Wapello County IA Archives Biographies.....Powell, James F. 1883 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 June 29, 2013, 12:25 pm

Source: See Below
Author: S. J. Clarke, Publisher

JAMES F. POWELL.

Since 1889 James F. Powell has been connected with the Courier and steady
progression has brought him to the position of publisher and editor. He is today
one of the well known newspaper men of Iowa, and the Courier has been an
important factor in promoting the progress and advancing the welfare and
prosperity of Ottumwa, advocating as it does at all times a line of practical
progress. Mr. Powell was born in Harrington, Delaware, August 16, 1868, a son of
Dr. C. C. Powell, who was likewise a native of Delaware. He became a practicing
physician and devoted many years of his life to that profession. He married Miss
Kate Fountain, a native of Maryland, and in 1876 they removed westward to
Illinois, where they resided until 1883 and then came to Ottumwa, where Dr.
Powell passed away in 1901.

Since making his initial step in the business world James F. Powell has been
connected with newspaper interests, and one of the factors in his success is the
point that he has always continued in the line in which he embarked as a youth.
In 1885 he secured a position in the office of the Democrat at Ottumwa, then
conducted by S. B. Evans and H. D. Crawford. He learned the printer’s trade,
which he followed in Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Omaha and at other points in
Iowa and Nebraska, but in 1889 returned to Ottumwa and secured a position as
typesetter on the Ottumwa Daily-Courier. Since that time he has been
continuously connected with the paper and was in the mechanical department until
the fall of 1900, either in the composing room of the newspaper or in the job
department. With the opening of the present century he was taken into the
business office as advertising solicitor and in 1901, when E. P. Adler, who was
business manager of the Courier, was transferred to the Davenport Times by A. W.
Lee, who owned the controlling interest in both papers, Mr. Powell was made
business manager of the former. In 1905 he became publisher of this paper and so
continues. In 1907, following the death of A. W. Lee, who was president of the
Lee Newspaper Syndicate, E. P. Adler was made president and Mr. Powell vice
president and treasurer of the Syndicate, which owns and controls the Tribune of
La Crosse, Wisconsin; the Daily Times, of Davenport; the Journal of Muscatine,
Iowa; the Courier of Ottumwa; and the Courier Post of Hannibal, Missouri. Both
Mr. Adler and Mr. Powell still retain their positions in connection with the Lee
Newspaper Syndicate and as such have become prominent figures in newspaper
circles in this state.

In September, 1907, Mr. Powell was united in marriage to Miss Mary E. Gardner, a
daughter of W. H. and Elizabeth Gardner, now residents of Lincoln, Nebraska. Mr.
Powell has always taken an active interest in athletics, particularly shooting
and rowing and he indorses all manly outdoor sports, believing that, in the
division of time, recreation may constitute a balance wheel for the arduous
business effort which is typical of the age. His policy in connection with the
Courier has been one of continuous advancement without recourse to any of that
sensationalism which has made the yellow journal an object of abhorrence to all
who believe in the educational and real news value of the modern paper.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:
HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY IOWA
ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME II
CHICAGO
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1914


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