He moved with his parents to Eureka, Eureka County and attended the common schools. His marriage to Pearl Bartlett resulted in four children, including pilot, editor, and poet Margaret Bartlett Thornton.
Bartlett received a law degree from Georgetown University in 1894 and was accepted to the Nevada bar. He served district attorney of Eureka County in 1889 and 1890. He was elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses (March 4, 1907 – March 3, 1911) and did not seek re-election in 1910.
After serving in Congress, he resumed the practice of law in Reno. He was appointed United States assistant district attorney for the District of Nevada on March 3, 1915, and served until March 30, 1918. Between 1918 and 1931 Bartlett served as a judge in the Nevada state court system, after which he resumed the private practice of law. During his time on the bench he granted over 20,000 divorces, including those for Jack Dempsey, Tallulah Bankhead, and W. K. Kellogg earning him the nickname “the divorce judge.” He later wrote a book called Men, Women and Conflict based in this experice whaih ceas edited by his daugtert Margaret edited. Published in 1931, it was re-issued in 1947 as Is Marriage Necessary?.

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