of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 388-389
F. A. C. FOREMAN THE NEXT EDITOR. When the firm of Stout & Israel became involved in financial liabilities and were compelled to suspend publication toward the end of the year 1848, the Bloomington Herald went into an eclipse for a short time, but during that winter, not long after the failure of Stout & Israel, F. A. C. Foreman came to Bloomington from New Boston, Illinois, and undertook the publication of the paper here. In New Boston, Foreman had conducted a paper with the peculiar name of The Broadhorn. He gave it that title because it was the name applied to a flatboat used on the Mississippi to carry everything. " 'Alphabet' Foreman we called him," wrote Mr. Mahin, "said he believed a newspaper should have a little of everything in it. He was an imaginative and florid writer. He had mingled considerably with the Mormons at Nauvoo and had written and published in his New Boston paper several blood curdling romances concerning affairs alleged to have transpired in Nauvoo when it was the Mormon metropolis and a city. Mr. Foreman was a practical printer, as well as a good writer, but a man of intemperate habits. His wife had learned to set type and was a true helpmeet. My sympathies on several occasions were excited for her and my indignation aroused against her husband by seeing him lying dead drunk while she was patiently setting type for the paper, at the same time her foot rocking the baby in a rude wooden cradle under the type stand. Foreman's intemperate habits were an insuperable barrier to his success in business, and after a few months of meteoric, brilliant displays in the literary world, his light went out in Bloomington. He moved west and died a few years later."
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