This well-preserved scrap of paper turned up the other day at the museum, a piece of ephemera from 1872 related to The Chariton Leader, a newspaper still published in Chariton 147 years later. It's a promotional piece, intended to attract subscribers to a publication that had launched on April 27, 1872, and therefore was only seven months old.
In it, editor Daniel M. Baker promises to write a comprehensive history of Lucas County and publish it in installments in The Leader during 1873. Did he actually do this? Well, we don't know for sure --- the earliest surviving issue of The Leader is dated Aug. 15, 1874. But it seems likely that he did. In 1880, Dan took a break from newspapering and wrote the local half of Lucas County's 1881 history, probably drawing from research undertaken during 1872 and 1873.
The Leader arose during the summer of 1872 from the ashes of The Chariton Democrat, founded by John V. Faith during 1867. Faith, a cantankerous character, had managed to ride himself out of Lucas County on a rail of self-pity during July of 1871, packing up his family, Washington hand press and cases of type and heading for Osceola --- where he didn't last long either. He really was, editorially at least, a nasty piece of work.
That left Lucas County with only one newspaper, the Patriot --- staunchly Republican in its editorial outlook. So Lucas County Democrats launched The Leader to replace the old Democrat. The founding partnership of Best, Axline & Branner, with Baker as editor, certainly hoped to make money and intended to report the news. But its role as mouthpiece for Lucas County Democrats was a decisive factor.
And no, you can't compare today's Republicans and Democrats with the parties that bear those names today. In 1872, Republicans formed the progressive party and were referred to by Democrats as "radicals." Democrats were the conservatives --- and ferociously racist, too.
Baker, the founding editor, was 30 when The Leader was founded, an attorney of considerable charm, wit and talent, but a draft-dodger, too. He had managed to avoid service during the Civil War by roaming the far west, returning to Iowa only when the war was over.
Baker's law partner, Napoleon Bonaparte Branner, provided the money for the operation. At 29, he was a veteran of service in the Confederate army in the Civil War and son of John Branner, among Lucas County's richest residents at the time of his death during 1871.
Edward Thomas Best, at 22 just a kid, didn't have much money, but he did have experience in the newspaper business, could set type, run a press and handle other practicalities of the operation.
Dr. William Henry Axline, at 26, had been practicing medicine at Attica before moving to Chariton shortly after 1870. It's not clear exactly what his role in the operation was.
A few months after the newspaper was founded, Branner transferred his interest to Dan Baker and returned to lawyering. At that point, the partnership became Best, Axline and Baker and the surviving "prospectus" was published under that name.
Dr. Axline soon moved on, returning full-time to medicine and locating in Harlan. He died in Fairfield during 1921 after a long medical career.
Dan Baker left the operation in 1881, heading for California where he became a crusading newspaperman in Santa Ana. He died during 1902, age 60.
Edward T. Best stuck with The Leader until the early 1880s, then headed west himself. He ended up in Neligh, Nebraska, where he founded The Neligh Leader in 1885 and published it until his death during 1923.
N.B. Branner's involvement in The Leader continued, off and on, until his death, also in 1923 --- age 80. He seems always to have had a financial interest in the newspaper, served as its interim editor now and then and finally sold controlling interest to his sister, Victoria J. Dewey, and her son, Walter.
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