J. L. Avery, editor and proprietor of the Arcola Weekly Herald since April 1, 1893, was born four and one-half miles southeast of Arcola, in Coles County, Illinois, November 25, 1866. The Herald was founded in the year 1883 by H. H. Moore, who conducted it until about the year 1891, when Willis S. Scales bought it and published it until he sold it to Mr. Avery. The paper is in a flourishing condition, strictly Democratic in politics and full of local news, with a circulation of about fifteen hundred.
J. L. Avery was educated in the common schools, the Arcola high school, and took a teacher’s course of two years. Afterward he taught school for seven years in Douglas and Coles counties. In 1892 he was married to Miss Nellie I. Fancher, of Charleston, Illinois. They have one child, Paul Kenneth.
Mr. Avery is a member of the Knights of Pythias and the Woodmen. He is a splendid news gatherer, a pungent writer and a young man of splendid reputation.
