← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
the pictures consisted mostly of snow. Desirious of better reception, residents along the Elkhorn River Valley from west of Norfolk to Stuart held meetings to see what could be done. At a Neligh meeting in July, 1964, representatives from KTIV— channel 4 and KVTV— channel 9 estimated that a UHF signal installation similar to that in use in Norfolk, would cost about $80,000 for the erection of towers at Neligh and O’Neill. The Elkhorn Valley folks were pledged to raise $44,000 of this amount.
Officers for the project were Joe Contois, O’Neill, chairman; Reg Pink- erman, O’Neill, secretary-treasurer; Jerry Sheets, Oakdale, vice-chairman; and board members Ray Brandt, Neligh, and Lane Griffin, Atkinson. After much hard work and many legal actions, the money was raised, the towers built and the stations on the air— and all by June, 1965.
In February, 1967 KOLN, channel 10, built another tower in O’Neill, free of charge to the community. The new tower, finished in 1968, gave area residents added coverage of news and weather. And when Telemaster Cable Company, Inc., installed cable TV in O’Neill in 1964, the city was one of the first in Nebraska to enjoy this system. It brought six channels from Sioux City, Sioux Falls, Lincoln and Albion into the area and its first home office was in the home of Ken Everett, the system manager.
In October of 1965 Telesis Corporation purchased the majority of the Telemaster Cable stock and took over the parent corporation. Under the direction of Telesis, the nation’s twenty-third largest operator of Cable TV systems, Telemaster Cable has continued to grow and prosper. Three more channels have been added and continuous improvements made in the electronic equipment. The company is now located at 223 East Fourth Street and is managed by James Christ. Edith Miles of the Frontier and Holt County Independent furnished most of the material for this chapter and it is here used much as she wrote it. Weekly newspapers in Holt County in the early 1880’s were peculiarly personalized. Their editors, looking upon themselves and their precious mediums as one and the same, called the combination “we.” Thus, their papers partook of the nature of personal organs and local news. Even a personal telling of who went where was alive with sympathy, kindliness We Chapter Fourteen or a little joke, the editor’s very own. Yet, in this fraternal quietude there was always the liklihood a war of words would break out. Without warning, and for no other reason possibly than a temporary feeling of orneriness, a brother editor might attack an esteemed contemporary, charging with drawn split infinitives under a barrage of long-primer epithets. This wasn’t all bad, for occasional change from the pastoral to the bellicose was what was needed to put the old zip into a calling which, in poetic truth, otherwise must have been exclusively a labor of love. (These unexpected wars also helped sell newspapers. No one wanted to miss the choice names the editors thought up, week by week, to call each other.) Weekly papers in those days consisted of four or eight pages. Half contained world and other external news printed in Omaha or Chicago; the other half, left blank, were to be filled with local news and printed at home. While most of these early 107 presses experienced hard times, a few benefited from publication of “final proof” notices. These usually came as political patronage from the district land office and meant five dollars each and every time a quarter section of land was deeded to a settler. As Mr. George Miles explained, editors who did not rate this business had to take a lot of corn, wood, cobs, cabbage, chickens and what not as legal tender for advertising and subscriptions. Early newspapers sprang up and died quickly in newly settled areas as neighboring editors vied with each other. Their emphasis was on politics and issues related to the development of their community. Although contents were limited, mostly local items, advertisements, syndicated serials and articles, pioneer newspapers provided a cultural influence in a time when few printed materials were available. As the fledgling community attempted to promote settlement, the establishment of a newspaper lent credence to claims of progress and prosperity, and served as a bench mark of civilization in the frontier settlement. Sometimes the newspaper was one of the very first businesses in a prospective town. Various issues were printed to proclaim the desirability of the area for settlers and were widely distributed in the east. One such issue called God’s Country was printed by the Frontier on March 8, 1883. About 5,000 copies were sent east to interest prospective settlers. Some papers went into business purely for political reasons. Virtually the only medium of mass communication, a newspaper provided a formidable political weapon, especially if it had an editor who possessed a fiery, biting and extensive vocabulary; the better to vaunt the virtues of his own party and to decry the failings of the opposition.
In his Frontier of December 6, 1956, Romaine Saunders reported “Holt County has had 26 newspapers; four are now published in the county. Eleven of the 26 were published and printed in O’Neill: the Bonner, Frontier, Tribune, Free Press, Holt County People, Item, Sun, Alliance Tribune, Beacon Light, Independent and Democrat. Two others, the O’Neill Republican and the Inman Review, were started elsewhere and moved to O’Neill.
The first paper in the county carried a Paddock date line and was known as the Holt Record. Others, fourteen in number, were the Minneola Sun, Dustin Dispatch, Amelia Journal, Em-met Echo, Chambers Eagle, changed to Bugle and then Sun; Inman Index, Ewing item and Ewing Advocate, Page Reporter, Shamrock Pickings, Stuart Ledger, Stuart Advocate and two papers at Atkinson, The Graphic and Plain Dealer.
Other county papers listed by the State Historical Society in Lincoln are the Holt County Republican of Atkinson and the Atkinson Bee; the Weekly Journal, established in Shamrock and moved to Chambers; the Stuart Press; the People’s Advocate at Ewing, also the Ewing Democrat; the Inman News, Inman Leader, Inman Review; Mese’s Saturday Courant at Page, also the Page Eye and the Page News.
Some of these papers existed only a short time, some merging with or being absorbed by other papers, others moving or folding completely. In 1974 only two papers are printed in the County, the Frontier and Holt County Independent at O’Neill and the Atkinson Graphic at Atkinson. Although these papers differ greatly from the format of their frontier counterparts, the newspaper industry continues to contribute measurably to the social, political and economic development of Holt County.
The Holt County Record, established June 2, 1879, at Paddock and moved to O’Neill thirty issues later, seems to be the first provable newspaper established in this county. It was followed by the Frontier on July 29, 1880, which exists today, having consolidated with the Holt County Independent in 1965. It seems to have the longest unbroken existence in the county. Dennis H. Cronin edited the Frontier from January 28, 1892 until May 16, 1946, a total of fifty-four years, and owned it for fifty of those years.
By 1909 O’Neill had become a two newspaper town, and continued so until 1965 when the Frontier was purchosed by the Miles family and consolidated with the Independent. T. J. Smith moved his Record from Poddock to O’Neill in 1880 where, in July, 1881 he sold a half interest to M. B. Gearon. In November Patrick Hagerty bought the other half. Democratic in politics up to this time, it now became Republican. In 1882 Judge G. M. Cleveland (in whose office M. F. Harrington once practiced law) bought Gearon’s interest and assumed editoral charge. On March 14, 1882, he changed the paper’s name to the Holt County Banner. By January, 1883, James H. Riggs was listed as co-editor and the paper claimed a circulation of seven hundred. The following year it was sold to John M. McDonough and Reese Mayer, after which it became a part of the O’Neill Tribune.
The Tribune, founded in 1883 by T. V. Golden, was sold to McDonough in May, 1884. The issue of August 25, 1887, states that the Tribune was a power for good but ran under high pressure and made many enemies for its proprietor. McDonough left O’Neill in 1888 to take charge of the Omaha World-Herald. The Tribune was a Democratic paper. Under the ownership of James and P. F. Killoran it passed out of existence in the early nineties.
The Frontier, a Republican paper, was established in July, 1880, by W. D. Mathews. The next year its editor became postmaster of O’Neill. The following paragraph is quoted from the issue of January 11, 1883: “The Frontier printing office, we venture to say, transacted more business than the majority of county offices during 1882. In looking over the book we find the gross receipts reach the modest sum of $4,000. This is a satisfactory showing to the proprietor, yet he expects to materially increase this in 1883 by strict attention to business and (by) getting up one of the best county papers in Northern Nebraska. The Frontier now has a circulation of nearly 1000 copies, with a steady increase, and will be printed on a power press before long.” The Riggs brothers, James and George, took over the Frontier about 1884. After eight years Mathews, associated with D. H. Cronin and Clyde King, was again owner-editor. Mathews dropped out in 1893 and King retired in 1896, leaving Cronin as sole owner. He at once installed Romaine Saunders as editor and manager.
It was Saunders who told the story, in the Diamond Jubilee edition of June, 1949, of W. D. “Doc” Mathews’ early vicissitudes as an O’Neill editor. T. J. Smith and B. C. Hill, already in O’Neill with their Holt County Record, had not welcomed the rival Frontier. As Saunders says, “the journalistic fur began to fly.” The editors lambasted each other with brimstone and fire, and out of this exchange came a plan by Smith and Hill to ruin Mathews. On a May night in 1881 the Frontier office was invaded and a wrecking job undertaken. When Mathews learned of it and hurried to his office he was threatened by both a hammer and a gun.
Recognizing that he was outclassed, he at once sent men to Niobrara to haul lumber for a new building of his own (the first had been rented) and set about salvaging his printing equipment. Friends came to his aid and, though some of his outfit was in McCafferty’s residence, one press in O’Neill & Williams’ law office, another press and most of the type in Hall’s liquor store, the imposing stone in Cleveland and Uttley’s office and some material in the Commercial 108 Hotel, he brought out that week’s issue of his paper almost on time. And in that issue Mathews stated that he had come to O’Neill to stay and his paper would continue to be published. The little town, outraged by the other paper’s attack on the Frontier, rallied to his banner and the popular editor had no more trouble of that nature. Even two later fires in his new building did not keep him from putting out his paper, which has not missed an issue in ninety-five years. Saunders, however, had worked on the Frontier before Cronin put him in charge in 1896, having been a printer’s devil for Doc Mathews in 1884 when he was only fourteen years old. In two different “hitches” he spent more than twenty years as editor of O’Neill’s leading paper and came to be known as “Mr. Frontier” himself. Up to the time of his death at ninety-two he had written “Prairie-land Talk,” for many years. This was a column of reminiscences of early Holt County and was one of the best accounts of local history available. Cronin sold the Frontier to Carroll W. Stewart in 1946. In 1959 Stewart sold it to Alan Cramer and James Champion, both of Wayne. In January 1965 Bill Richardson became an owner, and on June 1 Cramer and Richardson sold the paper to their only remaining O’Neill competitor, G. E. Miles and Sons. It was then consolidated with the Independent under the name Frontier and Holt County Independent, making it (at that time) Nebraska’s largest weekly newspaper. George Albert Miles was born in LaFayette County, Wisconsin. With his wife, Clara, and their three children, Gerald, Fay and Gladys, he came to Holt County in January, 1904. He was a farmer turned printer and had just sold his weekly farmers’ newspaper at Ainsworth, Nebraska and purchased the Independent at O’Neill. He adhered to the principles of the Populist and Democratic parties, both in private and in his newspaper, but refused to be under obligation to anyone.
Active in politics and civic affairs, through his good friend Congressman Edgar Howard, he secured the new post office building in O’Neill in 1937. As Justice of the Peace he sometimes married people, and liked to tell about the time a deaf and dumb couple argued him to zero on the marriage price— and then borrowed a $1.50 from him.
In 1922 George Miles was joined in the newspaper plant by his son Gerald (Hap) Miles. George died in July, 1937, after which Clara Miles and Hap continued to publish the paper. They were joined later that year by Fay, who had been employed by the Chadron Journal until his father’s death. Fay, who had helped establish the first printing shop and taught industrial journalism to veterans of World War One (he was a veteran of that war himself) at the University of Nebraska, was widely known in Nebraska newspaper circles. He was unexcelled as a machinist, compositor and draftsman, and on many occasions responded to emergency calls to repair inoperative typesetting machines and presses belonging to fellow publishers. Upon the death of their mother in 1946 the Miles brothers became joint owners of the paper. Ever progressive, the brothers added new equipment to their plant until it became the best equipped paper in the state. Fay died in 1956. In 1970 Gerald and his two sons, Bob and Arlen (Shorty), converted the plant to offset printing. Gerald died the next year but his sons have carried on. By 1973, besides publishing their own paper they were printing newspapers for seven other publishers— Springview, Bassett, Brewster, Ainsworth and Valentine in Nebraska and Platte and Burke in South Dakota. At one time, while Gerald was alive, there were three generations of Miles’ working at the Independent, Gerald, his sons Bob and Shorty and his grandson, Robert Arlen Miles.
A brief history of Holt County’s other papers is summed up .as follows: The O’Neill Republican, first printed in November, 1884, was moved to Atkinson in June of the next year, where it became the Atkinson Bee. The Free Press, a Republican paper, first saw the light of day in O’Neill October 15, 1886. W. D. Mathews was its publisher and editor. The Ewing item, started in Ewing January 10, 1884, by Clarence Selah, was shortly sold to Adam Bohn, then repurchased by Mr. Selah, who moved it to O’Neill in 1890, where it was published by E. E. Saunders, a brother to Romaine. One of four newspapers in the village of O’Neill for awhile, it was absorbed by the Frontier in 1892.
The Alliance Tribune, first published in O’Neill by C. S. Eves and Son, was independent in politics and lasted just a little over two years. The first issue of the O’Neill Sun came off the press May 8, 1890. Its last known issue was published in September 1897. It probably followed the Mineola Sun which was published in Mineola for a time. It was Democratic in politics. The Inman Review was born in 1883 at Inman, but moved to O’Neill in 1890. The Holt County Democrat was absorbed by the Holt County Independent in 1909. Sam Eves had been its publisher. According to Ham Kautzman, who wrote a farewell to the Beacon Light of O’Neill on June 11, 1897, his paper was entering its twenty-fourth year when it ceased operating. Although no early copies of the paper have been found, it was one of the earliest in the county. The Holt County Independent started in May, 1892. From 1897 until 1899 C. C. McHugh was editor and publisher. Edwin S. Eves edited and published it from 1899 until he sold it to George Miles in 1904. Eves had previously published the Amelia Journal, the Atkinson Graphic, the Atkinson Plain Dealer, the Ewing Advocate . and the Holt County Democrat.
In his farewell to the Independent readers, Editor Eves stated: “Col. George A. Miles, who will greet you after Monday morning, has been an editor and publisher at Ainsworth since Hec was a pup. George is a thorough Christian, a rock-ribbed populist and a good printer, an able writer and a good fellow. Those who wanted to lick the editor should have done so this week, for George weighs over two hundred pounds. You’ll like George and we hope you’ll come down to the office and get acquainted and make him think it’s as good a town as I told him it was, for, while I don’t think I could say a word too much for O’Neill, yet I want to say to you while I have a chance (that) I boosted O’Neill to the limit in framing up this sale.” The fusion of the Democrats and the Populists took place in Holt County about this time and the Independent reflected the merger.
The Amelia Journal, established in January, 1887 by Sam Eves, published its last paper on May 2, 1895, just before it was absorbed by the Atkinson Plain Dealer. After the O’Neill Republican was moved to Atkinson, where it became the Bee, it was published by W. H. Dudley. A hometown boy, Ulysses S. Grant “Liss” Moon, who had graduated from the Graphic, was a printer for the Bee. The first issue of the Atkinson Graphic was published in August, 1882. Harry Mathews, brother of the Frontier editor and publisher, established the paper and employed Homer O. Campbell as his devil in 1884. Homer was paid the grand sum of five dollars a month for his work. Harry Mathews retired in 1889 and Ed Lunt was editor and publisher until the paper was sold to Silas W. Kelly in 1914. Kelly edited and published the Graphic until his death in 1928, at which time his son Ralph took over and continued until his retirement in 1966. Ralph had worked side by side with his father in the newspaper business since he was thirteen, and 109 Dell Akin and his “Graphic” printing office in Atkinson. No date given. died while attending a convention in Omaha in June, 1967.
Ralph’s son, Warren, long his father’s right hand man in the press room, immediately shifted the pioneer printer’s mantle to his own shoulders and is still providing the hometown news to his many subscribers.
The Atkinson Plain Dealer, another of Sam Eves’ papers, dates back to August, 1893. The Graphic absorbed it four years later. The Chambers Eagle was first published at Chambers in 1889 by Earnest Henry. It may have been the forerunner of the Bugle, which began publication at Chambers in December, 1891. The Chambers Bugle came next, in 1902, and in 1917 it became the Chambers Sun. It continued under many different owners and editors until if suspended publication in 1942. It resumed publication in 1946, then died for good on September 30, 1948.
The Weekly Journal was established at Shamrock on November 20, 1886. Harry Ingalls was its editor. An August 4, 1887 issue of the Dustin Dispatch says the fertile valleys of the South Fork country are too small for the Shamrock Pickings and the Journal to exist in peaceful harmony. Consequently the Weekly Journal was moved to Chambers. But so was the Shamrock Pickings, although which was moved first is unknown today. The August 11, 1887 issue of the O’Neill Tribune reports that George L. Miller of Dustin had purchased the Dustin Dispatch from Ezra Saunders and would hereafter conduct the paper in the interest of prohibition. It was said by the Tribune to have been the only straight prohibition organ in the county. It must have had a very short life, for the August 25 Tribune notes that “Grant Saunders of the late Dustin Dispatch is now employed at the Frontier.The Emmet Echo was established by James W. Riggs, date unknown. It was mentioned by the O’Neill Tribune in its July 28, 1887 issue, and that is all we know of it.
The People’s Advocate was founded by a cooperative company of Populists in December, 1891. Over the years it had many editors until, in 1921, R. B. Crellin became the editor, and changed the name to the Ewing Advocate in 1927. Crellin sold the paper to Miss Thelma Drayton, who operated it until it ceased publication in September, 1954.
The Ewing Democrat, founded in 1886 by H. H. Claiborne, did not last long. The second paper by that name was published by J. A. or O. C. Bates in June, 1888. It functioned until 1892, perhaps longer. Bates was an old newspaper man from Red Oak, Iowa. John Trommershausser was also men- no tioned in connection with the Democrat in 1890. The Inman News began publication in October, 1892. It was still in existence in 1907. Some of its first publishers were D. L. Pond and a Mr. Leidy. The Inman Index, founded in 1884, was still operating in 1887. The Inman Review was started in 1883, then moved to O’Neill in 1890. The Inman Leader was established in 1914.
Another newspaper at Paddock, the Times, was established there some years after its Record moved to O’Neill. An April 3, 1890 issue of the O’Neill Tribune states that the Times would be moved to Dorsey, again leaving Paddock village without a Clara Pond, Editor of the “Inman News”.
paper of its own.
The Page News, born in July, 1892, expired quickly. The Page Eye, founded in 1890, did no better. Meese’s Saturday Courant, another Page weekly, began in 1894. The New Era followed in May, 1895. The Page Reporter had better luck. Founded in November, 1902, it continued publication in Page until its suspension in June, 1942.
The Ledger, published at Stuart, existed from 1883 until 1903. The Stuart Press, founded in 1884, had its beginning in Star, then moved to Stuart in 1885 or ’86. It was in existence for about a year.
Three Holt County writers merit mention in these poges.
Blanche Spann Pease, born to Mr. end Mrs. William Spann, near Atkinson, in 1909, became a well known free lance writer. Although she had had no training in her field, she began writing for the Atkinson Graphic in 1931. By 1938 she had sold to over one hundred different publications. Her column, “Lines from a Little House,” carried for many years in the Omaha World-Herald, was probably her best known feature. It also won her a national award in 1938. She is still editing her “Kitchen Nuggets” for the Norfolk Daily News but, after wearing out two typewriters, has had to give up most of her other writing because of crippling arthritis in her hands.
Mrs. Louis (Halloway) Neilson, a silvery haired little lady who lives on the outskirts of Chambers, has written numerous short stories, plays, poems, greeting cards and prayers. One of her prayers, published in The Upper Room, was read by eleven million people on June 9, 1959.
Holt County’s most unusual writer-correspondent was probably Josephine Verzal Bouska who wrote many articles for the Hospodarski Listy, an agricultural paper printed in the Bohemian language and published in Nebraska. It was comparable to the Nebraska Farmer, the state’s own long-lived farmers’ magazine. Mrs. Bouska, too, was a resident of the Atkinson community.
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