History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/Elden J. Hartshorn
ELDEN J. HARTSHORN, soldier and legislator, was born in Lunenburg, Vermont, June 16, 1842. He was educated in the public schools and St. Johnsbury Academy where he prepared for college. In 1862 he enlisted in Company E, Fifteenth Vermont Volunteers, and was soon promoted to second lieutenant. He was offered a West Point cadetship, but declined to leave the service. In 1864 Lieutenant Hartshorn was promoted to captain of Company G, Seventeenth Vermont Infantry and joined Burnside's Ninth Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac. The regiment was in the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Tolopotomy Creek, North Anna River, Bethesda Church, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and the fall of Richmond. At the close of the war Captain Hartshorn studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1869 and coming west the following year, located at Emmetsburg, in Palo Alto County, Iowa. Here he was land agent for the Milwaukee Railroad and represented many non-resident land owners. In 1873 he was elected Representative in the House of the Fifteenth General Assembly from the district consisting of the counties of Pocahontas, Buena Vista, Palo Alto and Emmet. He was elected to the Senate in 1875 serving in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth General Assemblies. In 1898 Captain Hartshorn was appointed to a position in the Interior Department at Washington.