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EDITED BY John C. Parish
Associate Editor of the State Historical Society of Iowa
| Volume I |
August 1920 |
No. 2 |
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Copyright 1920 by the State Historical Society of Iowa
(Transcribed by Gayle Harper)
THREE MEN and a PRESS
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On the west bank of the
Mississippi where Julien Dubuque, lead miner of the ''Mines of
Spain", had lived and died there grew up about 1830 a
settlement known as the Dubuque Lead Mines. In the midst of
miners' cabins and saloons appeared stores and churches, and
finally one enterprising citizen decided that the town needed
a newspaper.
So this man, John King, went back to
Ohio, whence he had come, and bought a printing press. And he
hired two assistants. One was William Gary Jones, a Whig, who
was to help him edit the paper. The other was Andrew Keesecker,
a typesetter and a Democrat.
The three
men and the press mobilized in a two-story log-house, and on
May 11, 1836, they issued the first newspaper in what is now
Iowa. It bore the name of The Dubuque Visitor and carried the
heading "Dubuque Lead Mines, Wisconsin Territory", – which
announcement was more progressive than truthful for Wisconsin
Territory had not yet been born. The little settlement was
still a part of the Territory of Michigan, although a bill to
create the Territory of Wisconsin was before Congress when the
sheet appeared.
History, however, soon vindicated
their prophecy and the heading stood. Being the only paper in
the region it served all factions. King himself was a
Democrat, while both parties were represented by his
assistants. In the columns of the Visitor appeared the
announcements of rival candidates for office, long-winded and
labored. "A Voter" and "A Candidate" took opposite stands on
the question of holding a nominating convention. ''Incognito"
and "Curtius" and ''Hawk-Eye" and other less modest
contributors ran the gamut of newspaper eulogy and
denunciation. Altogether this four page sheet was a unique and
interesting organ and a worthy pioneer in the field of
newspaperdom. In 1837 the name was changed to the Iowa News
and it became a Democratic journal. Later it was succeeded by
the Miners' Express, whose lineal descendant is the Dubuque
Telegraph-Herald.
But let us follow a little further
the fortunes of the three men and their faithful servant, the
press. John King remained in Dubuque, a newspaper man, a
judge, and later a retired and prosperous burger.
William Gary
Jones, who had been hired by King at three hundred and fifty
dollars, "with suitable board and lodging during one year",
passed on to other fields. He edited and published a paper in
New Orleans, and later practiced law in San Francisco. He
served in the Civil War as a captain in the Union Army and was
captured and held in prison for some time at Selma, Alabama.
He and his fellow prisoners, not content with the Selma
Reporter, which was smuggled in to them nearly every day by a
friendly cook's assistant, decided to edit a paper of their
own, which they printed by hand upon the walls of one of the
rooms. Jones was the editor and he was assisted by talented
artists among his fellow officers. The paper had an elaborate
vignette, composed of a Southerner, a slave, King Cotton, and
numerous reptiles. Each number had an illustration, articles,
and advertisements, all of which furnished much amusement to
men who were punished more by ennui than by their captors.
Andrew Keesecker, like his patron John King, remained in
Dubuque. He served on various newspapers, setting type for
over a third of a century. He was one of those rare
individuals who could compose an editorial as he set it up in
type, without reducing it to manuscript; and he acquired a
great reputation as a rapid typesetter. Once he engaged in a
typesetting contest with A. P. Wood, another Dubuque printer
and publisher.
With a printer's devil as umpire
they began at a signal to set up the words of the Lord's
Prayer. Keesecker finished first and according to
arrangements, started to announce his success by calling out
the last word. Unfortunately he had a curious habit of
stuttering which seemed to increase under excitement. So while
he was vainly endeavoring to bring out the triumphant word,
Wood also finished and cut into his stumbling efforts with an
incisive “Amen"; whereupon Keesecker, recovering his voice,
insisted that he had been trying to say that word for half an
hour. The perplexed referee finally gave the award to
Keesecker.
There remains the story of the press
itself. It was a Washington hand press, made in Cincinnati by
Charles Mallet. For about six years it did yeoman service in
Dubuque. Then it was removed to Lancaster in western Wisconsin
where H. A. Wiltse used it in printing the Grant County
Herald. A few years later, J. N. Goodhue determined to print
the first newspaper in Minnesota, and he bought the press,
carried it by ox team up the Mississippi on the ice to St.
Paul and used it to print the Minnesota Pioneer.
From this
point on, the press seems to have had a dual personality. In
two different States its re- mains are reverently guarded, and
two State Historical Societies cling firmly, each to its own
story of the later career of the old iron pioneer.
In
accordance with one story the press had in its varied life
acquired a wanderlust and leaving the haunts of comparative
civilization it went westward in 1858, by ox team again,
across the prairies and through the woods to the settlement at
Sioux Falls on the Big Sioux River where it printed the Dakota
Democrat, the first newspaper in Dakota. But its end came in
1862. In that year the Sioux Indians were on the war path.
They raided and burned the town, and the deserted old press,
warped and twisted by the fire, found its career of a quarter
of a century ended in a typically pioneer fashion. And to-day
in the Masonic Museum at Sioux Falls can be seen the remnants
of an old hand press that Dakotans point to with pride as the
one which printed the first newspaper in three different
Commonwealths.
But the Minnesota Historical Society
maintains that the press which migrated to South Dakota was an
altogether different press from the one which printed the
Dubuque Visitor and the Minnesota Pioneer, and that John
King's old iron servant remained to the end of its days in
Minnesota. According to this version, when the Pioneer became
a daily, the hand press was supplanted by a power press; and
it moved, in 1855, from St. Paul to Sauk Rapids, Minnesota,
where it produced the Sauk Rapids Frontiersman, and later the
New Era. In after years it printed the St. Cloud Union, the
Sauk Center Herald, and various other papers of central
Minnesota. From 1897 to 1899 it served the publishers of a
Swedish paper at Lindstrom, Minnesota. Finally, in 1905 the
old press was purchased by the Pioneer Press Company and
presented to the Minnesota Historical Society, where it can be
seen by those who love historic antiques.
Whichever
may be the correct version of the later years of this veteran
press, its career is a notable one; and the fact remains
undisputed that the journalism of at least two different
States, Iowa and Minnesota, began with the movement of the
lever of the old hand press that John King brought out from
Ohio in 1836 to the lead mines on the west bank of the
Mississippi.
JOHN C. PARISH.
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