History of Linn County Iowa Part 19

[Ill.u.s.tration: CABIN IN "CRACKER SETTLEMENT" NEAR MT. VERNON]

"The young swains, and especially the editorial gallants, who were so greatly enamored with the charms of Miss Katherine Johnson while in our city, often rallied each other afterwards on the subject; and some who appeared from their newspaper eulogies to be the most moon-struck while the romance lasted, and had written the largest amount of very soft poetry on the lovely daughter of the hero of the Thousand Isles, were the first to forget the object of their adoration. Alas for the fickleness of man's affection and the mutability of his attachments."

The above tells the story of how much trouble the various communities in Iowa had with bogus Bill Johnson and the various interpretations of the life and character of the outlaw and his alleged daughter. Mr.

Ellis still insists that his interpretation of the life and character of this outlaw is as he tells it and no one perhaps knew the princ.i.p.al characters better than he did. Mr. Ellis was the first one who met Johnson in Wisconsin as he was about to emigrate into Iowa. He was one of the actors in the occurrence at the Phillips House in Marion, he was the old friend and companion of William Abbe and knew most of the men in the Bennett party, such as Evans, Parrish, Rowley, and others, and he met in California many years afterwards the heroine who had become the wife of Peck and there had a conversation with both of them. Mr.

Ellis is of the opinion that when Johnson suddenly left Marion he went, to Missouri and later drifted back into Mahaska county, Iowa, where he was murdered. It was thought that Kate knew more about the murder than she let on, but living a life as she had lived it would not be best for her to tell all she knew of the various transactions with her so-called father. So far as Mr. Ellis ascertained Kate had reformed and carried herself in goodly repute among the miners of the far west where she was then known, it is said, at times as the Queen of the Thousand Isles.

Her husband, it is stated, was a reputable person and had always stood well in the community up to the time of the Johnson murder, and what part, if any, he took in that no one ever knew.

Bogus Bill Johnson is said to be buried in an unknown grave in Mahaska county and no stone has ever been found that marked his last resting place.

Kate, Queen of the Thousand Isles, sleeps in one of the mountain valleys of the Sierras on the Pacific slope and no one knows just when she died or where she was buried. The dual lives of the characters in this drama ended as all such lives do end, in infamy and disgrace.

CHAPTER XV

_The Newspapers of the County_

BY FREDERICK J. LAZELL

From the days of the early settlers until now the newspapers of Linn county have been among the most potent factors in the upbuilding of the community. They have been, as a rule, constructive newspapers. Their mission has been to build up, to help their communities grow in wealth and influence. The newspapers of the county have been noted for their sagacity and their breadth of vision, their conservatism and their tolerance. They have exerted a strong and a wholesome influence upon this and adjoining counties. In the state at large their influence for good has not been small.

The old adage that the good die young has not been true of Linn county's newspapers. The best papers today are those which were started in the earliest days of the various towns in this county. They have prospered as their respective communities have prospered. Their publishers and editors have been, for the most part, men with personal and property interests in their respective communities. That is why they have been builders and boosters. Linn county's proud position among the counties of the state, commercially, intellectually, and politically, is largely due to the fact that men of ability and integrity have worked and written and fought for the things they knew would be helpful to their const.i.tuents. And this is as true of the weekly newspapers as it is of the daily press. Very few counties in the state have had such an able corps of newspaper writers.

There were some weaklings, papers which were born and soon died. There have been a few freak newspapers. But not many. There have also been many able, brilliant young newspaper men who did good work in the Linn county editorial and newspaper offices for awhile and then left for larger fields of labor. Some of the county's ablest politicians and some of its most prominent business men have occasionally dabbled in newspapering, for the sake of some party or some pet project they were anxious to push through. That was in the earlier days. There has been very little of it in the county of late years.

In the main the newspaper men of the county have been men to the manner born, with a knowledge of the business from the ground up, men to whom the smell of printer's ink is as essential to their enjoyment of life as the scent of the sea to a sailor. If, as Elbert Hubbard tells us, art is the expression of man's joy in his work, then nine-tenths of the newspaper men of Linn county have been real artists, for they have stuck to their papers when they might have made heaps more money in some other line of business. But this love of the work so characteristic among the brethren of the Linn county press doubtless has something to do with the fact that their readable papers are read and quoted by the readers of other papers, from one end of the state to the other.

No chronological list of the newspapers of Linn county has been published, but it is interesting and instructive, and worthy of preservation in permanent form:

1851 _The Progressive Era_, started by D. O. Finch, in Cedar Rapids.

1852 _The Prairie Star_, started at Marion by A. Hoyt. Same year the name was changed to the _Linn County Register_, by J. H. and G. H. Jennison.

1854 Name of the _Progressive Era_ changed to the _Cedar Valley Times_. J. L. Enos a.s.sumes control.

1856 _Cedar Valley Farmer_ started in Cedar Rapids by J. L.

Enos. This was a monthly agricultural paper.

_Cedar Rapids Democrat_, started at Cedar Rapids by W. W.

Perkins & Co.

1857 _The Voice of Iowa_, started at Cedar Rapids by J. L.

Enos. Later this was called the _School Journal_.

1863 _Linn County Register_ bought by A. G. Lucas, who changes its name to the _Linn County Patriot_.

1864 _Linn County Patriot_ bought by Captain S. W. Rathbun, who changes its name to the _Marion Register_.

1865 The _Franklin Record_, started at Mt. Vernon by J. T.

and J. S. Rice.

1866 The name of the _Franklin Record_ changed to the _Mt.

Vernon Citizen_; pa.s.ses into the hands of H. S. Bradshaw.

1867 The _Cedar Rapids Atlas_, started by A. G. Lucas.

Lasted three months.

1868 _Western World_, started at Cedar Rapids. Republican in politics. J. L. Enos, editor.

_Linn County Signal_, started in Marion by F. H. Williams.

_Cedar Valley Times_ changes its name to the _Cedar Rapids Times_.

1869 The _Slovan-Ameriky_, started in Cedar Rapids by J. B.

Letovsky.

_Linn County Signal_ moves to Cedar Rapids.

The _Daily Observer_, started in Cedar Rapids by J. L. Enos and T. G. Newman, father of A. H. Newman.

_Linn County Hawk-Eye_, started at Mt. Vernon by J. T. Rice.

Purchased the same year by S. H. Bauman, and its name changed to the _Mt. Vernon Hawk-Eye_.

1870 The _Daily Observer_, which had been started as a democratic paper, changes its name to the _Cedar Rapids Republican_, and changes its politics to correspond.

1871 The _Linn County Pilot_, started by C. W. Kepler at Mt.

Vernon.

1872 Name of the _Cedar Rapids Republican_ changed to the _Daily Republican_.

_Linn County Signal_ becomes the _Linn County Liberal_.

1873 The _Lotus_, started at Center Point by J. F. Wilson & Co.

1874 The _Linn County Pilot_ moved from Mt. Vernon to Marion by A. Beatty.

The _Linn County Liberal_ moves from Marion to Cedar Rapids and takes the name of the _Standard_.

The _Sun_ started at Lisbon by J. W. Zeigenfus.

1876 The _Center Point Mirror_, started at Center Point by T. J. Metcalf and S. M. Dunlap.

1879 The _Iowa Staats-Zeitung_, started at Cedar Rapids by A. Hunt.

The _Iowa Farmer_, started at Cedar Rapids by Alex Charles.