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Please Don't Quote Me

By Caralee Aschenbrenner

PART IV —

Despite a multitude of problems the past few years, the stress of weekly deadlines, covering a wide territory, drumming up business and subscriptions, printing three to four other newspapers and jobbing plus the constant details of publishing and pressure no wonder John Howlett’s health was in decline. Several sources noted the amount of work he had on his shoulders. But then he was a workaholic, wasn’t he?.

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The picture here of John Howlett was given by his great-great grandson, Wayne Bickley Somers, CT. It is thought to have been taken in Lanark.

Within a year of the destructive fire that wiped out equipment and files of both the “Banner” and the “Gazette” from their inception, the organization of the stockholders that supplied money, the Gazette Printing Co. had been paid off and Howlett was again in charge, not as the “hired help.”

And again the business address had changed ... “Second story of the National Bank.” Times they were a-changin’. It had been the “Post Office Block” since the town began in 1861 when Thomas Newcomer built a wooden “clabbard” building on that corner and had a “post office” cubby in amongst the bolts of wools and calicos. He was postmaster, too. With the economy taking off, everyday life was more about business than a few pieces of mail that folks had to pay for to receive. It became the “National Bank Block,” it a landmark in the evolution of time.

Within days of that 1872 fire the Gazette had been resurrected from the combined house/business on the corner of Locust and Argyle and moved back to the important address uptown. From the anxiety-ridden weeks he’d had to print with make-shift means, he slowly came back with a more efficient looking paper and his spirit seemed to have raised ... No more listing complaints. He found things to celebrate such as this notice from the upstairs print shop ... “If you don’t think George Butts knows how to get up an elegant sign, cast your eye on our facade. It can’t be beat anywhere.”

So he was looking more outside himself, the minutiae of everyday life that spurs readers to curiosity. At about the same time in 1873 the following item appeared to help his morale. From Round’s Printer’s Cabinet, July 1873 — “One of the neatest newspapers in the Northwest is Jack Howlett’s “Carroll County Gazette” at Lanark. The makeup and general appearance is excellent but its presswork is particularly fine and is done by folding the sheet and printing one page at a time on a half medium Degenell (sp?) job press. He thus is not only able to print the paper easier, better and cheaper than a hand press but has a job press which does job work beside. There are many other publications that could adopt this in the West to their advantage.” Apparently the choosing of fixtures and method after the devastating fire in ‘72 had turned out well with Howlett thinking to the cutting edge ... Nothing extraneous, how to be economical, clever with what was at hand. Even with a large workload.

As in all families in every level of society, tragedy strikes unexpectedly. John Howlett and wife, Orpha, had four children—Frank, Fannie, Henry and May. References are made of them infrequently such as Frank being editor of a Grundy Center, Iowa newspaper. In July of 1873 Frank had married Lizzy Brankd in Lanark.

In late August this notice appeared in the Gazette. “Today we have the painful duty to chronicle the death of Mrs. Howlett (Lizzy) on August 23rd in her twentieth year. She died of bronchial consumption. We condole with our boy for this sad end to a brief marriage, seven weeks and two days. She bore her illness with meekness and fortitude.”

Were some of the illnesses Howlett wrote as having such prevalent conditions as tuberculosis or even cancer? The diagnosis of diseases and conditions was sketchy at best. Consumption, lung fever or tuberculosis, lung cancer could have all been nearly the same in a day when germs and bacteria hadn’t yet been “invented.” And no medicine developed either.

In February, 1874 Howlett began an article in this way, “Ten years ago we came to Lanark an entire stranger for the purpose of establishing a newspaper...” With that reminiscence he’d printed an article he’d found in a scrapbook that had come from the “Lanark Banner” in 1864. He continued ... “in a couple of months of many and vexatious circumstances,” the “Banner” was at last issued.

Delays and “vexatious circumstances” had hardly diminished the interim counting all the varied problems that had occurred in those ten years.

An April 17th article in 1874 predicted the coming of the end ... “The editor is under the weather still. The editor is through prophesying when we’ll be back at the office. We live in hope it will be summer sometime...”

John Howlett’s health, however, continued to decline. A journalist had seen the Howlett’s in Chicago and didn’t recognize him, he was so “wan and thin.” How was he able to travel? Persistence!

At the beginning of the New Year, 1875, realizing he could no longer work, the “Carroll County Gazette” passed into the direction of George Hay, a “farmer” who lived just a short distance north of Lanark between it and Georgetown. He’d been in the States twenty-five years, coming directly from Scotland, a canny and intelligent, broad thinking man. If he’d planned on taking the reins of the Gazette, more research need be done. His “introductory” follows (next week), a short notice here tells readers that his daughter, Helen Scott Hay, born just north, had an illustrious career as an internationally known nurse. She graduated from Northwestern University with honors in a day when women rarely went to college. She entered nursing to turn it into a most respectable profession, changing for the better methods of treatment, sanitary rules, demanding tribute to work done and helped the Red Cross become a recognized international organization for her work done in Europe during WWI. She was given awards by kings and queens, presidents and heads of state. An Illinois sponsored plaque paying tribute to her is at the Savanna Library. George Hay had traveled to Kansas after leaving the Gazette, gone Back Home to Scotland and then settled at Savanna where he became a banker, then retired. Helen Scott Hay retired to Savanna also but was busy with all sorts of community service. When she died she was buried at Oakville Cemetery with other of the clans from Scotland. It’s another incident in our on-going history that every small town enjoys if they search.

April 30, 1875—Mt. Carroll Mirror: (Editor) Howlett is reported down with lung fever. Is low indeed.”

June, 1875—Howlett has removed his office to his house at the corner of Locust and Argyle where he will conduct business. The brick bakery is going up there at the rear of the National Bank. Howlett doesn’t need the office anyway as he is too ill to work.”

Howlett was only able to dictate what he wanted to convey into print, being too weak to write. His “valedictory” appeared in the June 26 issue of the 1875 Carroll County Gazette. Business came first, “With the publication of this issue we bid readers farewell. Nothing but serious illness continued with prospects of a slow recovery induces this step. Being only able to dictate this article, it will be brief. George Hay our successor as editor and publisher by purchase, is an old resident of the county, too well known to require an introduction. We believe he’ll publish the Gazette in a satisfactory manner to all concerned. We respectfully ask all those who have furnished correspondence and items to continue their aid in this line to the columns of the Gazette. Mr. Hay will fill all contracts for prepaid subscribers and advertisements and all now due on the books. For same now be paid to the undersigned.”

John R. Howlett, June 26, 1875

As we say, business as usual. No maudlin sentiment, self pity; only the facts.

The final chapters in the story of the town’s first editor, Howlett, next week, though not the final chapters of the Gazette.

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