The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1904-01-01
Indiana Man Serves Long Time in
Newspaper Business.
John MiIlikan in Crown Point, Ind,
Has Honorable Career.
His Brother Actively Engaged in Ohio
at Age of SO Years.
Controversy Over Oldest Paper Printed
in United States.

,t
Especial Correspondence of Chicago Chronicle !
From Saturdays Daily.
Crown Point, Ind, Dec l9.-John Mil
likan, the Oldest editor in the state of
Indiana, resides here, hale and hearty,
at the age of SO years. Mr. AIillikan
knows the newspaper business from the
case to the tripod and has been identified
with the business in northern Indiana for
the past sixty years. He is not actively
engaged in his beloved calling at this
time, but still keeps up with the pro-
cession and his advice is much sought
by the younger generation of newspaper
men.
MIR. Millikan was connected with the
Lake County Register for several years
and he still manifests much interest in
the paper. He has been identified with
the Free Press at South Bend, with the
Union at La Porte, the Plymouth Repub-
lican and the Crown Point Cosmos. Mr.
Millikan is one of the old-style printer
editors. When he got short of help he
could step in and set type with the best
of them. He has always been hard work
ing, conservative and popular.
As an editor he was always careful
and sagacious and usually had the back
ing of the people of his community in all
his writings. When he first came to
Indiana the newspaper business was fan
from being in its present fourishing
state.
At the time of his first editorial efforts
in the state, he was able to do all the
work himself. He could write the mat
ter, set it up and print it himself on one
of those old-fashioned Washington hand
presses. Mr.. Millikan has, however, liv-
ed to see wonderful transformation in
the style of printing, and in the making
of newspapers. He is not much in sym
pathy with the modern famboyant style
and is much opposed to yellow journal
ism. Mr.. Millikan has brother, Will
liam Aillikan, who is still actively en-
gagged in journalism at the age of 80
He is editor of the Daily Herald al
Washington Courthouse, o.
The controversy started in Boston a
year ago as to what was the first paper
printed in the United States has been OF
interest to Mr.. Millikan. He does not
claim to know about the matter, but has
given the subject some attention.
An ancient news sheet, bearing the
title, "The Present State of the New
English. Affairs" has been called by some
antiquarians the first newspaper ever
printed in America, though the correct
ness of that designation is questioned by
others.
There is no evidence that second
number of the publication was ever
printed, and DIR. Samuel A. Green, librar-
ian of the Massachusetts Historical So
ciety and a high authority on such ques-
tons, says it is not properly a news
paper, but broadside, which is defined
as an occasional publication, printed on
but one side of sheet of paper.
A newspaper, he says, is always num-
bered and dated. The sheet is not num-
bered and the date is confined merely to
the year. He states, however, that, be-
ing printed newsletter, it represents
one phase in the evolution of the news
paper.
The only known copy is preserved in
the Massachusetts state archives at the
statehouse. It measures 9xl3 inches, and
embodies letters, or excerpts from let
tiers, received in Boston in 1859 from
Rev. Increase Mather, then in London.
The publication bears the foot note /:
'Boston, printed and sold by Samuel
Green, Jr."
William G. Shiilaber, secretary of the
Club of Odd Volumes, under whose super
visian fac smile of the original copy
at the state house has recently been pro-
duced, has called attention to an inter
esting fact not generally known in con-
nection with the origin of the American
newspaper.
During the first sixty or seventy years
of American history custom existed
among public spirited and influential men
OF keeping each other informed on pub
lie affairs by means of communications
known as newsletters, in their own hand
writing. These newsletters were handed
about from one to another, the recipient
often circulating several copies of spe-
cific letter, where the interest in it war
ranted the labor of making number of
copies of the original.
This led to the adoption of the name
of The Newsletter for the first newspa-
per regularly published, which was start
ed in Boston in 1904. It was apparently
the receipt of several of these manu-
script letters from London, and a wide
spread interest in the matter of which
they treated, that suggested to Samuel
Green, Jr., then the leading printer in
Boston, to print them together rather
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