Luther D. Hart and Aurelias B. Hart, sons of a pioneer family from Virginia, began farming in Hart's Field in the 1870s, and the town's first major development came when Luther granted a right-of-way to the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, leading to the establishment of a station called Hart City and the community's incorporation as Hartsburg in 1901. The railroad's arrival in 1893 transformed an area once served by Missouri River boats, bringing businesses that included a general store operated by H.G. Kohlbush and Hy Koch, the Samuel E. Hackman building with its hardware store, doctor's office, and meeting hall-theatre, the Globe Hotel for land buyers and railroad officials, and many other enterprises such as a newspaper, blacksmith shops, a livery barn, a grain elevator, a mill, a lumberyard, banks, and tin manufacturing. Hartsburg was shaped strongly by German immigrants, who made up most of its early residents after residential lots were marketed to families from towns including Washington and Marthasville, and whose culture and faith led to the formation of Friedens Evangelische Germeine and the building of the German church, where some services continued in German into the 1930s. The community also maintained a two-room schoolhouse for local children and, by operating its own generator from 1919 to 1929, had electric service earlier than most Missourians before an electric cooperative began supplying the area in 1929, though some farmhouses were not connected until 1947. Hartsburg also endured repeated flooding in the bottomlands, surviving nine major floods between 1903 and 1995, especially those of 1903, 1951, and 1993, with residents repeatedly sheltering one another, sharing meals, helping move belongings above the water, and joining together to clean homes and build sandbag levees after the waters receded.