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From: "Virginia Cunningham" <>
Subject: Newspaper articles
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:16:03 -0600


October 16, 1923 Murphysboro Daily Independent

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY
The Independent today celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. On October
16, 1873, two young men, John W. GREAR and Bethune DISHON, proudly watched
the hand power press turn out the first copy of their newspaper, The
Independent.
Today, one of these, John W. GREAR, with his hair silvered by the snows
of time, proudly greeted old friends who had come to shake his hand and to
recall the great days of old when youth was the golden mentor, and old age
was in the dim distant future, a thing unknown and unthought of.
Fifty years in the life of man brings many changes and fifty years ago
today seems a far distant time to those of us whose memories do not go that
far back on Time's calendar.
Those distant days even seem crude and unreal to those readers of the
Independent whose span of life does not extend that far. The changes in the
methods of making and printing newspapers, in the conduct of the everyday
things of life have been so great within those years that few indeed are
they who can visualize Murphysboro as it was on that day memorable to its
editors, when the Independent was born of paper and ink and the fertile pens
of these young men.
Murphysboro's western limits was then what is now Fifteenth street, its
northern limit the street by the Lutheran church and its eastern limits to
the northwest, a few houses on what is now Ninth and North streets.
Mt. Carbon was then a thriving community with the most important
railroad with its stores and its shops and mines. The Narrow Gauge railroad
(now the M and O) had only been completed into Murphysboro the spring and
trips over that line still a novelty.
The streets were lighted by oil lamps, when as the young editors naively
pointed out in an early issue, they were lit.
The only means of locomotion in that age was the steam railroad and the
steamboat, or the slow ox cart or horse drawn wagons or buggy.
Unknown and undreamed of by the citizens of the city or nation were the
automobile, the airplane, the great electrical trains, the telephone was a
toy just then announced to the world; the lighting of cities by electricity
was not to become a common place for many years later, and the larger cities
of the United States bragged of the fact that gas was used for lighting
streets and homes. The bath tub was declared a menace to public health only
a few years before and not a home in Murhpysboro was thus equipped. The
radio would have been considered a mad cap dream.
Newspapers were printed in the larger cities with steam power presses
and in smaller cities by hand power, printers who picked the type out letter
by letter, for the Linotype was yet locked in the brain of Ottmar
Lergenthaler, who later gave to the world the greatest invention of all
time, for it made reading and education universal.
On the farm the sturdy horse pulled the walking plows, and the self
binder was just becoming known. The power threshing machine was still a
novelty. The power tractor was unthought of for the internal combustion
engine was not to come until many years later.
But life was not a dull, drab thing, in those golden days, when speed
was unknown. It was full of neighborliness, it had its sunshine and its
shadows, its comedy and its tragedy just as we have today, notwithstanding
all that science has done.
In preparing this edition, incomplete as it is, without perhaps any
historical value as authentic history is know, the workers on the Indepenent
have found much joy and pleasure. It has been a pleasure to bring back to
the minds of many those days of the youth of our oldest citizens, the
pleasant pictures of these days.
For its incompleteness there is no apology. Much has been left out
inadvertently, that no doubt should have appeared, but it is the work of men
whose years do not go back to the time when the Independent made its bow to
the public, and has for its reason for appearing the fiftieth anniversary of
a newspaper which has become to the men who have made it for many years a
thing of life and blood, and a part of their very life.
To the many friends who have contributed data, contributions and
pictures we express out thanks.
The Independent from its first issue has had the confidence of its
readers and advertisers. This issue on its fiftieth birthday, with its
sixty pages, would not have been possible without the hearty co-operation of
the business and manufacturing interests of Murphysboro, whose
advertisements appear therein.
Within these pages appear personal stories of the various men and
business institutions whose advertisements appear in this anniversary
edition, many of them historical, all of them written with the thought of
the part they are playing today in every enterprise that is for the welfare
and the prosperity of Murphysboro.
Without a desire to boast it can be said that every business institution
in Murphysboro could have easily been included in this edition, had time and
energy permitted the handling of a work so great, so freely have the
business men been sold on the idea of a fiftieth anniversary edition of the
Independent. To those whose advertisements do not appear, we can only say
that it was planned to secure a fifty-page edition, and when that number had
been secured, work on calling on advertisers was discontinued and many were
not seen. With that resolve still in mind and the limitation of time in
which to turn out such a newspaper it was only by supreme effort that ten
more pages were added at the last minute to accomodate the stories and
pictures of those early days which came in late.




NEWSPAPERS OF EARLY DAYS
The fifty years of The Independent has seen many changes in the
newspaper field in Murphysboro. The only paper then published in
Murphysboro was the Era, which was started by Gill J. BURR and Joseph P.
ROBARTS. This paper was merged by purchase into the Republican Era in 1899.
The newpaper enterprise of Jackson county in the early days was
according to the history of the county printed in 1877, full of perils and
loss to the men who started them. The Independent has weathered the gale
without change of name or policy in the fifty years.
The first paper in Murphysboro was started in 1855 by Dr. F. C. and G.
C. BIERER, who brought a plant to this city via steamboat on the Big Muddy.
The next year they sold to Gov. A. M. JENKINS, who conducted it a few months
then suspended it to start The Sentinel which was equally short lived. The
papers in the county in 1873 were: The New Era, conducted by John H. BARTON
at Carbondale, The Item at Grand Tower, and the two papers in Murphysboro.
In 1876 Bethune DISHON and George JAHN started the Register at Ava, and the
Carbondale Democrat was started in the same year by Bell IRWIN. At one tme
in the history of Murphysboro four daily newspapers were published at one
time, when the population of the city was less than 5000. They were: The
Daily Independent, The Daily Era, The Daily Republican and the Daily
Searchlight. Since the merging of the Era with the Republican, however,
there has been but the two newspapers.



MANY NEWSPAPER MEN TRAINED ON THE INDEPENDENT
Among the men who have worked on the Independent in the past and have
made their mark in the newspaper world the present editor in his
twenty-seven years with the Independent recalls:
John HAMMOND, now editor and owner of the Anna (Ill) Democrat
W. C. McCARTY, now an editor in Missouri and for many years a leading writer
on the Post Dispatch and later other St. Louis newspapers
D. C. GREAR, editor and owner Daily Journal Herrin (Ill)
Dolph C. CARTER, long in charge of advertising on the Decatur Review, later
on the Homstead publications at Des Moines, Iowa, and now a member of a
large firm of lithographers in Cleveland, Ohio
Fred RISELING, now editor of a News Service in Oklahoma City (Okla)
A. W. ESSICK, editor and owner of the DuQuoin (Ill) Call
J. J. PENNY, who owned the Indpendent for many years until 1903 when he
bought the Long Beach (Calif) Telegram only recently retired from the
newspaper business having sold his interests in that plant for $150,000





LUMAN STEVENS REMEMBERS WAY BACK WHEN
I have been reminded that this is the 50th anniversary of the
Independent and about the 10th anniversary of the Dixon Mule, and while the
Mule went to the glue factory am pleased to see evidence of chin whiskers on
the Independent.
My school days in the old Osburn school house furnishes much food for
thought that I do not like to think about. There was at one time a flock of
apple trees that were covered with water sprouts close to the Ozburn school
house and I often wonder if it was not over pruned out of season.
A half centry is a long time and its hard to realize that since the
Independent made its bow to the public, the telephone, electric lights,
shock absorbers and the Holy Rollers have been invented.
About the time of the Custer massacre the Logan Guards were drilling
three nights a week in the old Arcade hall and Capt. T. C. WATKINS took a
vote of the company as to whether they would go to battle with Sitting Bull.
They never drilled again.
I represented "His Satanic Majesty" on the Independent at various times
and remember the first issue by Dishon and Grear. I received press notices
at various times; once when I took a header into Chance SAYLER's well and
another time when I stretched rope across the sidewalk. But the worst
predicament I was ever in was at a school play given in the old Concert
hall. Al OZBURN, Hank MOY, Joe GILL, Geo. ROSE and myself were in a play.
Hank and myself were negro characters and I was supposed to get my plug hat
all mashed up in a free-for-all scrap and was to do a monlogue about what
the frail would say about the condition of the hat. When I started on the
monologue I was horrified to find the hat was still on my head in good
shape, so I just reached up and pushed it off backwards and stepped on it,
then went ahead.
I lent valuable assistance to many charivaris, and remember when trying
to make Cal PELLETT come cross by blowing an old horn out in front of his
store. Pat CAVANAUGH, the marshall, grabbed me and got me nearly into the
calaboose. Geo. PELZER gave me a few swift kicks.
I remember when the first Narrow Gauge train whistled into Murphysboro
(then the Cairo & St. Louis R.R.) Up to that time it was almost an inland
town.
Luman STEVENS
Dixon, Mo
October 10, 1923




BERT R. BURR TELLS OF NEWSPAPER MEN
The following is an extract from an interesting letter from Bert R.
BURR, long editor of the Era, and son of the founder of that newspaper, Gill
J. Burr, now with the Treasurer's office in Springfield. The letter arrived
late and was of necessity blue penciled to fit the space of the occasion:
On the second floor of the building that once stood at the corner of
Tenth and Walnut streets, the northwest corner, the Jackson County Era had
its offices. Its editors were Gilbert J. BURR and Joe P. ROBERTS. I was
young and wished to enter the editorial field and asked for a job. Joe
ROBARTS, without recommendations asked or evidence of integrity, gave me the
job I sought. He hired me to carry in pails of coal from where it had been
dumped on the ground to the boxes on the second floor and convenient to the
stoves in the editorial rooms. He paid me cash and made it material in size
and worth possession by passing it to me in the form of five five cent
pieces. This is my first recollection of the Jackson county newspaper
field. I still believe that I earned that quarter.
Time and space do not admit telling here of the personalities of the
editors that Jackson county has had from Campbell Hill to Makanda, including
DeSoto and Ava, Murphysboro and Carbondale as the two big towns were of
course the centers.
Joe B. GILL of the Independent has been the outstanding figure produced
by Jackson county papers. He was Governor Altgeld's lieutenant governor and
made a real name for himself in Illinois affairs, and later in California in
business and banking circles.
Our papers have never produced a poet from any of their editorial rooms
but every other form of human pestilence has cropped--politicians mostly,
millionaries never, preachers rarely and bankers sparsely, Emory B. BENTLY
now of Clinton and a well known banker is the most prominent. Kent E.
KELLER now of California has risen from the Ava Advertiser to a commanding
position with the Standard Oil Company. Pete BARTON of the Carbondale
Herald now Colonel Eugene BARTON of the U.S.A. has ranged farthest. He as
captain was closely associated with Captain John PERSHING in the
Phillippines and in the recent war occupied important posts in training of
soldiers for overseas duties.
Charles BULLAR, M & O engineer and Fred ROLENS of the Independent are
but two of Jackson county's citizens who as boys were connected with the
newspapers. Hundreds of others who are scattered throughout the country and
who are engaged in every line of endeavor first saw business through the
carrier service and from the "devil's" viewpoint. Gus ESSICK at DuQuoin,
Elbert WALLER superintendent of schools, Pharis COCHRAN out at Tombstone,
the Everts and Sheley boys not forgetting that bunch of energy, Dolph CARTER
who is somewhere giving people good service of whatever nature.
McCarty who for years was the political power behind the throne in St.
Louis learned it all on the Independent and some of his work on the Post
Dispatch yet stands unbeaten in reportorial circles.
Fred RISELING, who centers at Oklahoma City for the entire southwest, is
the big active figure of news service and who came out of a Jackson county
newsplant. He is freelance and sells his own stuff in able competition with
the United and the Associated. He has done this for years. His beginnings
on the Independent are known to all of us. As you have read of the klan
stuff and all of the spot-lights thrown on Governor Walton by the news
dispatches you have seen some of the service that came from the energies of
one of our own.
Hiram WILLIAMSON who once ran the Republican Era for the owning company
is now superintendent of printing for the state of Illinois. The fact that
he is an expert at many things learned in Murphysboro is proved that he
served Governor Lowden and is now serving Governor Small in the identical
capacity. He has maintained his ascendancy in the Illinois Editorial
association all these years and lives happily in Springfield in one of the
show places of the capitol.
Years of absence have driven hundreds of persons from my direct
recollections as former delvers in Jackson county newspaper work but with
the names I have given they will all come back to the readers of this
article and it will be known that a spendid basis of beginnings was laid in
those youthful years. Shirley L. BURR is in Southern Michigan on the big
wagon road between Detroit and Chicago with a cherry orchard and Howard is
in Washington when he is not on some jaunt won as a price winner for being
successful with the New York Life Insurance Co., in securing big premiums.
J. J. PENNY and Mrs. Penny are in California and as all at home know
have won the battle of life and are not only affluent in worldly goods but
are loved and esteemed by neighbors and friends just as they were at home.
I believe that if ever there is success in this world that the
newspapers of this county have that high record as a reward. Speaking in
large terms and including all of them, there has never been anything yellow
about the Jackson county papers. Their editors have always been men who
knew what not to print as well as what to print. The papers have rarely
been negative. They are usually for something. Schools, churches, roads,
resources, have always been boosted and exploited. The people of the county
have had their actions, social and business, well and fully recorded. The
papers have been fair.
Bert R. BURR


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