Search the Leavenworth Weekly Times newspaper from 1870-1880 on Chronicling America.
The Leavenworth Weekly Times was published weekly from July 7, 1870, until January 1, 1880. Along with its daily counterpart Leavenworth Daily Times, it proclaimed itself as “the oldest paper in the State…the first Republican paper issued in the county, and the first Daily published in Kansas.” The Times also was recognized as the official paper of the county and city of Leavenworth. In 1870, the Times employed 27 people and recorded annual expenses of $56,000. In 1880, the paper circulated 8,900 copies when the county’s population reached 32,000. Although the number of pages in each issue fluctuated, the Times successfully filled nine columns with newsworthy content each week.
Daniel Read Anthony (1824-1904), younger brother of women’s suffrage advocate Susan B. Anthony, was one of the founders of Leavenworth and a public official, as well as the town’s most prolific newspaper publisher. He moved to the Kansas Territory in 1854 as part of the New England Emigrant Aid Company’s efforts to populate Kansas with abolitionists. Anthony’s first endeavor in publishing in Leavenworth was the Conservative whose first issue appeared on January 28, 1861. In October of that same year, Anthony enlisted as Lieutenant Colonel in the First Kansas Cavalry. By nature he was both combative and radical. He held strong opinions about Leavenworth, the Republican Party, abolition, and prohibition, among others. He was perhaps the state’s most fiery editor, but the written word was not his only weapon. During his brief tenure with the Conservative, he shot and killed rival publisher Robert C. Satterlee of the Daily Leavenworth Herald after Satterlee had accused Anthony of cowardice. A jury later absolved him. In 1875, rival editor and political opponent William Embry of the Leavenworth Daily Appeal shot and nearly killed Anthony. Although Anthony did not use them in his later years, he always kept two loaded pistols in his office. Besides the shooting affrays, Anthony participated in assorted fistfights and brawls, even into his sixties.
One of his employees wrote that Anthony “was a hard task-master, yet a good one….If he didn't like you it was best to remain in the background, for he never forgot why he disliked you." Anthony was successful in dominating the daily Leavenworth County papers. In 1871, he purchased the Leavenworth Bulletin, and in 1876, he bought the Leavenworth Daily Commercial, which was the only other morning paper at the time and also the “central organ of the Democratic, or opposition, party of Kansas.”
Following his father’s death, Daniel Read Anthony, Jr. (1870-1931) became editor of the Times and served in Congress from 1907 to 1929. The Leavenworth Weekly Times was succeeded in 1880 by the weekly Leavenworth Times, which lasted until 1918. Editions of the Times published during these years included the Leavenworth Daily Times, the Daily Leavenworth Times, and the Leavenworth Times, which has been a continuously circulating daily newspaper since 1878.
Search the Leavenworth Weekly Times newspaper from 1870-1880 on Chronicling America.