The Mishawaka Democrat, 1891–1911, and its founder the lieutenant governor

1891–1911 · the second paper

On July 4, 1891, Mishawaka became a two-paper town again: "there seemed to a young man an opportunity for another paper in Mishawaka, and the Mishawaka Democrat was launched… by William P. O'Neill." Howard's verdict, writing in 1907 with the paper before him, was that the event justified the anticipation: "The Democrat has continued to hold its place and has thus shown that there was room for two newspapers in Mishawaka." The Democrat was the Democratic organ against the Republican Enterprise, and its founder was seventeen in the year of the launch — William P. O'Neill, born February 7, 1874, at South Bend. The paper's course in the surviving record: the library holds the Democrat for January 1897 to December 1898 and again for July 1907 to August 1908; the directory record carried in O'Neill's biography gives the paper's operation as 1891 through 1911; and Ayer's 1920 directory, which lists the Enterprise, does not list the Democrat — the bracket closes consistently on an end in or near 1911, after which Mishawaka had one paper again.

O'Neill's own course outgrew his paper. The Indiana Historical Bureau's official roll of lieutenant governors gives "William P. O'Neill, Dem., 1/13/1913–1/8/1917, Mishawaka" — the Democrat's founder presiding over the state senate through the Ralston administration, a Mishawaka editor in the state's second office. The crime record of this section carries him once more, as a victim: attacked on March 1, 1920, with the Enterprise of April 2, 1920, describing him, in the surviving transcription, as the former lieutenant governor. He died at Mishawaka on February 17, 1955. The Democrat's twenty years stand as the town's one sustained experiment in a party-balanced press: a Republican weekly of the 1850s and a Democratic weekly of 1891, dividing the town's politics between two mastheads until 1911.

Sources

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), "The Press," on the Democrat's launching, read first-hand.
2. Indiana Historical Bureau, the official list of Indiana lieutenant governors, O'Neill's term and Mishawaka residence.
3. William P. O'Neill, biographical record and its cited newspaper-directory source, for the Democrat's operation 1891–1911 and his birth and death dates.
4. Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, newspaper holdings list, the Democrat runs of 1897–98 and 1907–08; N. W. Ayer & Son's directory (1920), the Democrat's absence from the Mishawaka entry.