Newspaper Tidbit

[W. Gray]

From the Elk County Ledger (Howard City), May 5, 1877:

     "There are entirely too many hogs running at large in town, for the comfort of the people who don't own them. We don't believe any citizen has a right, either legal or moral, to raise hogs at the expense, inconvenience and discomfort of his neighbor."



     "All necessary blanks have been received and the Elk County Bank is now prepared to do any and all kinds of banking business. The members of the firm, Messrs. Momma & Eby, are well known to our community as gentlemen of enterprise and good business talent. They will succeed."

     The Elk County Bank was located on the first floor below the second story Opera House where Cookson's Hardware is now. The bank eventually became the Elk County State Bank and then the Howard National Bank locating in a new stone building on the southeast corner of Washington and Wabash streets in 1886.

[W. Gray]

From the Kansas Telephone (a newspaper), September 3, 1887, speaking of its Elk Falls location:

“We have two hardware stores, three general merchandise, two drug stores, one bank, one grocery, one lumber yard, three hotels, two restaurants, one shaving parlor, one shoe shop, one tin shop, one furniture store, one livery and feed stable, one millinery store, two blacksmith shops, two medical physicians, one attorney-at-law, one real-estate man, one feed store and a meat market.”

Elk Falls had a lot more businesses than it now has but when the first federal census of all cities was released in 1910, the population was only 271.

This was apparently the first edition of Kansas Telephone and it apparently did not last very long going out of business in the same month of September 1887.

Elk Falls would not get another newspaper until 1903.

[W. Gray]

From the Elk County Ledger (Howard City), April 28, 1877:

“The LEDGER office boasts a new 'devil.' Johnny Thompson proposes to learn the printer’s trade. ‘Tommy’ [Thomas E. Thompson of Polk Daniels fame] has been promoted, and now has somebody to ‘boss’ over.”

A printer devil was an apprentice who mixed containers of ink and gathered type for the typesetter.

Three years later, “Tommy,” who had quit school at age thirteen, was now twenty years old and editor of the Elk Falls Signal.

[W. Gray]

From
Pettengill’s Newspaper Directory and Advertiser’s Hand-Book For 1877.


Howard City Courant; Wednesdays; republican; A.B. Steinbarger, publisher; circulation 800.

The Courant published at Howard City on Wednesday morning of each week; 4 pages; size, 22 x 31 inches. Established in 1874 [at Elk City]. Circulation, 800 copies. Official newspaper of the county, and leading republican paper in senatorial district. Advertising rates reasonable. A. B. Steinbarger, editor and proprietor. Sample copies mailed on application. S. M. Pengengill & Co., advertising agents.

Howard City, Elk Co. Ledger; Saturdays; republican; Adrian Reynolds, publisher, circulation, 600.


These were the only two newspapers publishing in Elk County at that time.

[W. Gray]

From an unknown date (but sometime in 1881) of the Lee’s Summit, Mo., News-Letter:

The “Elk Co. HERALD” a very neat and spicy paper, hailing from Howard, Kansas has reached our table. Its style make-up and appearance will compare with any paper in the west. We recognize the fact that Tom E. Thompson, formerly of the Elk Falls Signal is the local editor.”


Lee's Summit is near Kansas City.

The Thompson men started the Elk County Herald in Howard in early 1881 and then bought the Courant that fall.

Presumably the word “spicy” in relation to print had a different meaning in 1881.

[W. Gray]

From the Elk County Ledger (Howard City), April 21, 1877:

“A mammoth railroad meeting was held at Elk Falls on Tuesday. It was in the interest of the L. L. & G. extension and was largely attended by people from Independence. The people of Elk Falls and the county generally have been urging the L. L. & G. to build a railroad into this county for several years; but have never received any encouragement. Now, however, when there is a prospect for roads from other points, the L. L. & G., together with the Independence people, begin to “hump themselves.” The Elk Falls meeting was adjourned –so we are informed—for two weeks to give the L. L. & G. people time to get up a proposition which they will submit to this county.”