Untitled Document

The Henry County Gazette .

The first number of the first paper issued in Henry County was published Feb. 13, 1853 The Henry County Gazette, J. W. Eystra, editor. It was a modest little five-column folio, and showed rather a. bad distribution, both of ink and subs. It excited some curiosity with its first issue, but its support over the county was indifferent enough to discourage Eystra, and in the course of a few, months the publisher was wholly ready to sell to the first bidder.

He was compelled by want of funds to issue only when it was absolutely necessary to fulfill the law in the matter of the few legal ads. that were required to be published. Before the first volume was thus irregu larly completed the publication was discontinued. About this time Kewanee was commencing its big boom, and its want was an organ. The enterprising citizens clubbed together and purchased the outfit of the Gazette and took it to Kewanee and started the Henry County Dial, with Mr. Hyatt as editor and general proprietor. Hyatt, it seems, was a restless, odd kind of a man, and he filled up his life with changes and varieties of many kinds.

After remaining in Kewanee a few months he pulled out and went over to Geneseo, and started the Geneseo Republic. He bobbed around here among papers and business men, then left the county and tried Rock Island a while, and then returned to his old loves in Henry County. After a few years, marked mostly by failures, he left the county and he and his brother invented celluloid, went East and handled their patent and manufactured the goods, and got rich. We note this exceptional case among the fortunes of printers with the greater pleasure because of the rarity and novelty of Hyatt's varied failures and successes.

In the course of time the Henry County Gazette office materials, especially the old hand press, has traveled to nearly every newspaper point in the county.

The Gazette arrived in Kewanee Aug. 15, 1855, and its coming was a great event in the young town. If there had been a brass band in the place it would no doubt have been called out to escort the great arrival to its new home.

Portrait and Biographical Album of Henry County, Ill

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Illinois Ancestors

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