Off the Record March 27, 1948

3-27-48
A recall of news papering in Wooster 50 years ago would be incomplete without saying something of the older characters who participated in the business at that time. For instance, there was Lamuel Jeffries, the local editor for the Wayne County Democrat. Wherein I arrived in Wooster in Feb. 1, 1898, Lem Jeffries had held the position of local editor (that’s what it said at the top of the editorial column) for so many years that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. Lem was a character all by himself. Besides being local editor, he was also mayor of Wooster, which shows to what esteem he was held by his fellow man. He was the mayor and a fervent Democrat. That is to say, Lamuel Jeffries did not scratch his ticket. He believed that even a poor Democrat was much better than the very best Republican and he voted that way. Besides that, he was a pretty good reporter. He knew everybody so well that he could sit down and scribble off the family history of just about everybody in town like nobody’s business. My mind has become somewhat vague as to the exact date of either Tuesday or Wednesday being press day at the Wayne County Democrat office. On that day each week and without fail, Mayor Lem then officiating in his capacity as local editor, would amble down to see George Kettler at about the Daily Republican press time in the afternoon. This press time was somewhat variable, but the local editor was on hand at about 3 pm. And George Kettler would always accommodate him with the latest news. I can still hear across all the years George saying, “Have you got this?” or “Have you got that?” and Lamuel, who frequently did not have it, would amble back with it to the office upstairs over the Zimmerman Drugstore and back. The Wayne County Democrat was a carefully edited paper with wide columns of four pages and it covered the news of Wayne County from stem to stern. The old residents all over the county used to wait for it and if they saw the news in the Wayne County Democrat, it was so. I can well remember Lem’s speech to council shortly after he was reelected one April not too long after my arrival. I can recollect his statement that “ Wooster has more miles of paved streets than any city its size in the country.’’ And Wooster did have those paved streets. Three miles of them, Local Editor Lamuel said, and there was none to dispute his word. Lem Jeffries was elected mayor three times, which was an unheard of accomplishment in those days for they used to change mayors as frequently as the bishops used to change Methodist preachers and a lucky man was he who could hold on for two terms. But Mayor Lemuel held on. I don’t know just who was the Democratic boys in those good old days of the gay nineties. There were two factions almost always but Mayor Lem had the faculty of getting along with both of them. He was a diplomat of the first water as inoffensive as possible and a good judge of human nature. Fines were not big in those days and his favorite fine was 2 and costs. He made the fine so often, he could say it in one syllable, “tooncosts.” As my memory clicks, Mayor Lem got the costs. The salary was not too big and his sister came around every few days and kept his books.

The top editor of the Wayne County Democrat was E.B. Eshelman. And he was a gentleman of the old school who knew his democracy well. He knew not only his democracy well, but he seemed to have the faculty of knowing just what he ought to say to the people of Wayne County to keep them voting the ticket and voting it pretty straight. I used to go up and see him once in a while, but I can never remember him ever coming in to see me. I was on the other side of the fence. He did say something nice about me when I was married in April 1900, although he did not dwell on this subject as much as he had the week before when Gypsy Taylor and Alpha Shonaker had been joined together. But they were strictly local and I was a comparative newcomer and probably did not deserve as much as I got. My wife lived in Iowa before her marriage too, which was far enough away to cut it down comparably. When I used to see Mr. Eshelman’s office, I recollect it had a pile of papers on it something akin to the pile T.C. Reynolds had on his desk in our office. It was a pile of literature he thought he would be interested in at the time it arrived, but which he never got around to sorting out. I never knew what became of that pile. Probably John C Hoffman could tell. I can’t remember what became of Mr. Reynolds pile either. Probably the boys just carried it out. Mr. Eshelman in his later years, lived at the Archer House, now the Hotel Wooster, 20th Century. He wrote editorials almost to the very last and the folks at his office came after them and took the proofs down for him to read, which he did carefully and laboriously. Mr Eshelman always walked to the polls. But came a day when he had to be helped. I saw them help him. One man on each side and he rode to the polls the short distance from the Archer House. It was his last ballot that he cast that day. And I am quite sure he promptly voted a very straight ticket.