A Country Newspaper: Isaac Strouse, Juliet Strauss, and the Rockville Tribune

Early in the fall of 1879, a group of high school boys were sitting around a table at the offices of the Rockville Tribune newspaper in Parke County, Indiana. These boys naturally gravitated to the newspaper office, where, according to the paper’s employee, Isaac Strouse, “pipes and tobacco were always at hand and could be smoked with immunity from parental displeasure.”

Born in Rockville, Strouse had quit school at age sixteen to learn the printing trade in the offices of the Indiana Patriot, the forerunner of the Rockville Tribune. At first, Strouse and another boy had simply been charged with the task of printing editions of the newspaper on an old Washington hand press and the Rockville native’s ambition had only included becoming a typesetter and finding a job in Indianapolis.

With John H. Beadle’s purchase of the Tribune, Strouse’s horizons expanded. The veteran newspaperman agreed to take him on as a cub reporter and to review his work and to give him informal lessons on the proper use of the English language. On this day in the newspaper office, Strouse, who had risen to become the newspaper’s local editor, heard one of the boys proclaim Juliet Humphries as “the prettiest and smartest girl in Rockville.” Although he had gone to school with Betty Humphries, the oldest of the Humphries’ daughters, Strouse had never been introduced to the youngest member of the clan.

A short time after the discussion in the newspaper office, Strouse finally met the then sixteen-year-old girl who was to become his wife at a party where he had the distinction of  “being the oldest boy, as well as the only one not in school.”  Strouse spied his friend Betty Humphries sitting alone and went over to talk to her. After the two had been talking for some time, another boy came over and demanded, in a friendly way, for Strouse to meet the other girls at the party and called over Betty Humphries’ sister, Juliet. “Gyp [Juliet] came to our corner, bringing several of the other girls,” said Strouse, “and we were all ‘introduced,’ though every one of us was born within a radius of a mile.” Strouse and Juliet fell into a long conversation, which included a discussion of books and poems they had recently read. Their shared love of literature, and the close bonds they formed through Juliet’s “secret” work for the Tribune (Beadle had hired her to write, anonymously, for the paper), helped begin a courtship that ended in marriage.

By the time Juliet did her first reporting job under her own name for the newspaper, she and the local editor were “regarded by themselves and everybody else as ‘engaged,’” noted Strouse. And, despite the use of a non de plume (“La Gitana”), the small community knew that it was Juliet Humphries who had written several pieces that had appeared in the newspaper. For her first assignment, Beadle assigned Juliet to cover the Fine Art Hall at the Parke County Fair. The fair was considered the one great event of the year and the Rockville Tribune, in order to scoop its rival newspaper, took its press out to the fairgrounds in order to issue a daily report on the fair’s activities.

According to Strouse, his fiancée had a bit of trouble at first with her assignment. Beadle, needing her copy, sent Strouse to secure her report. The local editor found her with a pencil posed to her lips and a blank notebook in her lap as she sat gazing at the quilts, bread, pies, canned fruit, and other articles that jammed the Fine Arts Hall. Sensing her quandary, Strouse advised Juliet to make general comments on the exhibits and not to give particulars. “O, that’s easy,” she responded. The couple walked over to the Rockville Tribune’s tent and she wrote such a fine article that Beadle told her “it was much better than anything he could have done, although he was a newspaper man of many years experience,” noted Strouse.

Unfortunately for Juliet, her work on the Parke County newspaper brought with it little financial remuneration. “I wanted money the money to buy my wedding frock and a few other things,” she said. “There was no help for it.” At the age of seventeen, Juliet left school without receiving her high school degree and successfully passed the examination to become a teacher. In those days in Indiana, the state had no mandatory standards for teachers, with teaching licenses (like that given to Juliet) granted by county superintendents to those candidates who successfully passed written tests.

In addition to the written test, in order to gain a teaching job in Parke County Juliet had to obtain the signatures of most of the patrons in the school district. She had varying degrees of success with her neighbors: one man railed at her that her proper place was in the kitchen, not teaching school, and another offered to marry her as an alternative to signing her paper. Her father’s legacy helped with one man, known in the area for his tendency to get drunk on election day and pick fights with fellow voters. The man, however, remembered that Juliet’s father had been “a mighty good Democrat!,” and agreed to help her by signing her paper and obtaining signatures from his other neighbors.

Juliet’s stint as an educator lasted only a short time. “Under different circumstances I think I might have succeeded fairly well as a teacher,” shet said, “for I did know what was in the books and I had a faculty for general information, which is what is often sadly lacking in a teacher. I could interest the children.” She received help in disciplining any wayward boys from the oldest boy in the class, Henry, whom she befriended. “Soon he ‘licked’ every boy in school for me and we had fair order,” Juliet said. 

Instead of continuing her teaching career, however, she quit her job when she married Strouse. The nuptials, which took place on December 22, 1881, did not proceed without some disapproval—from the bride’s family at least. Traveling to her job as a teacher one day in her uncle’s wagon, she informed him that she intended to marry a man whose life’s work was to be a newspaper editor. The uncle solemnly chewed on a piece of straw for a moment before telling his niece: “Jule, don’t you know that being an editor is the orneriest business in the world?”

Strouse, who at the time of his marriage to Juliet had gone over to the rival Rockville Republican to take a job as a printer at a higher salary, discovered that his new wife possessed not only writing talent, but an independent mind as well. On their wedding day the couple had received as presents such items as a set of silver spoons, a porcelain tea set, table linen, a lamb’s wool comforter, and twenty-five gold dollars from the groom’s father. Also, the uncle that had wondered about the wisdom of marrying a newspaper editor had “accepted the inevitable” and had given the couple as a wedding present an elaborate illustrated family Bible, which included an illuminated marriage certificate at the beginning of the family record. In the record, Juliet inscribed: “Isaac Rice Strauss was born December 12, 1863.” Many years before, Strouse’s father had “Americanized” his family’s name from the German Strauss to Strouse. Throughout the rest of her life, Juliet used for her married name the old German spelling (Strauss), while her husband kept the newer version (Strouse). “She never would write our name as it was written by my father after he changed the spelling to compel the people of a typical Hoosier pioneer community to call him ‘Strouse,’” noted her husband.

The newlyweds endured a rough beginning to their years together. In the summer of 1882 they were both stricken with typhoid fever when an epidemic hit Rockville. With Strouse unable to go to work, and hence earn an income, the couple moved in with Strauss’s mother, a woman for whom her son-in-law had a world of respect. “I have not spoken of this unequaled woman as my ‘mother-in-law a half dozen times in all my life,” he observed. “I never could apply a name, so long the object of jokes and jibes, to such a woman.” With Susan Humphries able care, the young couple survived their bout with illness, but it took until autumn for Strouse to feel well enough to be up and about (his wife, whose sickness was far worse than his, was still confined to her sickbed but convalescent).

Riding to the fairgrounds with his father, Strouse came across his former employer, Beadle. Taking Strouse aside, Beadle informed him that the “exigencies of journalism have made it imperative that I have a partner.” The editor had fallen on hard times in his competition with Rockville’s other two newspapers, the Rockville Republican, which (not surprisingly) supported the Republican party, and the Parke County Signal, which allied itself with the Democrats. Beadle’s lack of business skills and some unfortunate hiring decisions that curtailed his ability to take freelance writing projects prompted him to ask his former employee to take a half-interest in the paper for $800. “Had he said $800,000,” said Strouse, “the price to me would have amounted to the same kind of a proposal.”

Aware of the newlywed’s financial difficulties, Beadle arranged for Strouse’s brother David to contribute $300, which he required to make the Tribune solvent again, and agreed to take a personal note from Strouse for the remaining $500. Strouse was more than happy to accept the offer and rode home to share the “glorious news” with his family. “How it heartened all of us!” he said. Not only did it mean some hopes of financial security for the young couple, but Beadle’s kind offer (Strouse later learned that no mortgage had been made against his interest in the newspaper) would also provide Strauss the opportunity once again to utilize her writing talents. Beadle and Strouse announced their new partnership to the community in the pages of the Tribune on November 10, 1882. “It shall be our earnest endeavor to make it a live paper,” the coeditors said, “containing all the local and a fair share of the general news, and for the next year we expect to make a specialty of home interests, in the schools, churches and business of the town and county.”

Country weekly newspapers like the Tribune dominated journalism in the Hoosier state and the nation during the late nineteenth century. From 1870 to 1890, the number of community weeklies serving towns of less than ten thousand people tripled in size from four thousand to twelve thousand. The phenomenal growth could be attributed to the modest capital investment it took to start a weekly newspaper in a small town. Most towns could even boast of having two newspapers to choose from—one supporting the Democratic party and the other endorsing the Republican party. This happy circumstance came about as a result of the strong partisan nature of Indiana politics at this time and a legal advertising law requiring government notices to be published in two newspapers that represented political parties receiving the highest vote totals in the last general election.

Politics was important to Strouse (he gradually moved the Tribune from a nominally independent stance to one that solidly backed the Democratic party), but he had to concentrate on other matters first to get the newspaper back on its feet. Just the simple act of putting out a newspaper often meant heavy labor with a small staff, slowly churning out pages by brute force, typically with a Washington hand press. County editors in those days, one practitioner of the art observed, served as “editor, reporter, proof reader, solicitor, collector and general roustabout.”

One of the first steps Strouse took to improve the Tribune’s position in the community was to move its offices from its location on the south side, a place “shunned by the up-and-coming progressives and sought by the slothful, or down-and-outers in the town’s business affairs,” to an upstairs location on the town square. To brighten the newspaper’s look, Strouse removed several “dead ads,” reduced its size from eight columns to five columns, and expanded the weekly from four to twelve pages, which included a literary supplement. He also crowded into the newspaper “‘local’ and ‘feature’ articles written by Mrs. Strauss [his wife] and her knowing, sensible mother—all of it making a wonderful change in the old sheet,” Strouse noted, adding that “before long we began to issue extra pages and a special Christmas number.”

As he took on more and more responsibilities at the newspaper (Strouse became the Tribune’s sole owner and editor in 1889), the newspaperman also found himself calling upon his wife time and time again to provide more copy to enliven the newspaper’s columns, including a department of  “Local Fables” written in the style of Aesop.

Typically for her, Strauss later tried to downplay her early contributions to the newspaper’s revitalization. “The editor would come home tired and careworn from his struggles with the old Washington hand press,” she said, “and his interviews with patronizing subscribers who wanted to pay in pithy turnips or green stovewood cut two inches too long for our little ‘early breakfast’ wood cook stove—and I hadn’t the heart to refuse when he asked me if I couldn’t write something to brighten up the paper.”

Strauss proved herself to be a tower of support for everyone involved in the operation of the county newspaper. Edmund Beadle, a nephew of John Beadle who started at the Tribune as an apprentice printer and eventually rose to become its owner in 1919, remembered that during the Rockville and Bridgeton fairs the Tribune printed between two thousand and three thousand premium lists. “No sooner would the ink be dry than the sheets were carried to Mrs. Strauss for folding and binding at home,” said Beadle. “She with needle and thread gave every spare moment she could from household work and care of her small daughters to the tedious task of folding and binding the premium lists.” Strauss also provided leadership for the newspaper at a time in journalism when females were a rare sight in newsrooms. The dirty and often noisy newspaper offices were considered “off limits” for genteel ladies.

For Strauss, however, there was not alternative; she often had to take over management of the Tribune for a week or two at a time while her husband, an avid outdoorsman, took hunting trips into the countryside. “There were so many interesting habitués about the shop in those days of hand work and easy living—it seemed as if there was more time to be lazy, talented and happy,” she said. Although she had to often deal with such problems as drunk printers, Strauss could turn for help to such persons as Doug Smith, Frank Howard, Will Mason, and others for copy to fill the paper. As for printers, she noted that “one could always pick up somebody and put him on his mettle to save the day if somebody fell by the wayside.”

Although poor and struggling to repay the $300 debt owed his brother David, Strouse noted that the one outstanding recollection of those early days of his married life was “one of constant fun and frolic.” There may have been little or no cash on hand from subscribers, but when it came to farm products taken in kind for a subscription to the newspaper, “we were opulent beyond the wealthiest of our townspeople.”

The Strouse household also received an abundant supply of reading material. Such periodicals as the North American Review, Atlantic, Scribner’s, the Magazine of American History, and the Independent Youth’s Companion were obtained in exchange for advertising or reviews. With free passes provided by railroad lines, the young couple could also travel to Terre Haute for performances at the opera house. Angry or resentful comments against the couple, said Strouse, were given a “humorous turn” in their work for the newspaper.

With her husband’s complete takeover as owner and editor of the Tribune in 1889, Strauss continued to provide assistance in whatever areas she could, contributing essays, poems, and other articles. The only piece of work she refused to tackle were editorials. Although politically in sympathy with her husband’s support of the Democratic party, she personally disliked politics. No matter how “sick or unable to write I might be during all the years she constantly contributed to our paper she never would write a political editorial,” said Strouse.

The only time Strouse could remember his wife deviating from this nonpartisan outlook came in 1896 when John Clark Ridpath, a well-known Hoosier educator, writer, and popular historian ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket. Ridpath, according to Strouse, had been “one of the first to recognize literary abilities in Juliet V. Strauss” and had always visited the couple when he came to Rockville. Because of her fondness for Ridpath, Strauss, according to her husband, worked tirelessly on her friend’s behalf, attending rallies, decorating speaker’s stands, and assisting other women in their auxiliary work. Strauss’s efforts, which included helping feed hundreds of people who had attended a rally on Ridpath’s behalf, were for naught; the Indiana historian lost to Republican George W. Faris by only 365 votes.

Just a few years after her husband gained control of the newspaper, Strauss embarked on an ambitious new writing project. On February 9, 1893, Strauss wrote her first “Squibs and Sayings” column for the Rockville Tribune. At first, her husband had attempted to dissuade his wife from becoming responsible for a regular department. Although “delighted” with her idea, he warned her that in his experience such departments usually ran in country newspapers for only a few weeks or months at best before petering out. “I believe I can keep it up,” Strauss said. She was as good as her word; the front-page column ran in the newspaper every week until Strauss’s death in 1918.