My Genealogy Hound

W. T. LINDSAY. There are probably few old settlers in southwestern Nebraska who have been more prominently connected with the newspaper interests of this section, or who have been more active in local politics than Mr. Lindsay, now of the Holdrege Nugget. Mr. Lindsay came to Nebraska in March, 1873, and settled at that date in Harlan county, since which time he has resided in Harlan, Furnas and Phelps counties and is well and favorably known, not only for his personal character, but for his public labors. His chief labors of a public nature have been in the newspaper field, and in that field he is known as a hustler.

Mr. Lindsay came from Iowa to Nebraska. His native state, however, is Ohio. He was born in Guernsey county, that state, in 1847, and was reared in that county and in Rock Island county, Ill., whither his parents moved when he was young. Going to Warren county, Iowa, in 1860, as a member of his father’s family, he there began the race of life. Having been reared on the farm, his first pursuits were of an agricultural nature. He worked on his father’s farm for some years, and then in the fall of 1868 he married Miss Jennie Adams, of Osceola, Iowa, and settled down in earnest to the solution of the bread and butter problem. He followed farming in Warren county, Iowa, till the spring of 1873, when he came to Nebraska and took a homestead six miles north of the present town of Orleans, in Harlan county. There he passed seven years in the toilsome pursuit of his fortunes amid the grasshopper scourges, the drouths, hot winds, blizzards and other discouragements, until, wearying of the struggle, he gave it up and in 1880 moved into the town of Orleans, where he engaged in clerking for a year or so. In 1882 he moved to Oxford and in the fall of that year founded the Register, a live, seven-column folio, republican, weekly newspaper, which he conducted about two years, then sold out. Not long afterward he started the Standard, a publication similar to the Register, and consolidated the two papers, running his new paper under the title of the Standard. This he conducted till the fall of 1888, giving to the people of Harlan and Furnas counties a sheet eminently worthy of them as well as of the wide-awake, progressive little town where it was published. In December, 1889, Mr. Lindsay leased the Holdrege Nugget of Mr. J. M. Hopwood, the veteran newspaper man of Phelps county, which he at once took charge of and which he is now running. The Nugget is not only the oldest newspaper in Phelps county, but it is one that has shown itself equal to the demands of the enterprising and public-spirited citizens for whom it is published, and it is needless to say that it has not fallen off in interest or public favor since it went into the hands of its present manager. Mr. Lindsay is a newspaper man possessing many of the best qualities for his calling. He has the natural acumen for the business, sometimes called the “newspaper nose”; he is an industrious worker, a man of sound sense and good taste and a good writer. And above all he is devoted to his calling and pursues it with enthusiasm. He has a host of friends and of course is not without enemies. No honest, earnest laborer in the wide field of politics and newspaper life ever was without enemies.