Hon. Edward S. Wilson carved his name in the newspaper world in the city of Ironton, where he made the Ironton Register one of the great papers of the day.
While the Register was firmly established by his predecessors, it remained for Mr. Wilson, once United States Marshal for the District of Puerto Rico, to make it the leading family newspaper of the Ohio Valley and with no superiors in the country for its particular field.
Mr. Wilson held residence in Ironton since boyhood. He graduated from the Ironton High School and went to the front during the Civil War, serving with credit throughout that memorable struggle.
His life among us was an open book, and our readers know him as well as the writer. His career had been busy – scholar, editor, author, and statesman – and the Register was, for years, a monument to his talent and energy.
In 1850 this paper was established by R. M. Stimson, who now lives in Marietta, Ohio. It was established as a Republican paper, and such is its policy today under the able management of E. S. Wilson, the editor, and proprietor.
Mr. Wilson was born in Newark, Ohio, in 1841. He served three years in the Union Army during the Civil War, after which he bought the Ironton Register and has run it since.
His connection with the paper is thus told in his own words in a letter for the semi-centennial number of the Register on August 1, 1900: “On the 3d day of July 1865, I was mustered out of the Union Army and received with about $800 in seven-thirty bonds a balance due me as a Lieutenant’s pay. I had hoped, at the close of the war to practice law, but my eyes were so weak that I abandoned that hope and concluded to go into the grocery business. I went so far as to buy a counter and secure a room.
The next thing, in August, the whim seized me to run a newspaper, and John N. Davidson proposed to sell the Register to me. I had no idea of accepting it until one day, he called me from a bandwagon, where a crowd was going to a meeting on Johns Creek and asked if I was going to “take him up.”
Without a moment’s reflection, I answered, “Yes.” He threw up his hands and said, “Boys, the Register officer is sold.” It was a freak on my part. I knew nothing about the business and hadn’t nearly enough money to pay for the office. I went to borrowing right away, and by August 31, 1865, paid cash for the plant, took charge, and began business with a $3,500 debt.
“The office was on the third floor of the building now occupied by Collet’s Insurance business. It was a miserable outfit – an old Washington hand press, a broken nonpareil jobber, and a scanty supply of a type, rules, leads, etc.
The office had burned down months previous and had not yet recovered from its desolation. I don’t remember to have seen a worse-equipped printing office. But since business was good and prices were high, I put the meager facilities to the utmost test. There were only two employees in the office, the foreman and a boy, and I made a third, devoting myself to editorial duties. I was a devil, pressman, bookkeeper, reporter, editor, and proprietor, and I put in 15 hours daily on the combination.
“In 1867, I moved the office to the third floor over the Exchange Bank, and in 1870 to Center Block, where it has been ever since. In 1870 I added a power press; in 1874, a steam engine; in 1885, a gas engine. On January 1, 1887, the paper was changed from a folio to a quarto, which has since maintained its size and form.”
He is one of the community’s good citizens, and the paper he publishes is of great worth to the county, where it circulates chiefly. It is said that there are few homes in Lawrence County, Ohio, that the Ironton Register does not enter.
Source: The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio 3 Nov 1929 p113
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