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Power of the Press With the help and encouragement of John Emery and the Farmington Press, the village of Farmington would receive its Charter. So important was the role Emery and the Press played in having the 1872 Charter accepted by the community, the story of he and his newspaper needs to be told. “Horrid black mud, and dust, with filthy, stagnant pools that filled the atmosphere with what in any eastern climate would be a real pestilence,” was Emery’s first impression of Farmington and its streets in the spring of 1870. Emery arrived from Boston in search of a healthier climate. He also came to look around Farmington to see if the community would be able to support a new newspaper. Farmington was without a newspaper in 1870 after Frank J. Mead folded the Telegraph and moved to the Dakota Territory. A native of Maine, Emery had lived all his life on the east coast, but the foggy and damp climate affected his health. It seemed that Farmington’s dust would be more suitable than fog and the fine aroma of Farmington’s filth healthier for him than the salty spray of ocean air. Despite his health, things had been good back east for Emery. Born at Eastport, Maine, in 1822, he spent his youth sailing the Atlantic. His nautical experience qualified him for a place on the Massachusetts Board of Pilot Commissioners. In 1860 he was appointed an Inspector at the Boston Custom House, a position he held for six years, and from which he was promptly discharged because he swore at President Andrew Johnson when he “swung ‘round the circle.” During the congressional elections of 1866, President Johnson made a “swing ‘round the circle” - a tour of the important cities of the east and middle west - to explain the reconstruction policy to the people and to help elect a congress with which he could work. His efforts were a failure. Under the goad of vicious heckling, Johnson lost his temper and hurt rather than helped his cause. One of the loudest hecklers was Emery. After losing his government job Emery went back to the business he knew best. When he was 14 he became a printer’s apprentice and for six years learned the newspaper trade. When he was 26, he purchased the Eastport, Maine, Sentinel, his hometown newspaper. He subsequently moved to Massachusetts on account of his health and purchased the Provincetown Banner and the Harwich Press. In 1870 a change in health led him to sell the newspapers. He went west in search of a healthier climate. Arriving at Minnesota in May, he met General John Averill, a veteran of the Minnesota sixth Infantry, who told him of an opening for a paper in Farmington. Emery spent a few days in Farmington and wasn’t impressed with what he saw, but the town had possibilities. After some doubts and hesitation, he wrote to his wife, Mary, to pack up his type and newspaper equipment, hire a railroad car and come to Farmington as soon as possible. When the boxcar arrived at Farmington in June and finally opened, Emery was horrified to see all the neatly packed type spilled and scattered on the boxcar floor. Type that has been spilled is known as pied type. It took the Emery’s two months to sort them and get them in working order. On August 4, 1870, the first issue of the Farmington Press appeared in town. History of Farmington contributed by David Schreier The PRESS “First Words”
“We shall aim to make a readable and wholesome news-visitor for every family who have cast their lot in this section, and build up and further all enterprises that shall be for the general welfare.” Emery tells his readers that the success of the newspaper and the prosperity of the community will be determined by the readers themselves. “Our usefulness will be in just proportion to the interest manifested by our fellow-citizens in aiding and sustaining us: THE PRESS will be just what its readers and neighbors give it the opportunity of becoming. By their good-wills, their subscriptions, their advertisement, their hints, their communication of news - in short, their general enterprise and co-operation in all that concerns the public welfare - they can sustain here a paper that will reflect credit to their town and county.” He then gives the ground rules for those readers who are interested in expressing their points of view. “On all topics we shall speak freely and with candor; and we invite all who can write to ventilate their thoughts as freely as we incline to ourselves. If they are written with fairness and courtesy, they will not be refused because their sentiments may not coincide with those of the Editor, for toleration and free speech shall be a special characteristic of THE PRESS.” The Farmington Press was a Republican paper and was fair to the residents of the community that leaned toward the Democratic Party, however it wasn’t so amiable to such politicians as Dakota County’s very own Ignatius Donnelly or his supporters. Emery had this to say in the October 13, 1870 issue about a certain unnamed gentleman who criticized the Press in the Hastings Union. “Some sorehead, who was not manly enough to make his complaints to us personally, has written a dirty little mess concerning this paper to the Hastings Union. He vows that he would rather endure the itch or even the cholera, (one of which he is probably afflicted with), than the PRESS in Farmington. Very likely. It hurts. And then his free-trade notions would naturally impel him to kill off any thing started at home - even his “patronage” would do that. Hypocrites generally prefer death to exposure. Our pen has evidently pricked a Donnelly yearling, and it is quite natural that he should bellow. Mr. ‘Low’ (so much of his signature is about right) thinks we shall be heard no more here after 1870. Well, if we should leave, we don’t believe we should cheat the people of Farmington half as much as he has, already. Now, dear Mr. Sorehead, do roar some more!” Emery made it clear to his readership that politics was important but not as important as the welfare of the community. “We shall mainly devote our columns to matters of local importance, and leave political squabbles, for the most part, to those who have a keen relish for such warfare.” Although Emery enjoyed a bare-knuckle verbal battle with politicians, his real desire was to use his energy and journalistic talents in helping Farmington to become a better community. “What Farmington Needs”
It was already obvious to the community what Farmington needed to “reap the advantages that properly belong to it as a place of business,” as Emery put it. Farmington was five-years-old when he arrived and it had already gone through a bitter county seat fight with Hastings and endured an unjust rejection by the governor to be incorporated and allowed to organize a municipal government. The Press had been in business for a month and began to make its first attempts to motivate the community “to whose interests we shall now heartily devote ourselves,” as Emery had promised. He offered two suggestions to improve the village. First, to construct a flour mill on the Vermillion River, and the second, to get incorporated. “Being the center of one of the best wheat-growing districts in the State,” he wrote in the September 1 issue, “there is no one enterprise that is more needed, or that will pay better, than a grist mill. Nature has furnished the power here to hand, in a stream that never runs dry, and where a fall of ten or twelve feet can be obtained. Wheat can be had in abundance - indeed is always to hand, and for lack of he mill has to be shipped as grain, so that even the farmers cannot get it converted to flour for their own use short of a tax of about 25 cents. per sack. Then reflect how much business the mill would add to the village. It would also require the addition of a barrel-maker, giving employment to a score of hands in packing and coopering. The additional business and trade it would stimulate here would pay for all expenses of costs the first year. Even if the water power were not available, a steam mill would be a good investment - as it would have all the business it could possibly do. Why not here as well as elsewhere in the State? At some rate or other, a Grist Mill must go up here, or our businesses interests will suffer.” "The Fair Promise of the Future"
To illustrate his second suggestion - to incorporate the village - he pointed to the example of a few residents he called “the fair promise of the future.” “The village wants trimming up. Property in any village is worth 100 per cent more for having good streets, good fences, good sidewalks, and a good supply of trees about it. The do-nothing, care-less and slovenly manner of letting the streets and walks take care of themselves, will soon spoil the reputation of any village. And a little pride and pains expended upon these will render any place attractive, and enhance the value of every house lot, twice what it may cost to improve them. Here and there we see evidence of taste and refinement about private dwellings. A graveled walk, a neat fence, a little paint and a green shutter, show that the indwellers have a sense of propriety, and desire to make things better. These people are the fair promise of the future, for without them we should have no hopes of improvement. Their example will be contagious - others will imitate them, and in time we shall all be better for their influence. But Farmington needs an organized force to start a reform in its appearance. It should be incorporated, at once, and have a local government that would regulate its local interests. First, the principal streets need to be crowned up, and guttered on each side, sending the drainage off to the river instead of sweltering and festering in puddles as now, creating malaria and engendering fevers. Were it not that our atmosphere is remarkably pure in itself, there would be no living here, from the effluvia arising from every conceivable kind of garbage that is dropped wherever it is most convenient. But so long as it is nobody’s business to make decent streets, nobody will think it worth while to build and beautify. We have thus indicated some of the grievous wants of this village. The people, united, can supply all these wants; and all of them will be better off, in every way, the day the work is done. Will they do it?” Emery had his doubts about Farmington. The first few months for the Press were difficult and the residents were slow to embrace it as a tool to improve the community. He knew how to broadcast the seeds of ideas, and knew the conditions were right for them to germinate, grow and flower in Farmington. He waited to see with whom his ideas fell and how they would develop. He did not have to wait long. Two brothers-in-law, J.M.D. Craft from Castle Rock, and Leroy Fluke from Farmington, organized the Farmington Mill Company in the fall of 1870. Emery would continue to campaign for the incorporation of the village for another year. His persistence would pay off. He would see the unpretentious little prairie town of Farmington grow to become “the gem of the prairie.”
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