Richard Harrison Trueblood. When it comes to long continued service in the newspaper field, some mention must be made of Richard Harrison Trueblood, who had been identified with the Yates Center News for fully thirty years, is its editor and manager, and more than anything else his energy, his knowledge of journalism, have been effective in making that not only the official paper of Woodson County but a strong and vital organ of public opinion in that section of the state.
Mr. Trueblood comes of long-lived and sturdy family stock. He is not the only living representative of his family. His father is alive, he had brothers and sisters who are doing their part to make the world better, and so far as known there is not a single one of the name since the original ancestry came out of England and settled in North Carolina in colonial times who have done anything to discredit this lineage.
Going back to one of the early generations, Mr. Trueblood’s great-grandfather was Mark Trueblood. He was born in North Carolina in 1786, a few years after the close of the Revolution, but before the thirteen colonies had been knitted together as an undivided and indivisible nation. Mark Trueblood had the spirit of the pioneer. He crossed the mountains and found a home in the old Northwest Territory, settling in Lawrence County, Indiana, when Indiana was still a territory. Late in life he retired to Daviess County, Indiana, and died there in 1868. He had been reared a Quaker and was always faithful to that religion. His wife was Millington Askin, who was born in North Carolina and died in Indiana at the age of sixty years. A brief notice of their children is as follows: William, who died in Sullivan County, Indiana, where he was a farmer; Jesse, mentioned below; Richard, who was a farmer and died in Daviess County, Indiana; Henley, who spent his life as a farmer in Daviess County; Millington, who died in Greene County, Indiana, the wife of Doctor Hilburn.
Jesse Trueblood, grandfather of R. H. Trueblood, was born in the Territory of Indiana in 1814 and was three years of age when Indiana became a state of the Union. He grew up in his native state, married there and spent his life as a farmer. Politically, he was a whig in the early days and subsequently became a republican, and though reared a Quaker he afterwards joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. He died in Daviess County in 1890. Jesse Trueblood married Charlotte Scott, who was born in Indiana in 1819, and died on the old homestead in Daviess County in 1891. Their children were: Phoebe J., who married Nathaniel Chambers, and they came to Kansas as pioneers of the territory and homesteaded land in Woodson County in 1858, spending their last years in that county; Mark, who is a retired farmer living at Loogootee, Indiana; Henry S., mentioned below; William H., a farmer in Daviess County, Indiana; Richard, who was a soldier of the Union army, and spent the rest of his days as a farmer in Daviess County, where he died in March, 1916; Martha, who died in Daviess County in 1876, the wife of Peter Ragle, now living a retired life in Daviess County; Almira, who lives at Odon, Indiana, the widow of John Hayes, who was a farmer; Jesse C., a physician and surgeon at Loogootee, Indiana; James, on a farm in Daviess County; Alice, wife of Albert Stickles, farming people in Daviess County; Elizabeth, wife of Fred Shaffer, a farmer in Daviess County; John, on the home farm in Daviess County; Sarah A., who died in 1900 in Daviess County, the wife of Mr. Smiley, who is a farmer still living there. There were thirteen children in this family and as noted all of them grew to manhood and womanhood.
Henry S. Trueblood, who is himself a pioneer of Woodson County and now resided at Yates Center, was born in Greene County, Indiana, December 9, 1838. He was educated in the rural subscription schools maintained in the early days of Daviess County, Indiana. His life was spent on his father’s farm until he was nineteen, and after that he clerked in a store three years, and then followed farming in Indiana for ten years. He came to Kansas and settled in Woodson County in 1871, taking up a homestead of eighty acres on Turkey Creek. He made that his home for about eight years, and had experience of the usual vicissitudes enjoyed or suffered by Kansas people of that decade. He became well known over the county and following his election to the office of county clerk removed to Yates Center. He was county clerk four years, and prior to that had served four years as trustee of Liberty Township. After his retirement from the office of county clerk he and A. F. Palmer engaged in the mercantile business and their relationship was dissolved only by the death of Mr. Palmer. Mr. Palmer’s place was taken by E. L. Gault, and the firm of Trueblood & Gault is still in existence, and one of the principal firms for the handling of general merchandise in Yates Center. They have a large and well equipped store on Main Street. Henry S. Trueblood also owned a farm on Turkey Creek, and had a residence on East Rutledge Street.
He is an active member of Woodson Post No. 185, Grand Army of the Republic, and is serving as its quartermaster. In January, 1865, he enlisted in the One Hundred and Forty-third Indiana Regiment of Infantry with Company K and was with the Union armies until mustered out October 24, 1865, at Nashville, Tennessee. His principal service was in Tennessee, and for a time he was stationed at Fort Donelson. His brother, Richard Trueblood, above referred to, had enlisted in August, 1861, in Company C of the Twenty-seventh Indiana Infantry, and was in service three years, during the most bitterly fought portion of the war. He was with the Army of the Potomac, participated in many of its engagements, including Antietam, and in the three days’ battle of Gettysburg he was wounded and was again wounded during the Atlanta campaign at Resaca.
Henry S. Trueblood gives vigorous expression to his advocacy of the republican party, is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was formerly affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and belongs to Yates Center Lodge, No. 99, of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and to the Commercial Club of Yates Center.
In 1861 in Daviess County, Indiana, he married Miss Julia Gowan. He was born in Greene County, Indiana, in 1842. Their children are: Richard H.; William H., who served as register of deeds in Woodson County four years and is now assisting with the Yates Center News; Charles A., who for the past eighteen years had been assistant postmaster at Yates Center; Cora B., who died in infancy, and Clara A., who died when one year old; Flora D., wife of E. L. Gault, a Yates Center merchant and business partner of Henry S. Trueblood; Lillian E., who resided at home with her parents.
Richard Harrison Trueblood was born in Daviess County, Indiana, January 15, 1863, and was about eight years of age when the family came to Woodson County. As a boy he attended the rural schools kept in Liberty Township, and the first eighteen years of his life were spent quietly and without special event on his father’s farm. On leaving home he came to Yates Center, and attended school there one year, at the same time serving his apprenticeship in the printing trade. He learned the art preservative with the Yates Center News, and in July, 1886, bought an interest in that old and influential journal. Since then he had been editor and manager and his business partner in the ownership is F. L. Stephenson, president of the Commercial Bank of Yates Center.
The Yates Center News was established in 1877 by Abe Steinbarger. It had published the news fearlessly and had advocated its convictions of right with equal fearlessness now for forty years. It is republican in doctrine and had a large circulation over Woodson and surrounding counties. The plant and offices are well equipped, and modern machinery prevails, though in the early days of the newspaper’s history its equipment was somewhat primitive.
Mr. Trueblood had always been personally identified with the welfare of the republican party in his section of Kansas. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, belongs to the State Editorial Association, to the Yates Center Commercial Club and had held all the subordinate offices in Gilead Lodge No. 144, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons at Yates Center. His home is on Rutledge Street, and he also owned the building on Main Street in which the News is published.
In April, 1913, at Wichita, Mr. Trueblood married Miss Jessie M. Hulsey, daughter of Jesse and Elizabeth A. Hulsey. Her father was a farmer in Georgia and is now deceased. Her mother resided with Mr. and Mrs. Trueblood. The latter have one child, Richard Hulsey, born in June, 1914.