Historical society meeting features History of Nuckolls Co Newspapers

 

March 30, 2023



The annual meeting of the Nuckolls County Historical Society was held Sunday afternoon at the museum located in Superior’s City Park.

Steve Renz, co-chairman, conducted the meeting and introduced the board members present, The board for the past year included Dave Frey, Dave Healey, Camie Kroeger, Lorri Meyer, Fred Meyers, Nancy Meyers, John Price Jr., Marty Pohlman, Steve Renz and Rob Williams. Kroeger has served as secretary, Healey as treasurer, Nancy Meyers as curator and Fred Meyers as co-chairman.

The 2022 financial report showed income of $28,964.30. This included donations of $14,044.92. Expenses were $42,185.39. Healey reported for the years 2016 through 2022 the average annual income was $27.700 and the annual expenditures were $42,000. The society has savngs which have helped to fund the operation..

Healey said the society was fortunate a number of people had left bequests in their wills which were making it possible to continue preserving the history of Nuckolls County.

The curator reported on the year’s activities. She said development of a research center in the main museum building had proven to be both practical and beneficial. It is serving museum visitors who want to research the history of school, towns and families. Special recognition was given to Brandi Weber of Nebraska Public Media who included information about the Fuller car which was made in Nuckolls County in a public television program “Classic Cars—Love Story.”

Members of the Maurice Denning family visited the museum. They shared information about Denning and donated a copy of Brian Beerman’s book, “Nebraska’s Missing Public Enemy, The Last of the Ghost Gang.” Denning and his associates robbed the Security National Bank in 1934 and took three hostages, Helen Denny, Paul Schmeling and George Whitney. Though included on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List, Denning has never been found.

The museum received many donations during the year and continues to look for items that were important to the development of Nuckolls County, Among the items donated during the year was a 1938 John Deere Model B tractor, a Model T truck thought to be a 1927, Dr. Leigh’s dental chair, the doors to the original KFEQ radio station located in the basement of a home at Oak, a clock which once hung in the Beulah Church, and an assortment of literature and advertising associated with the Fuller car factory.

Dave Healey, Lorri Meyer, Steve Renz and Nancy Meyer were reelected to the museum’s board of directors. Dawn Miller was elected to her first term on the board. All terms are for three years.

Annual memberships in the society are $10. Lifetime memberships are $50.

Following the meeting, Bill Blauvelt, managing editor of The Superior Express, presented a program on the history of Nuckolls County newspapers.

Springled among the facts were a number of pesonal stories.

Blauvelt said since his college days he had questioned the role weekly newspapers play in community development and had he completed his master’s degree thesis that was to be the broad topic. However, his plan to return to Superior and work part-time as the chamber of commerce manager and do the needed research was interrupted by the opportunity to become associated with The Superior Express. Now nearly 53 years later, he said he doesn’t have any hope of completing the thesis.

He noted the eastern Nuckolls County communities of Hardy, Cadams. Ruskin and Oak had newspapers. But what about Bostwick, Abdal and Mt. Clare in the western part? He has not been able to find a record of newspapers being published in those communities. Did the absence of newspapers speed the decline of the western communities?

Before focusing on Nuckolls County newspapers, he first considered the role of the weekly newspaper in the settlement of the Western United States.

In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the United States with the addition of 828 million square miles. In 1848, a treaty added another half million square miles. After the Civil War, this almost boundless land was settled by farmers taking advantage of the unprecedented opportunity to acquire land through the 1862 Homestead act.

It was possible for a veteran who had served at least two years to gain title to a homestead in as little as a year. The Homestead Act also provided federal subsidies in land and loans for the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

By 1890 more than 160,000 miles of track cris- crossed the country carrying immigrants, settlers and the goods they needed to start a new life. By that time, four railroads were serving Superior and the community was the third largest rail hub in Nebraska.

Though many of the settlers came from the eastern states, many also came from other countries. From 1881 to 1885 more than a million Germans settled in the Middle West. In the southern half of Nuckolls County there were a number of Danish settlers.

These settlers brought with them the cultural practices, languages, ideas and memories acquired while living elsewhere. They had to adapt to the new land and forge a new identity to survive and flourish.

The single strongest force in uniting the people was the newspaper. By 1899 there were 18,793 newspapers published in the United States and several of those were in Nuckolls County—Superior and Nelson each had at least two.

The weekly newspaper delivered state, national and local news. It was the settlers’ source of information and entertainment. In 1870, when this area was being settled, 75 percent of all Americans lived on farms.

Rural newspapers needed to be generally available and economically feasible to produce. One of the ways this was possible was by the use of boiler plate which was paper preprinted with news, features and advertising on one side. And that is where George Joslyn stepped in to fill a void. Many Nebraskans know of the Joslyn Art Museum and Joslyn Castle in Omaha, but they don’t know about the Western Newspaper Union, a company which helped forge the west.

Joslyn was a brilliant businessman who saw and took advantage of an opportunity. He provided ambitious men with everything they needed to produce a newspaper in the new communities. He staked these entrepreneurs with a printing press, type, paper and ink.

And the paper came preprinted on one side with serialized fictional stories, state and national news and advertising. On the blank side, there was space for local news.

Joslyn kept the revenue from the ads and the newspaper got free paper in exchange for providing the distribution.

The papers he spawned helped the new towns grow by describing the community and the surrounding countryside in ways that would attract new settlers.

William Louden, the father of Superior, realized the value of newspapers and started a Superior newspaper pretty much before there were other businesses in the town.

When Blauvelt joined The Express, the plan was to print it on a new press located at Belleville. The idea of printing a paper out-of-state didn’t set right with a lot of people. Some said it was not even legal. Blauvelt asked Hubert Ostdiek, an owner of the Lawrence and Nelson papers, what he thought. His answer came quick. He didn’t have a problem and wouldn’t challenge the legality of the Express printing plan.

But Francis Hansen, publisher of the Ruskin Leader, didn’t like the plan. She said the Nelson paper should be the legal paper since it was still being printed in county and public notices should not be printed in Kansas. Ostdiek was true to his word and told the Nuckolls County commissioners the county legal notices belonged in The Express which had the much larger circulation and not his Nelson Gazette.

Last fall Hubert’s son, Lee Ostdiek, was admitted to the Nebraska Newspaper Hall of Fame recognizing his role in making it legal for Nebraska newspapers to be printed out of county.

Lee had started the Clay County Leader in competition with the established Clay County Sun. He was setting the type in Clay Center but hauling the forms over to Lawrence where the paper was printed.

The owner of the papers at Edgar, Sutton, Fairfield, Harvard and Clay Center, hollered foul and the issue went clear to the Nebraska Supreme Court. The court found for the Ostdieks and today most Nebraska papers are printed out of county and many are printed out-of-state.

For example Red Cloud and Blue Hill are printed in Russell, Kansas, The Fairbury paper is printed in Iowa. After about 11 years printing in Kansas, The Express returned the printing to Superior. It is now one of a handful of Nebraska papers to still have and use an in-house press.

Even the Lincoln Journal-Star is printed in Omaha and the Kansas City Star in Iowa.

The Express can’t print fancy color on its press but the lower printing cost makes it possible to print more pages and hold the subscription and advertising rates down. For the readers who like colored phots, the electronic edition of the paper, available at superiorne.com has colored photos.

The late Herb Atkins worked at The Express for 47 years. Herb earned the distinction of having worked for every owner and managing editor the Express has had to date. He started with the founder, C. E. Dedrick.

Some Nuckolls County editors were simply looking for work and thought newspaper work offered promise. Some just fell into it.

Howard Crilly, Blauvelt’s predecessor, was raised on a farm near Franklin. He attended the University of Nebraska and worked as a Linotype operator in various locations. After completing his WWI military service, he was riding a train home and talking with a fellow passenger, a banker who held the title to Campbell Citizen. The banker suggested Howard take over the paper on a time payment plan.

Howard agreed and paid for the paper in the first year. From there he owned a succession of papers. At McCook, he started the town’s first daily.

The town had at least two weeklies at the time and so it was a competitive operation. His was a small operation, Mrs. Crilly set all the type by hand, Howard was the ad salesman, reporter and printer. He decided he needed a story to spark readership.

He conceived a plan to build readership. A hobo had been found dead in a boxcar. He didn’t think anybody would mind if he embellished the story a bit to spark readership. When the story appeared it said the hobo had been murdered.

The story caused an unexpected storm. The hobo’s grave was opened and an autopsy performed---there was no indication the hobo had died of anything other than natural causes. A coroner’s inquest was held and the judge demanded to know where the murder story came from.

Crilly decided to never again embellish a story or publish something he was not sure of.

Though in retirement, he did write two novels. One entitled “The Tinted Photograph” is based upon Nuckolls County stories.

. The other, “The Night the Opera House Burned” id based upon happenings in Wilbur, Nebraska.

His books are much like Ben Sherwood’s “The Man Who Ate the 747.” That book was also set in Superior with many chapters inspired by local people and happenings.

After McCook, Crilly published two weeklies at Wilbur, one offered the Democrats’ slant and the other the Republican slant. The editors waged war against one another each week.

Though his two youngsters were not out of high school, he decided to retire from the newspaper business and sold his Wilbur papers. He soon grew tired of retired life and bought the two competing weeklies in Superior. He was to stay in Superior and the paper business until age 75. He was The Express editor for about 34 years.

Editors of the Nuckolls County weeklies didn’t always know where their next nickel was coming from. F.A. Scherzinger of the Nelson Gazette told the following story.

He said, “There were weeks when not a single nickel came across the counter. At times I wasn’t sure I could hang on , but the Gazette has never missed an issue.”

Mr. Scherzinger acquired ownership somewhat unexpectedly in the spring of 1886. At the time of his death it was believed no other Nebraska editor had a longer record of continuous service.

He said, “I was an Ohio boy who took Horace Greeley’s advice to heart. I drifted out here because I played a horn and I had learned through a friend that there was a chance to play for a band in Nelson.

He landed in the Nuckolls County seat broke and looking for a job. It was suggested he go to the Gazette print shop where the editor had been in business two years. There the paper’s owner offered to sell him the paper.

Scherzinger said, “I told him I didn’t have enough money to buy breakfast. He offered to buy my breakfast and told me to come back. I didn’t need money to buy the newspaper. I could give a chattel mortgage and take over. I didn’t know what a chattel mortgage was but that was the way I got into the newspaper business.”

Howard Crilly saw the second issue of the Superior Enterprise, William Louden’s paper that was printed in 1875, the year Superior was organized. It was found in the walls of a house that was being torn down. The paper contained little local news but local news was sparse in a town that wasn’t much more than a dream.

The ads were mostly for patent medicines and get rich quick schemes as it was printed on boilerplate paper. There were no local ads but the only store at that time may have been Mr. Louden’s. The Guide was the next newspaper to appear in Superior.

These days some people apparently receive great delight in lambasting the media and blaming members of our Fourth Estate for many of the nation’s ills. But that isn’t new.

In the days when there were more than one newspaper in a town, it was common for the editors to wage war with one another. If there was only one paper in a town, then the editor often found an editor in another town to spar with. That was the case in Superior in 1882.

In the second issue of The Superior Journal, the Journal editor had this to say about his counterpart, the editor of the Nelson Herald,

He wrote “Ellis (the Nelson editor) drinks pond water and is a squint-eyed  consumptive liar with breath like a buzzard and a record like a convict. If he don’t tell the truth a little more plentifully, the Beaver precinct people, will rise as one man and churn him till there won’t be anything left of him but pair of suspenders and a wart.”

The Superior Express was established  in January of 1900 by C. E. Dedrick who came here from Iowa. After leaving Superior because of health problems, he published newspapers in Idaho Springs. Colorado.

In addition to serving as publisher of the paper, Mr. Dedrick also served as Superior Postmaster.

Mr. Dedrick was editor of The Express from its founding until March of 1926 when he turned over control of the paper to an attorney named Doane Kiechel. Kiechel had previously engaged in the practice of law in Superior with a brother-in-law, Joe Boyd. 

Kiechel served as editor for almost five years. He later become the Nuckolls County judge and served until entering the military soon after the outbreak of World War II. He entered the service as a captain in the judge advocate’s department. He remained in the regular army until 1950 and held the rank of colonel when he left.  He is considered to be the father of the Nebraska Civil Defense department, having served as the department’s first leader when it was established during the Cold War.

Herb Atkins had great praise for Kiechel and the paper under his administration. In retirement, Kiechel would return to work vacation times for Howard Crilly.

His job as county judge nearly cost Kiechel his life. A woman in the court room wasn’t happy with the way he ruled on an estate settlement, took a hammer out of her purse and whacked him on the head. He recovered and the woman spent most of the rest of her life in a Hastings hospital called Ingelside.

A Kiechel grandson now holds a top position with the National Historic Trust.

The next publisher of The Express was W. W. Driggs. His first issue was Sept 3, 1931.

Mr. Driggs’ brother-in- law, J. Allen Minger, was editor of the paper. Mrs. Driggs also assisted in the office. Mr. Driggs lobbied long and hard for the construction of the current Superior post office.

Howard M Crilly took possession of The Express on June 1, 1936 and sold it on May 1, 1970.

The first newspaper published in Superior was The Superior Enterprise by William Loudon and C. W. Springer. Joseph Free was the printer for the paper published less than a year.

The Superior Guide was establish in April of 1878 by J. H. Todd and J. H. Graves.  F. C. Yenning became the owner in the summer of 1887  it was a  staunch temperance journal.  

The  Superior Journal was founded in the summer of 1882  by a Mr. Cadwalder who came to Superior from Hebron. He continued its publication until 1894 when he was appointed to the Nebraska Railway Commission. The paper was then taken over by John Vedder who conducted its management until the early part of the summer of 1885 when it was purchased by N. C. Pickard and W. F. Buck.

The Journal continued under their control until late in the fall of that year when Mr. Buck disposed of his interest to E. F. Heitman who remained in partnership with Mr. Pickard until the following spring when he retired leaving the latter in full charge. Mr. Pickard published the paper until July 1888. He sold it to John Daniel Steine. Mr. Steine died Jan. 28, 1902, and his son, Clarence Eugene, assumed its management and continued its publication until selling it to Frank Stubbs, a Superior attorney.  A. S. Berry purchased the Journal in 1905 and was the publisher until his death. Randall Ford, a Kanss resident, purchased the paper in November,1934. The Berry Estate sold the paper at public auction for $4,170, Ford operated it until it was sold to Ben Mitchell less than a year later. Mitchell sold the paper to  W. C. Tempelton. Howard Crilly purchased the Journal soon after arriving in Superior and published both The Express and the Journal. The type was set in The Express office at 148 East Third Street and carried to the Journal office located in the 200 block of Central Avenue. Each page of type weighed about 75 pounds. The Journal closed after World War II.

The Superior Times  was established March 2, 1890, by the Dunlop brothers. It had good prospects but ran into difficulties in the hard times of the 1890s and passed away. The Superior Sun was published for a few years before it was taken over by The Express in February of 1900.

Prior to the newsprint shortage of WWI, both the Journal and The Express were daily newspapers. During WW I, paper was in such short supply some papers were printed on wall paper.

Evelyn Brodstone, who became the Lady Vestey, had a brother Lewis. In addition to publishing a stamp collectors’ magazine with national circulation, he also worked as a reporter for The Express. He maintained a desk at the Express, walked the streets of downtown Superior asking people he encountered if they had any news for the paper and combed the exchange papers for items of interest to the local readers.

It was customary for an Express reporter to be present at the depot when the passenger trains arrived and note who was coming and going. The last Express reporter to regularly meet the trains was Beth Wages.

Howard Crilly expanded the circulation of The Express with the addition of community correspondents in both Kansas and Nebraska with some as far away as Ionia.

While there were once many newspapers in Nuckolls County, today there are two left. The Express and the Nuckolls County Locomotive-Gazette. The NCLG paper was formed Jan. 1, 2010, with the marriage of the Lawrence Locomotive and the Nelson Gazette.

The Gazette was first printed May 8, 1884, with a former Superior businessman at the helm, M. L. Fogel. F. A. Scherzinger became editor in 1886. He turned the paper over to his son, Vic Scherzinger, in 1955. In 1963 the Ostdiek family of Lawrence purchased the Gazette and installed Larry as editor. In 1968 Jim and Donna Menke became editors of the paper. They raised their children in the Gazette office. Blauvelt remembered the day they left a toddler alone in the office and he upset a bucket of ink. The Menkes returned to find black ink everywhere. They never said how many days passed before the youngster came clean.

After the Spurling Hotel was destroyed by fire and the Commercial Bank built a new building on the hotel site, a big rain brought about the failure of the west wall of the building which housed the Gazette. However, the records and equiipment being used were rescued from the collapsing building and a new building errected. The new building, however, is rather drab when compared to the old brick structure which had been painted pink with the newspaper’s name blazing across the front painted with a black background and white letters. Though located a half block east of main street.it was hard to miss seeing the newspaper office. The Gazette building wasn’t the only one in that area seeped in history. A nearby building had been constructed with cement blocks salvaged from the Fuller automobile factory at Angus.

The Menkes retired in 2002 and Joan Unruh became the editor. In 2007, Mary Statz became the editor and she continued in the role until 2019. Teraesa Bruce is now in charge of the Nelson office.

The first Lawrence Locomotive was printed in January of 1888 with a man named Honeycutt as editor. In 1890, P. Flaherty became editor. The paper was discontinued for a time. In 1898 Dan Livington became the editor. He was followed in 1926 by John Livingston and in 1928 by John Weibler. Norbert Weibler became editor in 1941. Hubert and Louise Ostdiek began producing the paper in 1943. They stepped down in 1977, and Allen and Nancy Ostdiek became the editors. They sold the Lawrence and Nelson papers in 2010 to Superior Publishing Company but Allen has continued to serve as a volunteer photographer and writer for the combined newspaper.

There was also for a time a paper called the Lawrence Enterprise.

In addition to the Nelson Gazette, there was the Nuckolls County Herald and the Nuckolls County Inter-Ocean published at Nelson.

The Oak Herald was established in 1894 and the Oak Leaf in 1914. The Oak News was published from 1897 to 1911 when the name was changed to the Weekly Tribune. The Tribune closed in 1913.

Ruskin had both the Herald and the Leader with Francis Hansen as the editor.

Before it closed, the Ruskin Leader was in physical size the smallest Nebraska newspaper and also the Nebraska newspaper with the smallest circulation. In size it was much like a newsletter. A 1977 directory of newspapers listed it circulation at 320 subscribers.

The first issue of the Ruskin Leader was published in 1903 and it appears to have closed in 1978 when the subscription list transferred to the Nelson Gazette.

Max Bixby was the last editor of the Hardy Herald. It’s last issues were produced in the Express plant. After it closed, Max was a prolific freelance contributor to The Express. He often filled two pages of The Express with Hardy and area news. In its later years the Hardy Herald had a sputtering existence. It would be suspended for a few weeks and then resume publication. The Nebraska Historical Society gives the suspension date as 1957.

Ralph K. Hill was listed as publisher of the Hardy Herald in September of 1882. The Herald apparently began publication in 1879. Hill was a regular advertiser promoting his business as a developer, real estate agent and notary public. He was also a conveyancer. The dictionary defines conveyancer as a lawyer who specializes in the legal aspects of buying and selling real property. Later Hill was to be elected to the Nebraska legislature.

Even the little Republic County town of Warwick, just southeast of Hardy had its own newspaper for a few years.

 

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