Bosler, John Herman

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1854
    Full name
    John Herman Bosler
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Siblings
    7
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    10
    Family
    Abraham Bosler (father), Eliza Herman (mother), Mary J. Kirk (wife, 1856)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Occupation
    Businessman
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Presbyterian
    Political Parties
    Democratic

    John Herman Bosler (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    J. Herman Bosler was born in Silver Spring, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on December 14, 1830. He was one of eight children of Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler, an already distinguished county family active in farming, milling, and distilling. He attended the Cumberland Academy in New Kingston at seventeen and then went on to Dickinson College, entering in 1850 into the class of 1854 with his younger brother James Williamson Bosler. Neither brother completed their course, however, with John Herman withdrawing in 1851 to join his father’s business.

    A remarkable career in business, real estate, and manufacturing entrepreneurship followed. He first branched out for a short while in the iron industry in Huntingdon before returning to Carlisle to engage in milling and shipping grain. In 1869, he and his brother James, who had moved west, invested in cattle in Nebraska and Wyoming, and, when this venture proved an immense success, he prospered in real estate in the Omaha area. He remained interested, too, in local opportunities and, teaming again with his brother, opened the Carlisle Manufacturing Company, making freight cars, railroad frogs, and switch stands for the burgeoning railway expansion in Pennsylvania. Bosler was also president of the Carlisle Shoe Factory, director of both of the largest banks in town, and director of the Carlisle Gas, Water and Electric Light Company. In later life, he again turned to land in the West, this time in San Mateo County in northern California in a gigantic enterprise - the South San Francisco Land and Improvement Company - that involved thousands of acres of land and interests in local stock yards, banking, and slaughterhouses.

    Bosler also served a term on the Dickinson board of trustees between 1893 and 1897. He was a lifelong Presbyterian and a loyal Democrat who served as the elector from the district in the presidential election of 1888. In October 1856, he had married Mary J. Kirk of Mifflintown in Juniata County and the couple had ten children of whom seven survived infancy. John Herman Bosler died in Carlisle on November 18, 1897. He was sixty-six years old.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., "John Herman Bosler," Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/b/ed_boslerJH.htm.
    How to Cite This Page: "Bosler, John Herman," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5134.