of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 389-390
FIRST MUSCATINE JOURNAL PRINTED. With the extinguishment of Foreman's light, the Herald as a newspaper was also extinguished. A suspension of six months followed Foreman's departure, and then Noah H. McCormick came from St. Louis, purchased the Herald plant and resumed the publication of the paper, but under a new name. At this period the Muscatine Journal was born. At the June term of the district court in 1849, the court in accordance with the prayer of a petition numerously signed by citizens, had changed the name of the town by the big bend from Bloomington to Muscatine. The new name was of Indian origin, though whether derived from a tribe of the name or the Indian word Muscuti-Menesik, signifying fire island, an illusion to Muscatine Island, which was a large body of prairie on which the grass was sometimes burned, has been disputed. McCormick, when he again began publishing the paper, changed the name of the publication to the Muscatine Journal, and such it has remained through an unbroken publication history during the sixty-one years that have followed.
McCormick was a poor and pointless writer, it is related, but a fair business man and was able to do better with the paper financially than any of his predecessors. He, however, found it necessary in July, 1852, to sell out to Jacob and John Mahin.
EARLY EDITORIAL CONTROVERSIES. McCormick engaged often in bitter controversies through the columns of his paper with H. D. LaCossitt, the editor of the democratic Enquirer, the Journal's contemporary in Muscatine at that time. Of these unpleasantnesses Mr. Mahin has written: "These two editors carried on for many months a bitter personal controversy, unlike anything that is today seen in the newspapers. McCormick called LaCossitt his 'Pet Lamb,' because, in French, his name had that meaning, while LaCossitt, who was the more skillful writer, severely lampooned McCormick in various ways, accusing him, among other things, of abandoning a young lady whom he was escorting home, because he was afraid to return to his lodging place in the dark. All the circumstances of the narrative pointed to Miss Branham, a highly esteemed young lady, whom McCormick afterward married. Personal quarrels between editors were far more common and bitter in those days than now."
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