Old Landmark Changes Hands

SAYRE, FISK, RYAN, HOUSEL, WALKER, COFFIN, LINDLEY, ONEALL, VAUGHAN, CAMPBELL, NEWELL

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 2/23/2010 at 15:11:31

Last week we noted the purchase of the old "Col. Meyer brick" on the northeast corner of the square by R. W. Sayre, president of the Citizens State Bank, from the late Mrs. Cornelia Fisk. A few days later Mr. Sayre also purchased from Mrs. J. Evans Ryan the 3-story brick immediately joining the other on the south-the two having been built together and at the same time, in 1856, the first by Cephas J. Housel and the latter by a man named Walker. Mrs. Ryan had owned the property for over 25 years. The lower room has always been a popular business location, its occupants in a very early day, if we remember correctly, were Coffin & Lindley, J. B. O'Neall, Sam Vaughan, and others - now gone and nearly forgotten. The second and third stories for many years were used as office rooms.

The old Jasper Free Press office, A. K. and F. T. Campbell publishers, was on the 3d floor, and it was there where the Record local, standing on a box at the case, set his first type, in 1859. And where he and his chum, Jack Newell, issued the first daily paper in Newton-the little "Newton Daily Monitor"-in 1962, which was suddenly suspended in August of the same year when both of its boy editors marched away to war in Company C, 22d Iowa. Jack, dear boy, was killed at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in May, 1863. This little item opens a flood of memories-both sad and otherwise. ~ Newspaper unknown