The present popular editor and proprietor of the Owyhee Avalanche, at Silver City, Mr. L. A. York, is a native of Lewiston, Maine, born March 13, 1866. His parents were Jerome W. and Martha (Read) York, both natives of that city, and his father of Scotch ancestry. The first representatives of the family in America settled in Maine very early in its history. On the maternal side this ancestry is English, traceable back to Sir John Read, an English nobleman born in the year 1600. Mr. York’s father died in North Dakota, in 1894, at the age of sixty-five years; and his mother is living, being now in her fifty-eighth year. In religious faith they were Universalists.
Mr. York, the subject proper of this brief biographical outline, was the second of a family of three children. He was educated in the public schools, was taken by his parents to New Hampshire, in their change of residence to that state in 1871, and to Evart, Michigan, in 1879. In 1881 Mr. York entered the Weekly Review office, at Evart, to work in the capacity of printer’s “devil,” and in the spring of 1883 left for Telluride, Colorado, where he was employed at the printer’s trade. From the fall of 1884 to the spring of 1889 he was in North Dakota. Next he returned to Colorado and then proceeded to Salt Lake City, arriving there in the fall, and there he engaged in work on the Salt Lake Tribune, as “Slug 14,” until March, 1890, at which time he severed his connection with that establishment to accept the foremanship of the Avalanche office, of which he became the proprietor in 1894.
As a newspaper man and editor Mr. York has considerable ability and enterprise. In January 1894, he published, in book form, a Historical Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owyhee County, finely illustrated, which reflects great credit on his ability and enterprising spirit. The work has been favorably received.
Mr. York was happily married, at Weiser, Idaho, September 1893, to Miss Catharine Brady, and they have three children. Mr. York is an active, member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and in his political principles he is a “silver” Republican.