Grant County, OKlahoma Miscellaneous News Items

Grant County, Oklahoma
Miscellaneous News Items

PASSING OF AN OLD TIMER
Adrian Reynolds Came When All Was New---- Goes Now To Oklahoma
Has Purchased Paper at Pond Creek, Okla., and Will Be Assisted by His Son
From the Sedan Times-Star.
Adrian Reynolds will leave Sedan Sunday for Pond Creek, Okla., where he has bought the Grant County Vidette and will publish it assisted by his son, Adrian Jr. This is the leading weekly Republican paper of Grant county and it is safe to say that Mr. Reynolds and son will keep it up to a high standard. Pond Creek is the county seat and is only 100 miles from Sedan. Grant county has about 18,000 people and is one of the north border counties of Oklahoma, It lies south of Sumner county, Kansas.
With Mr. Reynolds’ removal from this community there passes out of the county one of its pioneers who for thirty five years has taken a prominent part in all its history. Born in North Carolina, Mr. Reynolds came to Kansas in 1856. He received very little education either down south or in Kansas. “My academic education consist of mauling tough hackberry into rails and hauling them two miles to fence a farm on the prairies of Anderson county. My university education was obtained by from three to four years of services in the Union Army.” Thus does Mr. Reynolds tell how he got his education.
Mr. Reynolds has been in the newspaper business with slight interruption for forty years. In March, 1865, he helped get out the first number of the Garnett Plaindealer. He worked there for a year and a half. Then he went to Humboldt to work on the Union. W.T. McElroy was foreman of the paper then and later he became editor. He has edited the paper so long since that he holds the honor of being the Kansas editor longest in the harness continually in one place. He is now postmaster at Humboldt.
In 1867 Mr. Reynolds says he hunted Indians, but in 1868 he settled down at Oswego and helped Ezra Trask get out the first number of the Oswego Register. Then he returned in 1869 to Garnett and helped Mrs. Olney, widow of the paper's founder, run the Plaindealer for a year.
In 1870 at Garnett, Mr. Reynolds met Martha C. Blackford and a few months later they were married. Miss Blackford had been educated at Baker University at Baldwin and was fitted in every way to make a helpmeet for the young county editor. She learned to set type and do all kinds of country newspaper work and for many years she helped her husband "get out the paper." Later she helped him in the postoffice and has always been faithful and loyal to her husband, helping him in everything he has undertaken. Only those of long experience know fully the trials and tribulations of a country editor and it was worse years ago than it is now. But Mrs. Reynolds made those early days sacrifices and performed the labor necessary to "keep the paper going" with true womanly fidelity and courage.
Mr. Reynolds came to Longton in August 1870, and entered into a contract with some fellows there to publish a paper. Longton was then a piece of wild prairie, belonging to the Osage Reserve and never yet seen by any government surveyor. The Longton Ledger was the product of the contract and it was issued first in February 1871. Both editors at present of the Howard papers were "devils" in the office under Mr. Raynolds. Fred C. Flory continued in the office three or four years. Thomas E. Thompson showed up a few years later. Mr. Reynolds describes him as a "tall, black haired youth timidly seeking a job."
In 1874 the Ledger was moved to Elk Falls and continued there until November 1876, when old Howard county became Elk and Chautauqua counties with the town of Howard made county seat of Elk. The Ledger then moved to Howard. Abe Steinberger was publishing the Courant at Howard and in a year or two the Courant and Ledger consolidated under the name of the Courant-Ledger. Steinberger sold to Mr. Reynolds his interest and retired. He was appointed postmaster at Howard in Nov. 1881 and served until Oct. 1, 1886 and that same year Mr. Reynolds sold the paper to Thompson & Son, the son being Tom Thompson, the present publisher.
Mr. Reynolds then came to Sedan and bought the Sedan Times-Journal of Col. R. G. Ward, taking charge of it Jan. 1, 1887. In June 1884, he sold a half interest in the Times-Journal to F.G. Kennison publisher of the Cedar Vale Star. The papers were consolidated, the Journal giving way to Star and the name becoming The Times Star. In January 1896, Mr. Kennison sold the half interest back to Mr. Reynolds and there was no other change in ownership until August 1, 1902, when Mr. Reynolds retired by selling to the paper's present publisher.
Mr. Reynolds was elected register of deeds of Elk county in 1885 and served six years. In 1872 he was elected a road overseer at Longton as a joke. He took the office and made the people build culverts around Longton that are standing to this day. In 1892 he was made a member of the board of charities by Gov. Humphrey. In 1898 he was made postmaster at Sedan and tomorrow night "locks up" for the last time, having served two terms.
The career of every newspaper man is an open book. What he says or does or even thinks, everybody knows, for his business itself is publicity. He is the faithful recorder of history, and if all that Mr. Reynolds has written in thirty-five years in this county could be spread out in book form what an interesting story it would make. Beginning back in the seventies, when the giants of those days made and unmade county seats in a single night, it would end in 1902, just as the old kingdom of Chautauqua was commencing to expand into the new destiny brought to it by oil. The pioneers are passing rapidly of late and Mr. Reynolds removal takes another. But few of the old guard remain. Death has brought to many their long last sleep; others on account of advancing age have moved away "to live with the children;" still other are yet here but well along in years. Few are there who still possess as much vigor and force as does Mr. Reynolds. Yet when he came here and took up the editoral quill on the old Longton Ledger all of these men were in their prime, the strong men of their day. The babes whose births the old Ledger proudly announced have become strong men and women. The young couples whom the Ledger dispatched out on the sea of matrimony with the usual good wishes have built homes, and many of them are now happy grandfathers and grandmothers. And in many a home in old Howard county, there are faded yellow clippings from the old Ledger telling of the deaths of dear ones or of weddings or parties-or what not. These things become family heirlooms and are faithfully kept long after the editor and even the paper is forgotten.
It is to Mr. Reynolds credit that he always worked for the good of the community, that his paper always took the side of truth and right, that it was clean morally and fit to enter every home and be read there. He accumulated no great fortune and it will therefore probably be his privilege to die in harness as an active newspaper man, but this is every true editors ambition. And now that he is going out to a new country and to new fields, he can take with him the best wishes of his old paper. The Times-Star--and of many friends for his and his family's long continued health, wealth and happiness.
[Elk County Citizen, April 4, 1906 - Submitted by L. Morgan]