Handwritten Newspapers on the Iowa Frontier, 1844–1854

NOTES

• In 1845 a manuscript newspaper, the Flumgudgeon Gazette and Bumble Bee Budget appeared on the Oregon frontier. Cf. Warren J. Brier, “The ‘Flumgudgeon Gazette and Bumble Bee Budget,’ “Journalism Quarterly, 36(Summer 1959): 317–20. In the 1860s and 1880s there were apparently several handwritten newspapers published on Utah's frontier. Papers were issued in Parowan, Manti, Mount Pleasant and Dixie. For a brief discussion of the Dixie papers, see: Lorraine T. Washburn, “Culture in Dixie,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 29 (July 1961): 259–60. There also were handwritten publications for church young people organizations during the 1880s in Hyrum and Orderville. Cf. Mark A. Pendleton, “The Orderville United Order of Zion,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 7 (October 1939): 151. All of these papers point to the possibility that handwritten newspapers were not an uncommon phenomenon in early frontier settlements.
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• Because only one copy of a Washington handwritten newspaper has survived, the June 1844 issue of the Quarterly Visitor, several different types of sources became important for this study. Two county histories, one written by Nathan Littler and the other containing interviews with Samuel James, were the principal sources for the descriptions of the Domestic Quarterly Review and the Washington Shark. Topographical maps, legislative records, newspaper accounts and county histories were used in discerning the geographical problems of the Washington County region. Demographic information was compiled from federal census records for 1840, 1850 and 1860, and territorial and state census returns for 1838, 1840, 1844, 1846, 1847, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1854, 1856 and 1859. Biographic data appeared in state and city records, county histories, autobiographies, newspaper stories and obituaries. Printed newspapers near Washington County published between 1840 and 1860, including the Iowa Capitol Reporter, the Bloomington Herald and Burlington Hawk-Eye, were examined for background information about the Washington community, the handwritten newspapers and their editors.
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• Nathan Littler, History of Washington County, 1835–1875, ed. by Edna Jones (Washington, Ia.: Jonathan C. Clark, 1977), p. 221.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid., p. 222.
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• Ibid.
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• Quarterly Visitor, June 1844, p. 4. The only extant copy of any of the three known papers is this issue of Visitor which is in the archives of the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.
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• The History of Keokuk County, Iowa (Des Moines: Union Historical Company, 1880), pp. 459–60.
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• The Visitor lifted two items from the Bloomington Herald, June 7, 1844. One was a news story about “the discoveries of Prof. Morse in Electro Magnetism.” The second item from the Herald was an anecodote titled “Female Delicacy.”
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• News stories in the Visitor consisted of two basic types: local and national. Local news stories included reports of events within the county and the state. National stories covered events which took place outside the state. Features were anecdotes, poems, short tales. Editorials included anything having to do with editorial policy (such as when the paper is scheduled to leave the editor's office), or with judgments about social and political events.
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• Quarterly Visitor, June, 1844.
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• Littler, p. 186.
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• Ibid., pp. 186–87.
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• Ibid.
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• Ibid.
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• bid.
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• Ibid.
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• See David Mott, “Early Iowa Newspapers,” Annals of Iowa, 3rd series, XVI (January 1928), pp. 161–233.
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• Since the Visitor was able to run material gleaned from the Bloomington Herald and Burlington Hawk-Eye less than a month after their publication, it seems likely that newspapers were able to reach Washington within a matter of weeks, if not days.
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• Dates for this determination were taken from LeRoy G. Pratt, The Counties and Courthouses of Iowa (Mason City, Ia.: Klipto Printing, 1977) and A Bibliography of Iowa Newspapers, 1836–1976 (Des Moines: Iowa State Historical Dept., 1979).
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• Washington County's representatives frequently presented petitions to the territorial and state government to finance construction of or improvements in highways and river crossings. For example, see The Journal of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the State of Iowa (Burlington: Burlington Hawk-Eye Office, 1847), pp. 104, 133. Cf. also Kathy Fisher, In the Beginning There Was Land: A History of Washington County, Iowa (Washington: Washington Historical Society, 1978), pp. 190–91.
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• The contrast between trade and business centers and agricultural centers is intended to distinguish between those cities which produced or handled goods for export or non-local consumption, and those cities which provided goods and services principally for local consumption. Examples of the former were Burlington, Davenport, Bloomington (or Muscatine), Ft. Madison and Keokuk. Iowa City, the territorial and state capital for a good portion of the period under consideration here, was primarily a government or business center and not an agricultural center. Agricultural centers were cities whose principal business and industries were farm related and local in character.
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• Cf. A Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census (Washington, D.C.: 1854).
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• Several counties in Iowa had different cities competing for the status of county seat. Population, business growth and the existence of a newspaper were important factors in the selection process. Washington, however, was never seriously challenged in this regard. See Pratt, The Counties and Courthouses of Iowa, for the county seat battles of Black Hawk, Cedar, Clayton, Clinton, Decatur, Jackson, Jones, Marshall and Muscatine counties.
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• A Bibliography of Iowa Newspapers, 1836–1976, pp. 186–91. One example of Washington's dependency on Iowa City and other cities' printing involved Daniel Stover, editor of the Visitor. The July 13, 1844, issue of the Iowa Capitol Reporter ran a report of the “Democratic Convention: Washington County on the ‘Look Out’ “in which Daniel Stover was listed as convention secretary. The last resolution listed in the report read: “Resolved, That the Secretary make out the proceedings of this convention, signed by the President and forwarded to the Iowa Capitol Reporter and Burlington Gazette for publication.” The president and Stover had signed the report, July 4, 1844, nine days before it publication. Such a practice may or may not have been commonplace, but in the case of Washington there were no alternatives if speed and wide distribution were desired.
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• Of the four editors, probably the least is known about Stover. Stover, editor of the Quarterly Visitor, was a lawyer and had started practice in Washington with his brother sometime in 1840, a year after their arrival in Iowa City from Indiana. According to a report published in the Iowa Capitol Reporter in July, 1844, Stover served as the secretary of the Democratic Convention held in Washington that year, and was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the Washington County commissioner's clerk. Being two of only about 10 lawyers in the county at the time, the Stover brothers held several important governmental posts in Washington and later in Keokuk County.
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• Samuel James, editor of the Domestic Quarterly Review, studied law with William R. Harrison, a prominent area lawyer and a close relative of Daniel Stover, in Washington during the winter of 1843–1844. At the beginning of the 1844 territorial legislative term, James was appointed as the clerk of the district court in Keokuk County with a mandate to organize the seat of justice there. It was during the spring after his study of law under Harrison and his appointment as the Keokuk County court clerk that James issued the Review. By July, James had moved to Sigourney, the county seat he helped to establish.
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• It was during his second term as postmaster under Lincoln that James became one of two handwritten newspaper editors to be involved with a printed paper. James served as interim editor and co-editor with the proprietor, A.S. Bailey, of the Keokuk County News (a “Republican Family Journal”) between Dec. 14, 1860, and Nov. 15, 1861.
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• The other handwritten newspaper editor who continued to be involved with the newspaper profession was Nathan Littler of the Shark. Though Littler did not have the law background of James and Stover, he was elected to a two-year term as constable of Washington in 1850, the year the Shark first appeared. In 1852 he was elected justice of the peace and served at that post until he moved to the Washington County town of Richmond. He returned to Washington in 1869 and wrote a history of Washington County which appeared serially in the Washington Gazette. In addition to editing the Shark while constable and writing the history for the Gazette while a county supervisor, Littler served as a correspondent for the reorganized Washington County Press when he lived in Richmond.
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• Richard B. McMillan (1823–1898), co-editor of the Washington Shark with Littler, lived in Washington initially from 1846 to 1855. During this period he was a county assessor and township clerk. He left Washington in 1855 and moved about the county and state for a time. Though McMillan did not pursue a career in journalism, he did have some influence on early journalism in eastern Iowa. McMillan and his younger brother, Horace Greeley McMillan, had moved to Washington together. While Richard McMillan was editing the Shark, Horace was living with him. It was no doubt there that Horace received his first exposure to journalistic practice. In 1898, the year Richard died, Horace Greeley McMillan purchased the Cedar Rapids Republican. Eventually, he owned two Iowa dailies and a weekly farm journal.
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• Sources which proved the most information were the extant copy of the Quarterly Visitor and issues of the Iowa Capitol Reporter from Dec. 31, 1842, to July 13, 1844. The Washington County histories of Littler (pp. 29, 126) and Fisher (p. 107) provided background on both Stover and his brother. The History of Warren County, Iowa (Des Moines: Union Historical Co., 1879) had additional information about the Stover family. Principal sources for biographic information on James were the Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington County, 1887, the extant copy of the Quarterly Visitor, and Keokuk County News, Dec. 14, 1860 to Nov. 15, 1861. James' obituaries appeared in the Keokuk County News, Jan. 16, 1908, and Jan. 23, 1908. Littler's autobiography appears at the beginning of his History edited by Edna Jones. Other sources include Howard A. Burell's History of Washington County, Iowa, 2 Vols., (Chicago: S.J. Clarke, 1909) and the Washington County Press from 1866 to 1869. Littler's county history originally appeared in the Washington Gazette, and his obituary appeared in the Iowa State Register, March 3, 1888. Littler provided a considerable amount of background on McMillan in his county history. Additional sources included Burell's History of Washington County, Vol. 2, pp. 601-04, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago: A.T. Andreas, 1883), p. 1108f, and D.W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, New Edition 1541–1885 (New York: Arno Press, 1975 reprint), pp. 65, 670, 676 and 700. McMillan's obituary appeared in the Washington Press, Dec. 14, 1898.
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• This possibility was first pointed out to the author by Prof. John Soloski, School of Journalism, University of Iowa.
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• Washburn, p. 259.
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