Charles Mabee Hyskell

HYSKELL, ROGERS, SWAIN

Posted By: Judy Wight Branson (email)
Date: 3/11/2010 at 17:24:34

From the book, The Progressive Men of Iowa
Vol. II, page 252 & 253.

Charles Mabee Hyskell, editor of the Burlington Daily Democrat - Journal, is a native Iowan, born in Winterset, Madison County, October 3, 1864. His father, Thomas M. Hyskell, was reared on a farm in Madison County, and was married to Ellen W. Swain in Winterset in 1851.
His father, Thomas Hyskell, was one of the first settlers within fifty miles of Des Moines. Our Mr. Hyskell's father lost his health when he was comparatively a young man and was obliged to give up farming and moved into town, where he engaged in the harness making trade.

There were three sons, of whom Charles was the second, and as they grew to manhood they supported their mother after their father's early death in 1871. She was a native of Indiana, and came to Iowa about 1850.

Attending the public schools in Winterset until he was fourteen years of age, young Hyskell entered the office of the Winterset Madisonian, where he learned the printer's trade. He was afterward employed in the office of the greenback paper, the Independent Mirror, then under the editorship of Jackson A. Evans. A desire for a larger field took him into the employment of the printing house of F. M. Mills, in Des Moines, where he learned many a good lesson. A few months later he formed a partnership with A. L. Wood, then a young school teacher in St. Charles, Madison County, but afterwards several times a member ot the Legislature. They established a paper in St. Charles called the Watchman. At the end of six months Mr. Hyskell sold his interest to Mr. Wood.

He they rejoined Jack Evans, and together they moved the Independent Mirror from Winterset to the settlement of Ord, on the North Loup river, in Valley County, Nebraska, where they rechristened the newspaper the Ord Standard. The county of which Ord was the business and political center had 3,00 inhabitants, of whom 2,600 were republicans, having three republican papers. Evans & Hyskell proposed to run a paper for the 400 democrats. The odds against them were too great, though they made a plucky fight. In the following August the sheriff took possession of the paper, and Evans began to teach school, while Mr. Hyskell returned to Iowa. he worked at the printer's case on the Omaha Herald for a time; then he was police court reporter of a sensational paper in Des Moines, known as the Daily Independent, edited by a man by the name of Lynch, which he soon resigned on account of the great physical dangers he encountered, owing to Lynch's libelous attacks on people in Des Moines. He was next foreman and finally city editor of the Daily Free Press of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

A year later he became city editor of the Burlington (Iowa) Gazette, where he remained in various editorial positions until the spring of 1896, when he undertook to issue a Saturday evening illustrated weekly paper in Peoria, Illinois, in partnership with Walter S. Rogers, an artist from the St. Louis Republican, and his brother, Fred Hyskell. Six months' time proved that the field was not ready for such a publication, and having disposed of the property, the owners returned to Burlington and laid the foundation of the present successful paper, the Burlington Democrat - Journal. The Democrat started as a morning paper in September, 1896. The following March the Evening Journal was published by George A. Duncan, and the papers were consolidated in an evening edition called the Democrat Journal. They started in with a small capital, but in two years they had secured a complete plant, occupying several floors of the building in which it is located, having a modern art department, complete telegraph report, Linotype machines and everything else that is necessary to make a first-class newspaper.

Mr. Hyskell has always been a democrat though he is the only one of his father's family that has voted for a democrat.

He is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America and the Knights of Pythias.

Mr. Hyskell was married in 1890 to Elizabeth A. Rogers, daughter of E. P. Rogers, assistant passenger and freight agent of the Southern Pacific Railway system at Portland, Oregon. They have two children, Thomas, born in 1892 and Ned, born in 1894.