The Monday After: When Walter Wellman came to Canton

Walter Wellman was among the elite journalists in Washington during the administration of President William McKinley.

"The City of Washington undoubtedly has more and better newspaper men to the square inch than any other city in the world," noted an article on the front page of the Sunday Repository on Nov. 21, 1897. "It is natural that it is so, for no country possesses so many newspapers as does ours and most papers supplement their press reports with specials from members of their staffs − usually very talented ones."

Among the most talented, the article went on to credit, was Walter Wellman.

Wellman toiled for the Chicago Times-Herald as the article was written. But, he had tight Canton connections. Wellman, who was born in Mentor, Ohio, in 1858, later had married a Canton girl.

This, of course, was years after he had gotten an early start in newspapers. As a youth he had worked in newspapers as a "devil," an individual who had many jobs around an office, among them getting type from a case into place to be used on the press.

According to an online profile, Wellman founded a weekly newspaper in Nebraska at age 14, and returned to Ohio to start the Cincinnati Evening Post.

Upon his return to Ohio, he first came to Canton and stayed for a time to work, marrying Laura McCann in 1879, the article noted, a woman with whom he had five daughters.

"Of course, the thousands of Repository readers who are accustomed to peruse his interesting articles are interested in his attractive personality, the more so perhaps because in the latter seventies (1870s), he pushed the proverbial pencil on the Evening Repository."

Remembering his time in Canton

The writer of the Repository's 1897 article had gone to the Times-Herald bureau office in Washington to talk to Wellman about his time in Canton.

"I found Mr. Wellman in a sort of reminiscent mood," the reporter wrote. "As he puffed away at his brier wood pipe, he appeared to see in the clouds of ascending smoke, the days of nearly two decades ago, fraught with interesting incidents."

Wellman recalled how he first got his job at the Repository.

"It will be twenty years ago next March or April when I dropped into Canton while on my way from Nebraska to the east," he said. "I was a typesetter then and was induced to stop in Canton by hearing that a daily paper was soon to be started there. I applied for a job and was promised on when the paper started − and secured it."

He remembered skilled mentors at the newspaper. Thomas Saxton and Wilson J. Vance were the "projectors of the paper," he said.

"The city editor and general local man was Alexander Butts, now editorial writer on the Kansas City Star, one of the best papers in the west," recalled Wellman. "He was one of the most clever men I have ever known. After a while Mrs. Vance went away for a time and as he had learned that I knew something about the rules of composition and spelling, he asked me if I would try and read proof and edit telegraph while he was gone. Now I had once edited a paper on the plains of Nebraska and as that was four years before and I was now eighteen or nineteen years of age, I jumped at the chance."

Recalling his youth

Wellman's reflection on his youthfulness at the time he was at the Repository caused recollections of an even earlier time in his life. While growing up in Mentor, his family had a neighbor named James A. Garfield. The relationship remained strong through ensuing years.

"While I was an editor of the Repository, General Garfield spoke in Canton and spent the afternoon before the meeting in the office, looking over old files of papers," Wellman remembered. "He had a great fondness for that sort of thing. I was very proud of having the great Garfield as my guest and he was not presidential timber then, either."

Wellman told the writer of the Repository's 1897 article that following his time in Canton he founded the Cincinnati Post with his brother. He noted that it became "a very valuable property."

And Wellman's writing became well-known, partly because of his skills but also due to his penchant for acting the part of adventurer. He searched on San Salvador Island and in the Bahamas for the original landing spot of Christopher Columbus. Early in the 1900s, he wrote books about unsuccessfully attempting to reach the North Pole − "A Tragedy of the Far North" − and trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an airship − "The Aerial Age: A Thousand Miles by Airship over the Atlantic Ocean."

Looking back to Stark County

The writer of the 1897 profile promised in the future to tell Canton readers a bit about Wellman's Arctic trips. But, for the moment he stayed focused on the past. The writer noted that with all the accolades coming to Wellman for his writing and reporting of Washington politics and his own adventures, the noted journalist looked back to Canton with fondness until his death from cancer in 1934.

"I owe my success largely to my training in Canton," Wellman said in 1897. "I won my wife there. and we love to walk the old streets where we conducted our courtship.

"I like the old place and am always glad to get back to see the familiar scenes and greet my old friends. Yes, I..."

But, with an interuption in mid-sentence, the interview politely but abruptly stopped, the writer of the profile reported. The past was forgotten in a flurry of activity in the present of the journalist's office.

"The telegraph ticker began its impatient clicking for more copy as demanded by the machines in far off Chicago and Mr. Wellman excused himself to satisfy the cravings of the hungry monster. ... As I said in the beginning Mr. Wellman is probably the 'most read after' correspondent in the world, in addition to the Times-Herald he supplies 175 dailies with special articles, and it is estimated that in all he talks daily to over three millions of people."

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Monday After: When Walter Wellman came to Canton