Born To Be a Newspaper Man

by Martin J. McGowan Jr.

Grandmother Sarah and Her Family

My grandmother was a strong-willed person. She had to be to survive the hand of cards she was dealt in life.

She was born in Portage, Wis., April 27, 1864. I don't know how she came to Minnesota but she and her family settled in Stevens county, Minn., next to Swift county, where the McGowans lived. My grandfather Patrick McGowan, was born in Underhill, Vt., March 8, 1854. He came to Minnesota and settled in Kerkhoven in the eastern end of Swift county.

What brought my grandfather and grandmother together is unknown to me. They were married in August, 1881, when my grandmother was 17. In the succeeding 18 years there were 10 children born to this couple. The first was Gertrude, born at Hancock in Stevens county, June 26, 1882. This must have had some connection to my grandmother's residence in that county. The rest of the family was born in Swift county. The occupation of my grandfather was shown in records as farmer and butcher.

The marriage did not last long, only a bit more than 18 years. My grandfather died in early December, 1899, which must have taken away some of the joy of Christmas. The cause of death was listed as catarrh, which was an early medical term for chest congestion or bronchial problems. He never saw his youngest child, Lucy, who was born just after the new year on Jan. 8, 1900.

The death of my grandfather left my grandmother at age 35 a single mother with nine living children and no visible means of support. A daughter, Sarah, died at birth in 1886. It is not recorded where she was buried. Since the family lived in Kerkhoven in Lutheran territory, it is assumed Sarah, the daughter, was buried in a common grave in a Catholic cemetery in Murdock or DeGraff. No marker or record was ever found.

Then Laura, the second child born, died in 1901 at age 16, a month short of 17. My father, Martin, was the third child born, and to support the family he left school in the ninth grade to go to work. He worked one month as an apprentice printer to learn the trade. He also worked as a night man at a local hotel. Gertrude became a milliner making beautiful large hats, examples of which abound in early family photos.

By 1914 my father, his brothers and sister decided to go into the newspaper business for themselves. They moved to Appleton and purchased the Appleton Press. My father became publisher. His brother, Allen, became the shop foreman. Another brother, Joseph, went to Chicago to learn how to operate the Linotype machine.

A fourth brother, F. R. (Pat) McGowan, became the advertising salesman. Gertrude took over the duties of bookkeeper and social news reporter. She had a special sideline of selling Christmas cards from a catalog during the holiday season.

They almost lost the paper before they got started. On one of their first days a fire broke out. The fire came from the gas heater that melted the metal in the pot of the Linotype machine. By the time I came to operate the Linotype there had been a change to have electric heating elements in the metal pot, which removed the threat of fire.

After surviving the fire, World War I brought some changes. Five of the brothers entered military service and my grandmother received notice in a large newspaper article for having so many sons in service. Allen remained to keep the newspaper going. My father went to St. Paul to work in the food rationing program for the state. This was the time my father married my mother in St. Paul when she was a nurse at Swedish hospital. I have a photo of my father and mother together, the only one I know about. I can date the photo by the fact my father was in uniform so the photo must have been taken during the few months he served in the military. My father's actual military service came at the end of the war. He enlisted in the Army and was sent to Camp Dodge Ia., in August, 1918, and the war ended in November.

Food rationing was under the direction of Herbert Hoover nationally. This was rather ironic for my father was not a fan of Herbert Hoover when he became president.

The fifth brother in service was the youngest, Leo, who graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., in 1918.

Back row: Martin McGowan, F. R. (Pat) McGowan, John McGowan holding John Terrance (Terry), Gil Suave McGowan, Mary Morgan McGowan holding Catherine, Allen McGowan, Sarah Breen McGowan, Mary Donnelly McGowan, Joe McGowan, Gertrude McGowan.
Middle row: Sara Jane McGowan, Helen Harrison McGowan, Alicia McGowan, Molly McGowan, Leo McGowan, Irvine Lidstone McGowan
Front row: Jack McGowan, Marty McGowan Jr., Jim McGowan, Bill McGowan, Patty McGowan.

After the war some of the brothers took up other pursuits. My father resumed his duties as editor and publisher of the Appleton Press, which he continued to do until I became editor on his partial retirement after World War II in 1947. I became publisher upon his death in 1954.

Joe McGowan returned to Benson and acquired the Swift County Monitor and latter bought out his competition, the Swift County News, running them as twin weeklies. I later published those papers with the Appleton Press for two years while also serving in the legislature from the county.

Allen McGowan became manager of the Minnesota Editorial Association, later renamed the Minnesota Newspaper Association. This was an organization of all the weekly and small daily papers in the state. The organization served to sell advertising for the papers and also obtain national advertising.

Pat McGowan became state printer under the administration of Gov. Elmer A. Benson, of Appleton, a close family friend. After a change in administrations, Pat bought the weekly Willmar Journal at Willmar, which he ran until his death in 1951.

Gertrude became postmaster in Appleton, a job arranged for her through political influence by my father when that was possible. She held that post until her death in 1951, the same year Pat died.

The only other brother not previously mentioned is John. He was a natural, outgoing man, the humorist of the family. He worked many years traveling and selling for the Atwater Kent radio company. Later he did the same for a national coffee firm.

As editor of the Appleton Press my father became quite active politically. When I was about age 10 he started taking me to political picnics to hear speakers from the Democratic party. At about age 16 when he was a delegate to the state Democratic convention he pointed out to me the lobbyists that hung around the convention. He noted that the same people would be hanging around the Republican convention as well.

In those early days the Democratic party was a weak, split third party. The Farmer-Labor party emerged as a strong opponent for the Republican party. Weak though they were the Democrats argued among themselves. There was the Regan-Noonan faction called the Rumpers, while those affiliated with Joseph Wolf were the Regulars. Wolf was the national committeeman from Minnesota for the Democrats and he controlled the patronage or dispensing of jobs. My father was one of his cohorts.

My father was a presidential elector for Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election. Roosevelt came to the twin cities in that year to campaign and a photo appeared in the daily papers showing my father sitting next to Roosevelt on stage. I never got to save a clipping of that photo or an original photo.

Twenty-Eight years later when John F. Kennedy came to the twin cities to campaign for president when I was in the legislature, Betty and I were invited with some other politicians to visit Kennedy and Jackie in their suite at the top of the Leamington hotel in Minneapolis. We didn't get any pictures, but I noted Kennedy seemed bored and Jackie hovered over his shoulder to read something.

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