USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Newark > A History of the city of Newark, New Jersey : embracing practically two and a half centuries, 1666-1913, Volume II > Part 17
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As the Eagle was breathing its last, John C. Thornton estab- lished The Jacksonian, first as a weekly and later as a daily. James W. Schoch became associated with him. The paper ended its days in 1857.
William H. Winans, a well known Newark printer, started The Newark Daily Mercury about 1848. It was a vigorous Repub- lican sheet. It ceased publication in 1862.
In 1840 or thereabouts Newark had a weekly newspaper known as The Temperance Advocate. In 1844 there was a high-tariff anti-Democratic paper, The Tariff Advocate. At this same period there was The Morning Post, vigorously Democratic. All three were short-lived.
The Rev. William Hagadorn published The Newark Intelli- gencer, beginning about 1825. He was a Universalist preacher and he boldly took issue in politics with both the Sentinel of Freedom and the Eagle. In 1828 another Newark weekly, The Anti- . Jacksonian, made its appearance and was vehemently opposed by Hagadorn. The Anti-Jacksonian soon died. Hagadorn was a warm . supporter of Jackson and Calhoun. The Intelligencer did not long outlive the Anti-Jacksonian.
In the early part of the year 1829 a fierce anti-Masonic paper was started in Newark, called the Newark Monitor. It had for a motto the following: "It must be obvious that the whole machinery
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of the Masonic Institution is adapted for political intrigue." The Monitor was published weekly by S. L. B. Baldwin. It is believed to have stopped publication about the end of the year 1831 or beginning of 1832.
THE DAILY ADVERTISER, 1832-1906.
George Bush & Co., "2 doors east of the Market in Market street," began the publication of The Newark Daily Advertiser on Thursday, March 1, 1832, with Amzi Armstrong as the editor. The latter had as assistant John P. Jackson. It was the first New Jersey daily. " It was an ardent champion of the Whig party, and its first issue proclaimed itself for Henry Clay and John Sargeant, the Whig candidates in 1832 for President and Vice-President. Upon the completion of the first volume, the conductors of the paper announced themselves satisfied that a daily paper could and would be maintained in Newark. They confessed that the enter- prise was not profitable thus far, but expressed confidence that it would be in time. They trusted that the impression which had been circulated to their injury, that it (the paper) was merely got up for temporary purposes during the late Presidential elec- tion, will no longer operate to their disadvantage. In the first number of the second volume Mr. Armstrong withdrew. In his valedictory he said his connection with the paper was originally intended to continue only for a few weeks. He gently upbraided the literary and scientific citizens of the town for not assisting him by contributions to the columns of the paper, and hoped they would pursue a different course towards his successor, Mr. William B. Kinney, who then became editor and presently proprietor of the Daily ; but the title of George S. Bush & Co. was retained as pub- lishers, Bush being the manager of the mechanical department of the paper. In 1833, Mr. James B. Pinneo entered into partnership with Mr. Kinney, and took charge of its business management. The style of the firm was J. B. Pinneo & Co., Mr. Kinney manifest- ing always an aversion to having his name spread out in connec-
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" Shaw's History of Essex and Hudson Counties; vol. i, p. 223.
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tion with the proprietorship. Mr. Pinneo subsequently retired. * Mr. M. S. Harrison succeeded Mr. Pinneo on the Adver- tiser. Upon the former's death, Mr. Kinney became the sole pro- prietor, and under his control the paper rose steadily in value, power, excellence and influence. Under his conduct the Advertiser steadily continued to prosper. Among those whose pens enriched the columns of the Advertiser during Kinney's editorship were the late Rev. James W. Alexander, who, under the nom de plume of 'Charles Quill,' wrote a series of very interesting papers on 'American Mechanics and American Workingmen,' and Mr. Sam- uel K. Gardner-'Decius.' Joseph P. Bradley, later associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, may be said to have begun active life as the Trenton correspondent of the Advertiser."
William B. Kinney retired from the editorship on June 19, 1851, after being in charge for eighteen years. His son, Thomas T. Kinney, soon became sole proprietor of the paper and in his day it increased rapidly in power and influence, and attained to a repu- tation that was country-wide. Thomas T. Kinney introduced steam power, improved presses and other equipment. He took an influ- ential part in establishing the system of news gathering that ulti- mately took form in the Associated Press.
Many writers of prominence were identified with the Daily Advertiser at one time or another. One of its most able and influ- ential editors, from the days of William B. Kinney himself, was Dr. Sanford B. Hunt, who came to the editorial chair from ardu- ous and useful service in the Civil War. He wrote masterful editorials for the paper until the time of his death, in April, 1884. At that time the New York Tribune said of him:
"Dr. Sanford B. Hunt, the editor of The Newark Advertiser, died yesterday afternoon at his home in Irvington, after an illness of three months. He was born in Ithaca, N. Y., on Christmas, 1825. He studied in the medical college in Willoughby, Ohio, and after practicing medicine in Hunt's Hollow and Mendon, he removed to Buffalo in 1855, and became Professor of Anatomy in the Buffalo Medical College, editing The Medical Journal. Before this he had contributed articles to The Knickerbocker Magazine. About 1858
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he was made associate editor of The Buffalo Commercial Adver- tiser, and later he succeeded Ivory Chamberlain as the editor. He was afterward editor of The Buffalo Express. In 1860 he was elected superintendent of public schools in Buffalo. As soon as the war broke out Dr. Hunt went to the front as a surgeon. After service at Fortress Monroe he entered the One Hundred and Ninth New York Volunteers. He organized Camp Convalescent, near Alexandria, and after service there did duty in the West, first on Heintzelman's staff and then at Fort Smith, Ark., where he was surgeon-in-charge. On the evacuation of Fort Smith he was com- plimented for gallantry in removing his wounded under rebel fire. Later he was surgeon-in-chief and medical director at New Orleans and medical director of the Army of the Southwest in the march from Selma, Ala., to San Antonio. With the rank of brevet lieu- tenant-colonel he was mustered out of the service in Texas.
"Dr. Hunt wrote the history of the Sanitary Commission in 1865, and contributed to several newspapers and magazines. In May, 1866, he accepted the editorship of The Newark Advertiser. He was a Republican from the time that the party was organized, and from an earlier time was an Abolitionist. He drew the first Civil Rights plank in the Republican platform of New Jersey, and the platform of many local and State conventions. He was a fre- quent contributor to periodicals. He was a member of the New Jersey Centennial Commission and of the Prison Labor Commis- sion."
In 1906, the Newark Daily Advertiser, having changed hands several times in the preceding half-dozen years, passed out of existence, and the Morning and Evening Stars were established. ,
THE EVENING JOURNAL, 1857.
On Monday, November 2, 1857, The Newark Evening Journal rose, out of the ashes of the Eagle and the Jacksonian, Senator William Wright having acquired both of the last mentioned. This was in the first year of Buchanan's term as president.
" "The editorial management of the Journal was placed in the hands of Edward N. Fuller, a New Hampshire journalist of the strongest Democratic proclivities. For more than a decade the Journal had a hard battle for existence. It was constantly cramped financially. Once or twice it came to the brink of the fate of its forerunners-the Eagle and Jacksonian-and once was forced to suspend temporarily; but hard work and zeal revived it, and in the latter part of 1867 the business management and part owner-
" Shaw's History of Essex and Hudson Counties; vol. i, pp. 226-227.
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ship passed into the hands of Judge William B. Guild. * * In the latter part of 1871, Mr. Fuller retired from the paper, and Judge Guild became sole proprietor, 'The Journal Printing and Publishing Company,' organized with the founding of the Journal, having dissolved.
"During the war, the Journal made itself obnoxious
by its * * attacks on Mr. Lincoln's administration. The paper opposed coercive measures toward the South, and refused to hoist the national flag, until angry demonstrations were made towards the establishment. Then, by advice of peace-making friends, it did so, with the following explanatory flourish :
" 'OUR FLAG IS THERE!
" 'At the request of our neighbors, and by advice of several of our good Democratic, anti-war and anti-mob friends, but without the slightest threat or attempted intimidation from any quarter, we to-day threw out from the Journal office the flag of our country,-the emblem of the fraternal Union formed by the immortal Washington and his compatriots, and rendered sacred by our Revolutionary battles fought against a foreign foe. Upon that flag was have placed the mottoes-'Free Speech,' 'Free Press,'- the symbols of a free people. By that flag and those mottoes we shall stand to the last-ever mindful of the patriotic reminiscences of our whole coun- try, and praying for its reconstruction upon the old Republican basis, as it will be, when reason shall take the place of sectional passion, and the spirit of a peaceful and patriotic fraternity is restored to the people. So mote it be.' "
The spirit which led the Journal to oppose the war moved it to oppose the drafts. This latter course ended in the editor's arrest on a charge of inciting insurrection. Mr. Fuller was arrested on Friday, July 25, 1864, taken before a United States Commissioner and held in seven thousand dollars bail. On Wednesday, February 15, 1865, the case came up before Judge Field in the United States Circuit Court at Trenton, when Fuller retracted his former plea and pleaded guilty, and the matter was disposed of by the imposi- tion of a trifling fine. Fuller insisted that he "never designed to favor mob-law or incite to insurrection," and in whatever he had written or published had "never been moved by sedition." The following month Fuller withdrew from the Journal because of a difference of opinion with the Board of Directors of the concern. The evening of the afternoon of Fuller's retirement (April 14th, 1865), Lincoln was assassinated. Next day the Journal appeared in deep mourning over the dreadful event. On September 19th Colonel Morris R. Hamilton took command. A year or so afterwards, how-
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ever, Mr. Fuller regained his old place and held it until 1871, as already described. On the 18th of October, 1884, the immediate and responsible control of the Journal passed out of the hands of William B. Guild, and under the control of a publishing company. The Journal ceased publication about 1894.
LAST HALF CENTURY OF JOURNALISM.
Richard Watson Gilder and Newton H. Crane began the pub- lication of The Newark Morning Register on May 4, 1869. It lived but three months under this management, and was later conducted upon a co-operative plan. On May 4, 1871, the property was acquired by Chancellor Theodore Runyon, G. N. Abeel, A. A. Smalley, J. McGregor, W. H. Camp, David Anderson, Frederick H. Teese, Samuel Klotz, J. Ward Tichenor, Herman Schalk, A. M. Reynolds, Joseph G. Hill, W. N. Truesdell, H. W. Duryee, William Parker and Hugh Holmes. The business was then incorporated as the Newark Printing Company and William A. Ure was made business manager of the Register. The venture soon collapsed. The paper was next published under the control of the National Railway Company, Chancellor Runyon and Colonel G. N. Abeel retiring from the company. In 1875, Dr. M. H. C. Vail became sole proprietor of the paper, having purchased it at sheriff's sale.
On May 18, 1872, The Newark Sunday Call began publication. Its first owner was Frank F. Patterson. On October 6 of the same year it was purchased by Dr. Sanford B. Hunt, Colonel G. N. Abeel and Henry Hill. They published it for about five months when it returned to the ownership of Mr. Patterson. On September 1, 1873, William A. Ure and James W. Schoch, who had been inter- ested in other local newspaper ventures, became the owners of the Call. It is now. (1913) owned by the Newark Call Printing and Publishing Company, of which G. Wisner Thorne, William T. Hunt and Louis Hannoch are the principal owners.
Newark's second Sunday newspaper was The Newark Free Press, started on October 28, 1883, as an independent paper, later becoming a Democratic sheet. L. J. Hardham was the publisher
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and its first editor Joseph Atkinson. A year later the paper was sold to James F. Connelly & Co., and two weeks afterward lost its identity in The Press, a Newark morning paper, first issued on October 15, 1884, by James F. Connelly & Co. Late in the 1880's the Press and the old Morning Register joined forces and became the Press-Register. This enterprise was abandoned in 1890. The New Jersey Unionist, a weekly devoted to the interests of organ- ized labor, was established in 1886, and was merged with the Newark Sunday Standard when the latter was started, in 1889. In 1894 the paper became the Times-Standard, and died a few months later. In October, 1891, the Newark Morning Times was launched upon the fickle sea of Newark journalism. It passed away in 1894.
The Newark Evening News began publication September 1, 1883, by Wallace M. Scudder and Henry Abbott Steel. In 1900, Mr. Steel retired and Mr. Scudder became the sole owner. A Sunday edition of the News was started Feb. 24, 1901 and stopped publication at the end of February, 1905.
The early Newark printers did far more than publish news- papers. Job printing of every sort for which there was a demand was part of their daily work, and they were incessantly busy with the preparation of books and pamphlets. They published scores of sermons, learned disquisitions, Independence Day orations, essays, almanacs, textbooks and lawbooks. In 1902, Mr. Frank Pierce Hill, who had but recently left the headship of the Newark Free Public Library to become librarian of the Brooklyn Library system, pub- lished his valuable work, "Books, Pamphlets and Newspapers Printed at Newark, New Jersey. 1776-1900." This contains sev- eral hundred titles. Since that time the list of Newark imprints has been greatly increased by William Nelson, of Paterson, and by the attaches of the New Jersey Historical Society and the Newark Free Public Library. No student of Newark history can conscien- tiously neglect a study of the older of these publications, many of which are in the archives of the New Jersey Historical Society, and some in the Newark Free Public Library.
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LITERARY NEWARK.
At a "Symposium" of the Wednesday Club on the evening of March 20, 1907, a paper giving evidence of much careful research was read by its author, Mr. G. Wisner Thorne. Its title was "Literary Newark," and a portion of it, which bears particularly upon the period since the days shortly before the Civil War, is reproduced here.
"It was in a day long since gone by that Henry William Her- bert dwelt on the banks of the Passaic, in this city, and gave to the world, as 'Frank Forrester,' many popular books and sketches about the pleasures of the gun and the rod. But he was more than a charming writer about sports and woodcraft. A son of the Dean of Manchester, England, who was a poet, historian, linguist and orator of renown in his day, Henry William Herbert was also a highly accomplished man. Of his many romances, "The Brothers" was successful here, and "Cromwell" was read and highly praised in England. He also translated books written in foreign tongues, wrote poems which Poe praised, and edited magazines. His biog- rapher says, with perhaps some exaggeration: 'With the exception of Irving's home, "Sunnyside," no author's dwelling had grown more familiar by name to the world of literature on this continent than "The Cedars"-Herbert's home on the eastern edge of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.' 7
"Until about the outbreak of the Civil War, the claim of New- ark to be a home of letters seems to have rested largely upon the fact that Irving and Herbert were associated with the city, and that Godey's Ladies' Magazine had many readers in our town on the Passaic. But since that day, other men who have wielded a facile and graceful pen, some of whom have been prominent in the literary world, have lived and worked here. All will at once recall Dr. Abraham Coles, whose famous translations of "Dies Irae" were only a part of his literary product; Frederick W. Ricord, author of many English renderings of verse in foreign tongues; Dr. Thomas Dunn English, physician, journalist, publicist, drama- tist and poet; and [the late] Richard Watson Gilder, poet and editor of The Century Magazine, who in his earlier manhood was an editor of the Newark Advertiser, [and was attached to two or three other local journals] and long resided here, together with his sister, Miss Jeannette Gilder and his brother, Joseph B. Gilder, who jointly published the New York Critic for a score of years. Edmund Clar- ence Stedman, poet and author of works on poets and poetry, had his home in Stratford place, Newark. Mention of him requires
Herbert's grave is in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.
b eed
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reference also to his mother, Mrs. E. C. Kinney, of Newark. She was herself a maker of verse, and in her poem on 'Divident Hill' she showed that she perceived the element of romance in Newark's early history.
"Of Newark journalists, the late Dr. Sanford B. Hunt and John Y. Foster, had literary ability that made them prominent in their profession. Dr. Hunt was the author of many magazine articles, and Mr. Foster's history of 'New Jersey in the Rebellion,' written, as I saw at the time, under very high pressure, is yet marked with considerable beauty of style. * Later, sitting at my desk I touched elbows with another delightful literary man, George R. Graham, the founder of Graham's Magazine, of Phila- delphia. When I knew him he was an old man, full of reminiscences of Poe, who edited the magazine, and of many famous contributors to it. Mr. Graham made a fortune with his magazine and lost it, made and lost two more, and did his last work as editor of a Newark newspaper.
"Most of you are probably familiar with Joseph Atkinson's history of Newark. I saw him write it day after day and night after night in spare moments-if it can be said that he had any spare moments-that came to him while he was editing the Newark Journal during the day and writing news articles for the New York Herald at night. That book is a monument to the author's indus- try, not to speak of its other merits. We are all in debt, too, to the late William A. Whitehead for his studies in New Jersey history.
"Professor James Mapes wrote many papers upon scientific subjects, and his home in the southern part of Newark [in what is now the Weequahic Park section] was visited by men prominent in literature, as well as those more especially interested in science. His daughter, Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, author of 'Hans Brinker' and for many years editor of 'St. Nicholas,' may be called a member of the literary guild of this city. 'Marion Harland' and Miss Amanda M. Douglass, the novelists, have both passed several years in Newark, and young Stephen Crane, author of 'The Red Badge of Courage,' a highly successful book, was born here, being a son of Rev. Dr. J. Townley Crane. His death, in 1900, at the age of thirty, brought to an early close what promised to be a brilliant career in the field of fiction. He claimed to be a descendant of Jasper Crane, one of the settlers of Newark, and if this be true he is the exception that proves the rule that the offspring of the Milford and Branford colonizers have not been contributors to literature. * *
"Let me remind you that the 'Encyclopedia of Practical Quo- tations' represents patient research by J. K. Hoyt and Miss Kate Louise Roberts, of this city. Edwin Asa Dix, who had been the
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literary editor for a New York weekly magazine, and has written several novels, besides a history of Samuel de Champlain, and his brother, William Frederick Dix, a New York editor, were born and educated here. *
* * Edward Stratemeyer, of Roseville, has been a most prolific and successful writer of books for boys. The late Noah Brooks, editor of The Advertiser, was even more widely known for his histories and stories for boys.
"Some of the learned professions overlap. All clergymen are writers, and in a sense members of the band of literary workers. Many educators, likewise, do their best service with the pen rather than in the classroom. But some men of both these professions have special claim to be regarded as men of letters. Among those who have been Newarkers are the Rev. Dr. Ray Palmer, the author of 'My Faith Looks Up to Thee,' and other beautiful hymns; Rev. Dr. Lyman Whitney Allen, who has made many successful incur- sions into the field of poetry; Rev. Dr. S. I. Prime, whose varied writings under the nom de plume of 'Ireneus' made him known throughout the country. We do not forget, too, the great work on Christian missions that has come from the pen of a Newark man, Rev. Dr. James S. Dennis. The late Rev. Dr. Jonathan F. Stearns, pastor of the Old First Church, made important contributions to the historical records of Newark, and his son, the late Professor Louis F. Stearns, of the seminary in Bangor, Me., wrote and published theological works that were accounted very able. Rev. Dr. William Hayes Ward, the learned divine and Orientalist, is also a high- class journalist and the author of miscellaneous papers and books. And in passing mention must be made of his sister, Miss Susan Hayes Ward, who has been associated with him in his journalistic and other literary work.
"And now a brief paragraph about some of the Newark educa- tors who have contributed to the literature of their professions or shown scholarly attainments. Theodore Frelinghuysen was the Chancellor of the University of New York and afterward President of Rutgers College. At the head of the list must be named also the late Professor Henry A. Rowland, a graduate of the Newark Academy, who was also famous here and in Europe as a scientist, a professor in Johns Hopkins University and the author of a hundred scientific monographs. There is time merely to name Farrand, professor of history in Leland Stanford University; Professor Livingston Farrand of Columbia University, a contributor to sev- eral publications, and Professor Wilson Farrand, of the Newark Academy, not alone because of his papers and addresses on problems in education or on the poetry of Tennyson, but for the reason that for a time he was an editor of Scribner's Magazine. Professor Austin Scott, late president of Rutgers College, formerly resided in Newark, and Rev. Dr. James G. McIlvaine, professor of belles-
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letters in Princeton College, was pastor of a Newark church for many years. Professor Charles G. Rockwood, Jr., of Princeton ; Professor John E. Hill, of Brown University; Professor Graham Taylor, sociologist and editor, all grew up in Newark. Our present sheriff [1907] Frank H. Sommer, doctor of jurisprudence, formerly filled a professorship in the leading New York law school.
"Then there is Professor Louis Herbert Gray, who was born in Newark, educated in the Newark Academy, and still resides here; famous as an Orientalist and writer of several works on the languages, literatures and religions of India and Persia. In the Forest Hill section dwells Henry Hurd Rusby, the American bot- anist, who has written several works on plants and kindred sub- jects."
Dr. Rusby was president of the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1909-1910, was expert in drug products in the Bureau of Chemistry, United States Department of Agriculture, 1907-1909; then pharmacognist in the same bureau. In 1911 he was largely instrumental in securing the vindication of Dr. Harvey W. Wiley and a number of his associates in the same bureau.
Thomas Dunn English, whose claims to literary fame are based to a degree upon a poem ("Ben Bolt") which he himself considered one of his least meritorious efforts, lived in Newark, from 1878 until his death at his home in 57 State street, on April 1, 1902. He was born in Philadelphia on June 29, 1819, and told the author of this history that he had a dim recollection of seeing Lafayette passing through the streets of the Quaker City on the occasion of his last visit in 1824. IIe cherished the memory of a "tall gentleman in a long brown coat standing up in a carriage and bowing to the crowds of people in the streets." Dr. English at- tended William and Mary College, at Williamsburg, Va., and received the degree of M. D., from the University of Pennsylvania in 1842. When little more than a child he composed some verses and sent them to the Philadelphia Ledger. They were accepted, and in his declining years he facetiously told the writer that he dated his downfall from the acceptance of those lines. He could never divorce himself from literary effort. He wrote several novels, but very few did he acknowledge as his own. His "Ben Bolt" which became a popular song, appeared in the New York
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