George W. Kingsbury Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1126-1127 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

	This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit 
	organizations for their private use. 

	Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval 
	system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other 
	means requires the written approval of the file's author.

	This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside
	a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at

	http://usgwarchives.org/sd/sdfiles.htm


				GEORGE W. KINGSBURY.  

	George W. Kingsbury, who has written and compiled this History of 
Dakota Territory, is a citizen of Yankton, where he has resided since 
March, 1862. He came up from Junction City, Kansas, at that time. He 
was born in a farm home, on the west branch of the Mohawk river, in the 
town of Lee, Oneida County, New York, December 16, 1837. His father, 
Charles Backus Kingsbury, was born at Norwich, near New London, 
Connecticut, September 21, 1802. His grandfather, Asa Kingsbury, was 
born in Connecticut, about 1750. In 1776 he enlisted in Colonel John 
Ely's regiment, at Norwich, and served during the Revolutionary war, 
becoming a sergeant in 1878 or 1879. These items are gathered from the 
official records in the War Department, at Washington. He married after 
the war and resided at Lebanon, Connecticut, until early in the 
eighteenth century, when he emigrated to New York and settled at Turin, 
Oneida county. G. W. Kingsbury's mother was Ruama Barnes, born at 
Leyden, Lewis county, New York, December 21, 1805. Her father was Abram 
Barnes and was born at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1777; her grandfather 
was John Barnes, also a native of Connecticut. Her mother was Ruama 
Kennedy, born at Bedford, Westchester county, New York, in 1777. The 
Barnes family settled near Turin early in the eighteenth century.  

	The father of George W. Kingsbury removed from Lee to Utica in 
the same county in 1843, and in Utica the son attended the common 
schools, and in time learned the trade of a printer. He was one of the 
carrier boys of the Utica Morning Herald while a school boy, and served 
his apprenticeship as a printer in the office of the Utica Daily 
Evening Telegraph, published by Thomas McQuade and James McIver, and 
also in the office of the New York Baptist Register, owned by Dolphas 
Bennett and was published at Utica.  

	At the age of eighteen, with the consent of his parents, Mr. 
Kingsbury removed to Watertown, Wisconsin, to work with civil engineers 
on the Watertown & Madison Railroad, of which, a cousin, Sylvester 
Barnes, was chief engineer. This was in 1856. In the fall of 1857 a 
financial panic, nation-wide, came on; work was suspended on the 
railroad, and on all lines under construction, and the subject of this 
sketch spent the following winter employed as a printer, on the Daily 
Pantagraph, at Bloomington, Illinois. In the spring of 1858 he went to 
St. Louis, secured passage on a Kansas bound steamboat (there were many 
of them at that time), arrived at Leavenworth in May, when what was 
known as the Utah war was impending and Leavenworth was a principal 
outfitting point for the government. The young man concluded that there 
was an opportunity here for employment that would enable him to see 
much of the western country at the expense of the government, by 
engaging as a driver in the ox-trains that were then loading up. 
Accordingly he went out to Fort Leavenworth where the ox corrals were 
located, and spent a portion of one afternoon witnessing the yoking up 
of several hundred oxen and the "hawing" and "geeing" that was required 
to get them into the train. He returned to the city in early evening, 
and the next morning found employment as a compositor on the Daily 
Ledger. Two months later, in July, he was at Junction City, at the 
confluence of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers, three miles west of 
Fort Riley. He had been engaged by the Town Company to do the 
mechanical work on their weekly newspaper, which was to be called the 
"Junction City Sentinel." He found that the Town Company had purchased 
a hand press and a lot of type from some parties in another town, but 
parts of the press were lacking, as were numerous other indispensable 
accessories. These had been ordered from St. Louis by Mr. Lincoln, a 
compositor from the New York Tribune, who had come out and taken a 
claim nine miles from Junction, which he visited every Saturday. The 
editor, Benjamin Keyser, a lawyer, a returned Californian, and an able 
writer, prepared his salutatory, probably read it to the leading 
settlers, and all were clamorous to see it in print, though all were 
informed of the incompleteness of the printing machinery; but anxious 
to gratify the urgent demand, the salutatory was put in type, placed on 
a galley, locked up, the inking fairly well done, and a readable proof 
taken and delivered to the editor. This printing was the first that was 
done in Kansas west of Topeka, and at that time Colorado, as Arrapahoe 
county, was part of Kansas. The Junction City Sentinel was finally 
issued. It was the first newspaper west of Topeka.  

	Mr. Kingsbury spent the winter of 1861-2 at Topeka, the capital, 
employed on the state printing—the state of Kansas having been admitted 
to the Union in 1861, and in March, 1862, he came to Dakota, as has 
been stated. He began the publication of the Weekly Dakotian in May, 
1862, with Frank M. Ziebach as silent partner. Mr. Ziebach had 
established the paper in June, 1861, and continued it for several 
months during the election campaign—and retained a half interest in the 
property and business, when in 1862, the publication was resumed. As 
the first "Dakotian" had been a Douglas democratic newspaper, and the 
new Dakotian a republican journal, political party prudence suggested 
the formation of the partnership in the name of Mr. Kingsbury who was a 
republican.  

	Mr. Kingsbury continued in the printing and publishing business 
at Yankton for full forty years, during which time there were a number 
of new papers started which were consolidated subsequently with the 
Dakotian. In 1875 the Daily was started by M. S. Bowen & Company, Mr. 
Kingsbury representing the company, and in 1902 he disposed of the 
plant and good will, and retired from the publishing business.  

	On the 20th of September, 1864, George W. Kingsbury, of Yankton, 
and Lydia Maria Stone, daughter of Nathan and Laura Stone, of Lawrence, 
Kansas, were married at the home of the bride's mother, near Lawrence. 
They came directly to Yankton, traveling by steamboat from St. Joseph, 
Missouri, to Council Bluffs and the remainder of the journey by stage. 
Three sons were born to them in the course of the following twelve 
years— George Wellington, Theodore Horace, and Charles Stone—all of 
whom are living and reside in South Dakota, except the second boy who 
is in California. Lydia, the wife and mother, died February 1, 1898, 
and after a few years the little family was broken up,— the home 
practically abandoned. The History of Dakota Territory, to which the 
reader of this sketch was introduced at its beginning, was, however, 
entirely prepared under the old home roof—erected in 1864—the only home 
and dwelling the family ever occupied.