Burkholder, William M.

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

William M. Burkholder is one of the younger native Kansans filling places of responsibility and action and recently became proprietor and editor of the Anthony Bulletin. He had one of the older papers of Harper County. The Bulletin had enjoyed an independent existence since 1891, but is a continuation of several earlier papers. The old Harper County Enterprise was founded at Anthony in 1884, was consolidated in 1891 with the Alliance Bulletin of Harper, and was continued under the name Weekly Bulletin. The editor and publisher prior to Mr. Burkholder's ownership was R. P. McColloch. The Bulletin is independent in politics and had a circulation all over Harper and surrounding counties and also in Oklahoma. The offices and plant are on North Jennings Avenue.

William H. Burkholder was born at Tribune, Kansas, October 10, 1890, and represents a family that had been identified with this state for over forty years. He is descended from one of eight brothers who came out of Switzerland and founded homes in Pennsylvania in 1754. These brothers were early members of the Mennonite sect, and it was owing to religious persecution in Switzerland that they sought new homes and freedom of worship in America. The great-grandfather of William Burkholder in 1816 moved with a party of people of similar religious views to Ontario, Canada, and the colony founded there the Town of Waterloo in Waterloo County.

Samuel Burkholder, grandfather of the Kansas editor, was born in 1816 at Bowmansville in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and in the same year was taken by the family to Ontario. He became a prominent contractor in Canada but in 1873 brought his family to Marion County, Kansas. He was a man of considerable property and owned much land in Kansas. He died in Marion County in 1893. His wife was a Miss Reis, who was born in Wuertemberg, Germany, and died in Marion County, Kansas.

Samuel Burkholder, Jr., father of William M., is a prominent attorney at Marion, Kansas. He was born in Waterloo County, Ontario, May 28, 1859, and was fourteen years of age when he came with his parents and his five brothers to Marion County, Kansas. Two or three years later he went back to Canada and attended the Academy at St. Catherines in Ontario. While there he was a member of the military organization known as the Queen's Guards. In 1886 he graduated from Kansas University in the classical course, taught a year at Bethel College then situated at Halstead, now at Newton, Kansas, and was then admitted to the bar and had now been in active practice for thirty years. For a time he had a law practice in Greeley County, Kansas, and was the first county attorney there. In 1891 he again located at Marion, and had enjoyed a practice which ranks him among the successful lawyers of the state. As a republican he had filled the office of county attorney of Marion County three terms and had also been mayor of Marion. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Masonic fraternity in which he had attained the Royal Arch degree, the Beta Theta Pi college fraternity, and is a member of the County, State and American Bar associations. Samuel Burkholder married Florence Miesse, who was born in Fairfield County, Ohio, December 23, 1864. William M. is the oldest of their four children. Arthur L. is at the experimental station at Hays, Kansas, working for the Kansas Agricultural College, of which he is a graduate. Margaret Lucile is a graduate of the Marion High School and of the State Normal at Emporia, and is now teaching in Marion County. Lieutenant Edwin had been a student at Kansas University but is now enrolled in the Federal service as a lieutenant in the Third Kansas Regiment of the National Guard.

William M. Burkholder was educated in the public schools of Marion, graduating from the high school in 1908, and in 1913 took his A. B. degree from Kansas University. He is one of the most scholarly editors in Kansas and had made himself familiar with a broad range of subjects. In 1915-16 he was a special student of economics and history in Harvard University. Mr. Burkholder had had considerable experience in educational work, taught a year in the rural schools of Marion County, one year in the Beloit High School and one year in the Wichita High School. He became editor and publisher of the Anthony Bulletin on January 1, 1917. Mr. Burkholder is, like his paper, independent in politics, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity. He is unmarried.

Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans

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