. He started a newspaper at South Hutchinson, Kansas, and later worked on both the ‘Signal’ and ‘Northwest’. From there he went to Chicago where he spent many years on ‘The Chicago Live Stock World’, writing under the name of ‘Tony Yorrick’, From Chicago he went to St Joseph, Missouri, where he published a newspaper for Swift & Company. He later purchased the ‘Sioux City Live Stock Record’, which may have been owned by Swift & Company before that. The newspaper was discontinued around 1939.

Hartman’s columns in the ‘Record’ were written under the by-line of ‘The Old Grouch’. The titles were: ‘By The Hitching Post’; ‘Viewed From The Curb’; and ‘Rabid Rantings’.

Y A Hartman was one of the orignal ‘Sioux City Stockyards Boosters’, a group that took organized train trips to the west to publicize and boost Sioux City as a market for western livestock. On one trip, when Roosevelt was running for President, the table was set with copper beer mugs that had a music box in them that played, ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, I still have this.

There are many stories about him. I’m not sure how much tuth thre is in them. One was that he gave the originator of the ‘Little Yellow Dogs’ the idea of auctioning off a dog at Christmas by telling him the story of how all he wanted for Christmas one time as a boy was this ‘little yellow dog’.

In Sioux City he was regarded as an authority on livestock. In fact, he was one of the best known stockmen in the west wehre he knew most of the territory as they result of many trips through the cattle country in the interests of the paper. He always wore a ten-gallon hat, carried a cane, and was almost never without a cigar.

Y A Hartman was associated with the White Horse Patrol (I think he may have helped to sponsor a horse.) My mother says he was a Mason, but I doubt that. I am almost sure he was an Elk as he had an elk’s tooth on his watch fob.

Hartman died of pneumonia at a Sioux City hospital at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, Napoleon, Ohio. He had lived at the West Hotel for many years. (Footnote: He signed a life care agreement with a banker two days before he died, so his money went to the banker, not his sons. Some time later laws were passed prevent this kind of thing form happening.)