Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1888 — DEATH OF A NOTED MAN. [ARTICLE]

DEATH OF A NOTED MAN.

Death of Petroleum V. Na»by at His Home in Toledo. David Ross Loke, (widely known as Petroleum V. Naaby) died at his residence in Toledo on the 15th of consumption, aged 55 years. His father (N. R. Locke, a veteran of the war of 1812) is still living in Toledo, at the advanced ' age oi ninety-four. The father was one •of the original anti-plavery men of the country, and young Locke inherited the intense hatred of the “peculiar institu tion” and love of freedom which made him such a power with his pen during the civil war. In the eleventh year he was apprenticed to the printing trade in the- office of the Courtland (N. Y.) Courier. After serving his seven years he traveled through the United States, working at his trade and acting as a reporter. In 1852 he founded the Plymouth (O.) Advertiser, conducting it two years. In 1855 he founded the Bucyrus Journal, and afterward was successively connected with the Mansfield Herald and Findlay Jeffersonian. He was editing the latter when the war broke out, and its columns appeared the first numbers of the renowned “Nasby Letters,” the first bearing the date of April 21,1861. These political satires sprang at once into tremendous popularity. They were copied into newspapers everywhere, quoted in speeches, read around camp fires of Union armies and exercised enormous influence in molding public opinion North in favor of vigorous prosecution of the war. In 1865 he assumed charge of the Toledo Blade, first on a salary, afterward purchased an interest, and finally entire control. He was one of the founders of the Republican party of Ohio, and the Nasby letters were but part of the work he did in the political field. He also did a vast deal of purely litejgry work, having written two dr three successful plays, books of travels, and many novels and sketches for his own paper. He was also a poet of no mean order, and several of his devotional poems can be found in "various church hy muals.Bomefonrc>r~ five years ago his health began to fail, after twenty-two busy years of auduous labor, and he gradually withdrew fiimE.elf from active work.