Gosler, Nicholas

The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.

Nicholas Gosler. In 1881, at the age of sixteen, alone and without capital, Nicholas Gosler came from his native home in Germany and settled in Chase County, Kansas. At the farm of Charles W. Rogler, one of the old German settlers of that county, he found work as a hand at stipulated wages of $100 per year. The Rogler farm was a mile and a half north of Matfield Green. Mr. Gosler arrived in Chase County on Christmas Day of 1881, and thereafter for ten years steadily worked on the Rogler farm. He was by no means an ordinary farm hand. He was a strenuous worker and he also exercised good judgment in handling the slender string of resources that were the remuneration for his work. All that he could save he invested in stock, cattle and lands, and went from the Rogler farm to a place of his own, continued farming and cattle raising on a constantly increasing scale, and in twenty years from the time he arrived in Kansas poor and friendless he was one of the men of affluence in Chase County.

This is a record that had been equalled by very few of the early comers to Kansas. Mr. Gosler was born in Germany January 4, 1865, a son of John and Catherine Gosler. His father, who was a gardener, died in the old country when his son Nicholas was three years old. The widowed mother is still living in the old country and is now seventy-nine. There were just two children, the daughter Margaret having been born December 1, 1870, and still living, unmarried, with her mother.

Nicholas Gosler obtained his limited education, in the Town of Asch and attended the village school until fourteen. He then began learning the wagon making trade, and left that to come to America.

In 1903 Mr. Gosler was one of the men who organized the Matfield Green State Bank. In 1906 he was chosen its cashier and had given much of his time and attention to the duties of this office to the present time. The bank had a capital of $10,000, surplus of $6,000, while its deposits average $70,000. Thus Mr. Gosler had figured in his home county as a farmer, stock raiser and banker.

On August 17, 1891, he married Miss Adaline Rogler. She was also born in Germany and is a sister of the late Charles W. Rogler, with whom Mr. Gosler worked the first ten years he spent in Chase County. Her parents came to Kansas in 1859. They had lived in Iowa before coming to Kansas.

Mr. Gosler is an active republican and had been a man of affairs outside of his private business. He was a member of the board of county commissioners of Chase County from 1907 to 1911, and was elected chairman of the board. In 1916 he was elected a member of the Board of Trustees of the Chase County High School. His home is in Matfield Green, but he owned and operates a valuable stock farm one mile south of Bazaar in Chase County.

Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans

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