USA > Connecticut > New London County > A modern history of New London County, Connecticut, Volume I > Part 57
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57
Secretaries and Treasurers-Albert S. Bolles, Norwich, secretary and treasurer, February 28, 1873, to July 14, 1874. Waterman R. Burnham, Nor- wich, secretary and treasurer, July 14, 1874, to March 7, 1875. William Fitch. New London, secretary, treasurer and business manager, March 8, 1875, to December 3, 1875. Charles Elisha Dyer, Norwich, secretary, treasurer and N.L .- 1-27
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business manager, December 14, 1875, to April 30, 1880. Albert S. Bolles. Norwich, secretary and editor, December 14, 1875, to January 1, 1881. Alonzo H. Harris. Norwich, secretary, treasurer and business manager, 1880, to May 7, 1884. Charles Elisha Dyer, Norwich, secretary, treasurer and business manager, May 7, 1884, to January 25, 1888. Alonzo H. Harris, Norwich, from January 24, 1888, to October 1, 1898. Charles D. Noyes, treasurer, October I, 1898, present incumbent. Isaac H. Bromley, Norwich, December 15, 1858, to 1862, when he entered the Union army as the captain of Company C, 18th Regiment-Management; original control. B. M. Fullerton, Spring- field. Mass., 1862 to 1865 .- Platt and Gates management. Isaac H. Bromley, Norwich, 1865 to July 5, 1871 .- Gates management. William H. W. Camp- bell, Salem, Mass., July 6, 1871, to February 28, 1873. His pen name was "Kham." -- Spalding's control. Albert S. Bolles, Norwich, February 28, 1873, to May 18, 1874. Sturtevant's control. E. J. Edwards, Springfield, Mass .. May 18, 1874, to December 14, 1875 .- Osgood regime. Albert S. Bolles, Nor- wich, December 14, 1875, to January 1, 1881 .-- Dyer and Harris; Osgood regime. A. P. Hitchcock, New Lebanon, N. Y., January 1, 1881, to August I, 1885 .- Harris and Dyer; Osgood and Prentice regime. Edward H. Hall, Geneva, N. Y., August 1, 1885, to June 25, 1888 .- Dyer and Harris; Prentice regime. A. P. Hitchcock, New Lebanon, N. Y., 1888 to 1893 .- Harris ; Pren- tice and Osgood regime. A. Walton Pearson, Newburyport, Mass., since March 17, 1893; Dyer, Harris, Dyer, Harris and Oat; Osgood. Gallup and Noyes regime.
Assistant Editors-William H. W. Campbell, Salem, Mass .; with Brom- ley. James Hall, Geneva, N. Y .; with Campbell, Edwards, Bolles and Hitch- cock. Edward H. Hall, Geneva, N. Y .; with Hitchcock. W. H. H. Hale, New Haven ; with Hitchcock. Miss Ella A. Fanning, Norwich ; with Pearson. Night Editors-Henry Hall, Geneva, N. Y .; with Fitch and Dyer. Amos A. Browning, Norwich; with Dyer. Edward H. Hall, Geneva, N. Y .; with Dyer. L. R. Southworth, Woodstock; with Dyer. Walter A. Littlefield, Boston, Mass .; with Dyer. Edward H. Hall, Geneva, N. Y .; with Harris. W. H. H. Hale, New Haven ; with Harris. William C. Thompson, Norwich ; with Harris. Albert A. Sparks, Norwich ; with Harris and Oat.
City Editors-William Fuller, Hartford; with Bromley. Henry P. God- dard, Norwich; with Bromley. Henry Wing, Norwich; with Bromley. Henry E. Bowers, Norwich; with Bromley. William Fitch, New London ; with Campbell. John Rathbone, Norwich; with Fitch. Stiles Stanton, Ston-
ington ; with Fitch and Dyer. Edward Thomas, Norwich; with Fitch. Thomas Hull, Stonington; with Fitch. Amos A. Browning, Norwich; with Dyer. Stiles Stanton, Stonington; with Dyer. John Rathbone, Norwich; with Dyer. A. Walton Pearson, Newburyport, Mass .; with Dyer, Harris; Dyer and Harris. William C. Thompson, Norwich; with Harris. Frederic W. Carey. Norwich ; with Harris. Julian R. Dillaby, Norwich ; with Harris, Oat. Harvey M. Briggs, Norwich ; with Oat.
Sporting Editor-William Peet, Clinton with Oat.
Assistant City Editor-Charles F. Whitney ; with Harvey M. Briggs.
Reporters-Luther K. Zabriskie; with Pearson. Leslie T. Gager; with Pearson.
The Norwich Bulletin has now been four years in its new home, Nos. 62-74 Franklin street, not far distant from its first habitation and within sight of the spot where its infantile years were passed. Although changes have occurred in stockholders, officers, editors and employees, The Bulletin, as the child of The Courier and the grand-child of the Weekly Register, remains steadfast in its devotion to principle and to the best and highest interests of its patrons, its State and its country, and will ever thus continue.
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Isaac Hill Bromley, one of the founders and the first editor of The Norwich Bulletin, won for himself an enduring national reputation as one of the able and brilliant editorial writers of his time. His first editorial in The Bulletin, to be found in our fac-simile of the first issue presented to our readers today, not only marks out the policy of The Bulletin for its first half century, but shadows forth the quality of the editor who made his mark in the nation by his masterly and brilliant work and who honored every position in life to which he was called. Mr. Bromley was a native of Nor- wich and a graduate of Yale, and had represented the town in the Legislature and this district in the Senate prior to his entering upon his editorial career. He had conducted the paper but a short three years, when the war broke out and he answered to the call of his country and went to the front as captain of Company C of the Eighteenth Connecticut Volunteers, and a year later he was appointed provost marshal for this district and continued in that office till the close of the war. He then returned to the editorial manage- ment of The Bulletin, which he directed until 1868, when he became a stock- holder and editor of the Hartford Evening Post. In 1872 he became an editorial writer of the New York Sun, and then went to the New York Tribune, where he continued from 1873 till 1883, after which he went to the New York Commercial Advertiser as editor for a few months. During the Presidential campaign of 1884, he edited the Post-Express of Rochester, N. Y., and in 1891 he returned to the New York Tribune, with which paper he remained until his death on August 11th, 1898, in this city. Mr. Bromley was a government director of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1882 until 1884, and in 1885 was appointed assistant to the president of the Union Pacific Railroad.
Editor Bromley's guaranty for The Bulletin in the first issue was as follows :
"We intend to furnish the community with a good family newspaper, as well as a political journal, and we shall admit nothing into its columns that has the least savor of impropriety. We shall exercise the same care over our advertising columns, as over the editorial and other reading matter, and the wives and children of our subscribers may feel assured that they can read the whole sheet through without being disgusted or shocked by the miserable catch-penny advertisements that stare readers in the face from too many of our otherwise respectable newspapers."
This has continued to be the policy of The Bulletin for a half century, and it is to be hoped that it will ever continue as the honorable record of the paper which today, with the Yale lectures upon Journalism, which he endowed and that bear his name, stand as his best monument.
Mr. James N. Perry, of the firm of Manning, Perry & Co., first owners and printers of The Bulletin, was born in Lebanon, and learned the trade of a printer in New London. He came to Norwich when twenty-one years of age and established himself in the job printing business with Horace R. Woodworth, buying out the printing business of James M. Stewart. In 1858 he and Mr. William D. Manning, under the copartnership title of Manning & Perry, merged their business and associated with them J. Homer Bliss and Isaac Bromley for the publication of The Bulletin in Franklin hall, Mr. Perry acting as business manager a few months, when Mr. Charles Black succeeded him. Mr. Perry then went to the mechanical department, from which he retired in 1860, when he was bought out by Mr. Charles B. Platt. He continued in the employment of The Bulletin job office for some time and then accepted a position as an accountant. Mr. Perry has been the book- keeper for J. P. Barstow & Co. for twenty-six years and is still in active life and esteemed by all who know him.
William D. Manning was born in Norwich at the Falls October 19, 1818,
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and has spent practically all his life here, being identified with the printing business exclusively. When a boy he went to Philadelphia to learn the trade of a machinist, but soon returned here and became an apprentice in the office of Hon. John Dunham, who then owned The Norwich Courier. With him in the same office as an apprentice boy was John G. Cooley. For twelve years after serving his time as apprentice, Mr. Manning was foreman for Ebenezer Sykes, who bought The Courier of Mr. Dunham, later making it a tri-weekly, and moved it away from Market street. For a period he had full charge of the paper during Mr. Sykes' illness. About 1853 Mr. Man- ning purchased of Mr. Dunham his job office in Shetucket street, which had been closed, and conducted it with marked success for about five years, although his capital at the start was but $1.25. In 1858 there were three job printing offices closed because of the amount of lottery business being done here at that time. There was a question as to what would be done with so much type as there was in these job offices, and it was suggested to Mr. Manning that a daily paper be started here. Favoring the idea, he consulted some of the prominent Republicans of the town and received so much encouragement from Hon. H. H. Osgood, Hon. Henry Starkweather and Edmund Perkins that it was decided to launch a daily, James N. Perry consolidating his office with Mr. Manning's, and with them were J. Homer Bliss and Isaac Bromley as partners, the firm name being Manning, Perry & Co. The suggestion of the daily is said to have been made to Mr. Man- ning by Homer Bliss.
The name was suggested either by Colonel Osgood or Mr. Starkweather, and the first paper was published on December 15, 1858, on Franklin Square, over the car station, in what is now Foresters' hall. With Isaac Bromley as an editor, the paper was a success from the start and the Tri-Weekly Courier soon abandoned the field and was taken in by The Bulletin in Janu- ary, 1859. Editor Bromley's leaving was a severe loss to the paper, and, in fact, against the wish of the editor himself, for, as he told the owners then, he had placed his salary so high to the Hartford people that he never believed they could afford to pay it. About that time, Charles Platt suc- ceeded Mr. Perry as the business manager and Mr. Manning continued at the head of the job and mechanical end of the business for thirty-three years. When Mr. Platt entered the firm the name was changed to Manning, Platt & Co., and the paper saw one of its most prosperous periods during his man- agership.
After Mr. Platt's death, a company was formed and Mr. Manning dis- posed of his interest in the paper, but continued to be the foreman of the job department for a number of years longer. Mr. Manning taught the prin- ciples of the trade to many young men. When he mastered the calling, printing was in a primitive state, and most of the work was done on hand presses. Address cards were printed with a "proof planer" In those days printers boasted that type could never be set by machinery unless inventors could make brains. Mr. Manning has lived to see the perfection of type- setting machines and linotypes, and presses that will print rapidly in five colors from a roll of paper. Although out of the business for twenty years, he still feels at home in a printing office.
John Homer Bliss was born in Hebron, Connecticut, August 4, 1832. son of John Flavel Bliss and Mary Ann Porter of that place, being a lineal descendant of Thomas Bliss, one of the founders of Hartford, 1640, and also of John Porter and wife, Anna White, pioneer settlers in Windham, 1639. After receiving a liberal education under the tutelage of the late General Calvin Daggett of Andover, he entered the printing office of the Norwich Courier in 1848, then located in the room directly over the present waiting
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room of the trolley roads on Franklin Square; and experienced the various vicissitudes incident to the life of a printer's "devil" and newsboy. In 1852 he went to Waterbury, Connecticut, and was for a year and a half a com- positor in the office of The American, then located in the original Gothic hall, opposite the corner of the public square at North Main street, Cook & Hurlburt being the publishers. In 1854 he returned to Norwich, and in 1858 formed the project of a daily paper, and finally induced the consolidation of two job printing offices-W. D. Manning's on Shetucket street and James N. Perry's on Franklin Square-and the Norwich Morning Bulletin, so well and favorably known in eastern Connecticut, was the child of that union.
In 1876, Mr. Bliss commenced the compilation of family statistics, the result being the publication by him of the "Bliss Family Genealogy" in 1881, during a temporary residence in Boston. In connection with this work he made many valued acquaintances and friends, among them being the late George S. Porter of Norwich. For several years succeeding 1876 he was a contributor over the signature of "Xylo" to the Printers' Miscellany, a trade paper published in St. John, New Brunswick, as many of the older printers in Norwich may remember.
In the spring of 1881 he became connected with the Attlebore Advocate as compositor and contributor under the editorial management of Mr. Mow- ton, remaining there until January, 1887, when he removed to Plainfield and soon afterward became connected with the Plainfield and Moosup Journal as compositor, and has for some twenty years been the local re- porter for that paper, and for several years has furnished news items for The Bulletin. Mr. Bliss is eminently pacific in disposition, is very domestic and regular in habit, seldom indulging in so-called visits and then only at the call of business; and, at the age of seventy-six, is in possession of all his faculties-a wonderfully well-preserved specimen of humanity, whose good nature it is to extend to all his earnest wishes for their con- tinued happiness and prosperity.
Daniel W. Tracy, the present foreman of The Bulletin, was the first compositor engaged when the establishment of the paper was a fact, and he had a hand in its birth and has always had a live interest in its progress. He was born in Preston June 13, 1839, learning the printer's trade in the Aurora office under the tutorship of the late John W. Stedman, and has been a sturdy representative of the craft for over half a century.
John Trankla, The Bulletin's first pressman, came to Norwich in 1853, and entered the employ of James M. Stewart, who did a printing business in the Chapman building on Franklin Square, as a hand-pressman doing miscellaneous work, there being no power job-printing presses in Norwich at that time. William N. Andrew, superintendent of The Bulletin job print- ing department, was then roller boy. Mr. Stewart sold his plant to Messrs. Woodworth and Perry of New London in 1854. During that year a part of the plant was temporarily moved to a barn back of St. Mary's Catholic Church, where miscellaneous printing was secretly done for several months, for the reason, it is presumed, that like Guttenberg, they were afraid that the powers would discover the primitive art. In 1858 the Stewart plant was consolidated with the printing business of W. D. Manning, for the purpose of having an outfit for the publication of the Norwich Morning Bulletin, under the firm title of Manning, Perry & Co. Mr. Trankla was hired by the new company to take charge of one of the first power Adams printing presses, printing The Bulletin for thirty years, the files for that period still giving evidence of his painstaking work. During his employ- ment the firm changed several times, but "John" was always found running the press which printed The Bulletin.
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The night of the blizzard, March 12, 1888, he had to procure a carriage to take him to work. That night he caught a severe cold, which developed into pneumonia. He never regained his health, and he passed away on No- vember 20, 1888.
The "Norwich Evening Record" was established as a Democratic party organ by John G. Lynch, May 22, 1888, and during the first two years of its existence it changed ownership three times. On May 1, 1890, it was pur- chased by Cleworth & Pullen, publishers of "Cooley's Weekly," and has since been conducted as an independent local newspaper, free from any political party control, and in the interest of the whole people. On April 1, 1893, the plant was moved from 151 Main street to larger quarters in the Osgood building, 101-103 Broadway, opposite City Hall, where it still remains.
Since January, 1906, shortly before Mr. Cleworth died, the paper has been owned and published by Frank H. Pullen, under the name of Pullen Pub- lishing Company. From time to time the paper and its plant have been mate- rially enlarged and improved, and as a member of the Associated Press, "The Record" has striven to fill its own particular evening field, covering Norwich and the nearby towns to the satisfaction of its steadily increasing clientele. The subscription rate is two cents per copy, or six dollars a year and local advertisers who use its columns regularly and freely have always found "The Record" a most profitable medium for reaching the evergrowing number of people why buy in Norwich, the natural trading centre of Eastern Con- necticut.
"Cooley's Weekly," an independent newspaper, was established July 15, 1876, by John G. Cooley, who was widely known in this section, having published newspapers in Norwich many years before, and afterward con- ducting a successful printers' warehouse and advertising agency in New York City. By somewhat sensational methods and the popular price of "Fifty Cents a Year and No Postage," it soon attained a large circulation through- out Eastern Connecticut. After Mr. Cooley was incapacitated by illness, the paper was continued for several years by his son, John G. Cooley, Jr.
In 1888 the business was purchased by Allan Cleworth and Frank H. Pullen, both long connected with the Lowell, Massachusetts, "Courier." Un- der the firm name of Cleworth & Pullen, they assumed control on October 4th of that year. Mr. Cleworth died February 27, 1906, and the publication has since been continued by Mr. Pullen under the name of Pullen Publish- ing Company. Since May 1, 1890, it has been issued as the weekly edition of the "Norwich Evening Record," but under its original name. It is still a favorite in the rural districts and with many former residents of Norwich who have moved away.
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