Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1889 — DEMISE OF EX-GOV. MARTIN. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DEMISE OF EX-GOV. MARTIN.

The Well-Known Kansas Politician and Editor Expires at Atchison. An Atchison (Kan.) dispatch says: Col. John A. Martin, ex-Governor of Kansas and editor of the Atchison Champion, is dead after a nine weeks’ illness with a disease the physicians could not diagnose. He leaves a wife and seven children. He was born March 10, 1839. at Brownsville, Fayette County, Pa. In his youth he was a companion and playmate of James G. Blaine, who was also bom in that city. When old enough he was apprenticed to the printer’s trade and learned the art in the office of the Brownsville Clipper. In October of 1857 he came to Kansas, settling at Atchison. He worked for a short

time on the Squatter Sovereign, a Democratic paper, and afterward he went to Bedpath’s paper, the Crusader of Freedom, published at Doniphan. In 1858 he bought the Squatter Sovereign, changing the name ‘to Freedom’s Champion and converting it into a free-state paper. Later in the paper’s history the name was changed to the Champion, and it has been an earnest and faithful advocate of the Republican party from the beginning of Colonel Martin’s ownership of it until the present. He was a member of the board of managers of the National Soldiers’ Homes. He was elected Governor of Kansas in 1886. During the war he was Colonel of the Eighth Kansas Infantry and served in the Army of the Cumberland. Forced circumstances cannot - depress a negro or suppress his native wit. The other morning a gang of them were working on the rock pile, and above was a placard bearing the inscription: “Do not disturb us; this is our busy day.” The lowa cheese factories talk of Organizing into a corporation and want a name. We suggest the Mite Society/

JOHN A. MARTIN.