Newspaper Tidbit

[W. Gray]

The Auburn (IL) Citizen, September 13, 1907, quoting the Kansas City (MO) Journal of an unknown date:

"One Howard girl refused to go to Elk Falls with her best young man when she heard that the conveyance would cost him $4, and he rewarded her good sense by taking another girl."

[W. Gray]

From the Howard Courant-Ledger, August 1, 1878:

"Subscriptions and advertisements which had not expired with the last issue of the [Howard] Examiner was made, July 12, will be filled out by the [Howard] Industrial Journal."

Newspapers seemed all over the place at this time in Howard's history.

During the period 1878 to 1883, these newspapers published at one time or another in Howard:

Clipper
Courant
Courant-Ledger
Daily Courant
Daily Courant-Ledger
Elk County Herald [started by Thomas E Thompson and family]
Grip
Industrial Journal
Journal
Kansas Rural
Weekly Examiner

[W. Gray]

From the Elk County (Howard City) Ledger, November 25, 1876:

"The Biologicalciceroninaoperonicanphilomathian society meets every Wednesday night at 7 o'clock. John Nowlin, President."

[Diane Amberg]

That's OK. Penicillin clears it right up.

[Roma Jean Turner]

Patryn  Go to your local library and ask for the microfilm of whatever paper and years you want and they should be able to get it for you throught interlibrary loan.  I often do that here.  I believe the Kansas Historical Society website, (sorry don't have the link memorized), lists the papers and microfilm numbers.  It sometimes takes 2 or 3 weeks to get them but you can usually have them for 3 weeks.  Of course, they library will keep them there for you.

[W. Gray]

From the Longton Weekly Ledger, January 3, 1874:

"It is reported that Turner & Kelley, formerly of the Howard City Messenger have bought the material of the defunct Elk Falls Journal and are going to commence the publication of a new paper at Elk Falls. We wish the boys success in any legitimate undertaking. But with the number of newspapers already published in the county [there were but four in Howard County at the time] we hardly see how they can hope for financial success in publishing a paper in Elk Falls a dead town, and a town which they both proved to be dead, as they will discover by referring to back files of their own paper. Anything we might say, or any advice we might give would not be taken by them as coming from a "disinterested party" so we shall let them take their own course, and in due time will chronicle the demise of another Howard county newspaper. The first issue of the paper will be covered all over with the word failure, as anyone familiar with affairs in Howard county can plainly see.

"We made a true prediction of what would be the fate of the Journal which the first number of that lamented sheet made its appearance; and in anticipation of the commencement of another paper we predict the same in regard to it. We may be mistaken, may be reasoning from a false standpoint—a short year will tell."

While the Longton newspaper predicted a short year, Turner and Kelley's version of the Elk Falls Journal  lasted one and a half years.

Elk Falls was fighting a nasty battle with Boston in court for the county seat when this editorial appeared. The Longton editor was a long time anti-Elk Falls fan and favored Boston.

The Independence Republican had moved to Elk Falls a year earlier in 1873, and became the Elk Falls Journal. That version of the Journal lasted less than a year when Howard City's Turner and Kelley decided to take it over keeping the name Journal. They had sold their Messenger in mid 1873 and that newspaper wound up in Boston.

Six months after the Longton editorial, Elk Falls appeared to be firmly entrenched as the county seat even though the entire county was awaiting a Kansas Supreme Court decision to decide between Elk Falls and Boston. The Longton newspaper decided to leave Longton and move to Elk Falls becoming the Howard County Ledger (not to be confused with an earlier Howard County Ledger in Longton).

With the move of the Ledger to Elk Falls, that town became a two-newspaper berg and would be until Howard County was divided in June 1875. At that time Turner and Kelley gave up and moved the Journal to Sedan where it became the Chautauqua Journal. The Ledger stayed in Elk Falls until November of the following year when it moved to Howard City.

[jpbill]

Does anyone know where the original hard copies of the various Elk county newspapers are.  The state historical society got rid of them several years ago and I wondered if they ended up in Elk county somewhere. 

All the newspapers they had could be spoken for, which I did, but since I didn't live in Elk county, they turned me down.  I did get all the Johnson county newspapers.  I only took the pre-1965 papers.  That produced 9 stacks each about 5 feet high.  That's 45 feet for those of you who graduated from Howard High.  LOL.  Sorry, just had to get a little jab in there.

WRH
Moline High School 1961

[W. Gray]

From the Howard County Ledger (Elk Falls), August 5, 1875:

"The Board of Commissioners for Elk & Chautauqua counties meet in joint session at Sedan, on Monday, August 23rd, 1875. At that meeting they desire all claims against Howard county to be presented for settlement."

The Howard County Ledger editor refused to change the name of his newspaper because he thought the state law creating Elk and Chautauqua counties was unconstitutional. He also believed the Kansas Supreme Court would rule in that direction. Less than a month later on September 10, 1875, the Supreme Court determined the Howard County division law was constitutional.

The newspaper quickly became the Elk County Ledger.

This is probably the first time I have heard of county commissioners holding joint session.

[W. Gray]

Longton Weekly Ledger, January 17, 1874.

"A man named G.D. Gortman was murdered by one James Mund, near Jayhawk, in this county, on Monday, the fifth, inst. It seems that Gortman accused Mund of a criminal intimacy with his (Gortman's) wife, which resulted in Mund's shooting Gortman four or five times with a pistol and, after he was dead, two or three times with a rifle. The murderer escaped into the ever ready criminal's paradise, the Indian Territory, and is yet at large."

This was Howard County and Jayhawk was slightly southeast of Peru in the vicinity of Niotaze.

[W. Gray]

From the Longton Weekly Ledger, January 17, 1874:

     "Of all our troubles since coming to Howard Co., our greatest has been to get a decently respectable quality of flour for family use.
     
     "Our merchants would sell us a sack of flour with assurance that it was of the best quality and to prove that they believed it to be so, they would charge the price of first quality flour.
     
     "But this did not make any difference, the flour would be black, musty and totally unfit for a whiteman to eat. The merchant was not to blame he had been imposed on by the wholesale dealer, whose motto was 'anything is good enough for the hoodoos in Southern Kansas.'

     "Well, that thing has played out now, so far as this neighborhood is concerned.

     "John Johnson, Esq., has his new flouring mill in full operation at his place on Elk River five miles below Longton [at what became Oak Valley].

     "Several parties who have taken wheat to his mill come back with the report that they get a larger yield of flour and by all odds better flour than they have been able to obtain at any mill theretofore patronized by them.

     "Mr. Johnson, well knowing that the printer is always in need of a little flour, sent us a sack 'Just to try it'—and after having made a fair trial of it we are willing to assert that we never saw better or whiter flour. It is much better to eat and the party who presides over our culinary department is in better humor and scolds less by half than formerly.

     "We are very glad, indeed, that this enterprise of neighbor Johnson's is likely to prove a success—more especially as it will not only be a benefit to him but to everybody in Longton Township, as well."