Newspaper Tidbit

[W. Gray]

This item came from a Howard Courant issue of sometime in 1914 and is from the "FORTY YEARS AGO" column quoting from the Longton Howard County Ledger of May 9, 1874:

"Z. T. Dean, our young tonsorial friend, while out hunting the other day shot a crane. Its wings measured something less than sixteen feet from tip to tip."

[Diane Amberg]

That is one huge bird! I wonder what he did with it? So the Howard Courant was the Howard paper in 1914? Daddy was born out there Nov.1, 1914.

[W. Gray]

There were two Howard newspapers at the time.

The Howard Courant was the Republican paper ran by Thomas E. Thompson and The Howard Citizen was the Democrat paper run by Fred C. Flory. These guys were good friends, and eventually, the newspapers occupied the same building running off the same press owned by Flory. Each editor had his own office. The two newspapers merged in 1942.

[flintauqua]

Waldo,

Have you ever written out a "family tree" of the newspapers from Elk County that are now represented in the Prairie Star?  Or even gone so far as to draw it all the way out to include the CQ papers and the eastern Cowley ones?

Just curious.

Charles

[Diane Amberg]

Good! Thank You.  Waldo. Now I know why the paper I always read when I was growing up was the Howard Courant Citizen.

[W. Gray]

I did it for the northern Howard/Elk County portion and it was in some files that I lost earlier this year. After I was presented with the Blue Screen of Death on my computer, I told the repair guy to start me out with a clean slate. I had backups of everything except that one directory. And, I don't know why I had left that directory out.

At one time, I thought I wanted to do it for the "other" side but never did get around to it.

There was a lady several years ago who wrote in the Flint HIlls Express (I think it had that name then) exclaiming the newspaper's roots were over 100 years old and they dated all the way back to 1894.

I did not know it at the time but she was off by 25 years since the roots actually went back to 1871. She was just retiring and I think she might have been working in the Sedan office and was looking at it only from the perspective of her old newspaper. I think it was a Burden newspaper, but I cannot recall.

The Courant itself started in 1874 in Elk City. Moved to Longton for a spell and then moved to Howard City to replace the Beacon. The same guy, Abe Steinbarger, owned both the Courant and the Beacon. Steinbarger was the first mayor of Howard and right after that changed his name to Steinberger. Still don't know the reasoning but he is buried in Grace Lawn.

The 1871 editor, Adrian J. Reynolds, who is at the deepest root, liked to tell people he started publishing in 1870. When he merged with the Howard Courant around 1878 he stayed on as an editor and he put that information in the Howard Courant masthead. Not sure why he claimed that and there is no evidence to support it. He might have been trying to claim that his newspaper was the first in Howard or Elk County but the Elk Falls Examiner came out two weeks before Reynold's Ledger did.

When Tom Thompson came along in 1881, he eventually corrected it to 1871.

[W. Gray]

All the old timers remember the Courant-Citizen. I remember reading it also.

Mrs  Thompson sold out to the Citizen seven years after her husband's death.

She married Tom Thompson in 1882 so she was getting up there when she hung it up. They had a son who was also a newspaper man but he apparently had no interest in Howard and went to work for the Kansas City Star retiring from there in 1958.

She was a visible co-editor of the Courant from almost the time they were married and she took over after he died. Actually, it was before that because he was sickly and confined to bed for some time before he died.

[patyrn]

Waldo,

Are the historical news items you refer to from your files or do you have a computer link to access old copies of Elk County newspapers?  When I go to Howard, I like to go to the library and check out the microfilm but was curious if there were maybe other ways to retrieve that information for us out-of-towners.

KRI

[W. Gray]

No, I get my research the same way you do--from microfilm reels. From Inter Library loans and I have been known to go to Topeka a few times.

[W. Gray]

March 21, 1874, Longton Howard County Ledger:

"Some parties owning a fish net are taking from fifty to one hundred pounds of fish from Elk River daily."

"Somebody has been killing Georgie Cannon's bantam chickens, and George is mad."