Charles P. Beebe. Among the well known newspaper men of Wilson County, one who had had broad experience in his vocation is Charles P. Beebe, who during the past three years had been managing editor of the Neodesha Daily Sun. Mr. Beebe learned the newspaper business at the case, and had worked his way up through the various departments of the business so that he had a thorough knowledge of all its details. Under his editorial management this publication had become one of the best daily papers of Wilson County and wields a wide influence all over this section.
Mr. Beebe was born March 31, 1879, in the City of Salina, Kansas, and is a son of David and Mary Baldi (Moore) Beebe. He comes of colonial stock, the founder of the family having come from England to New York prior to the Revolution and is a grandson of Ambrose Beebe, a native of the Empire State, who died in Cleveland, Ohio. David Beebe, the father of Charles P. Beebe, was born in 1832, at Norwalk, Ohio, and was there reared and educated. At the outbreak of the Civil war be enlisted in a Nebraska regiment of volunteer infantry, with which he fought during the entire period of the struggle, and not long after the close thereof, in 1867, located as a pioneer in Saline County, Kansas. The homestead upon which he located is now included in the south part of the City of Salins, and when that city was established he took up his residence there. In 1875 he established the first daily newspaper, The Farmers Advocate, which he conducted for some years, but finally retired from active life and died at Salina, April 12, 1890. Mr. Beebe was a republican in politics and very active in civic affairs. He served as county clerk for a period of sixteen years, and also held various other offices, including those of city clerk and township trustee. He was a faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr. Beebe married Mary Baldi Moore, who was born in 1848, in Rockeastle County, Kentucky, and died December 9, 1914, at Neodesha, Kansas, and three children were born to this union: Charles P.; Mamie, who is the wife of G. H. Wiley, a clerk for the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway at Kansas City, Missouri; and Ray, a traveling salesman who died at Neodesha in 1915 and is buried at Salina.
Charles P. Beebe attended the public schools of Salina, Kansas, but is practically self-educated, for at the age of eleven years he left school and began to serve his apprenticeship to the printing business in the office of the Salina Sun, of which W. H. Johnson was editor and proprietor. Subsequently he became a reporter on the staff of the Salina Union, of which N. H. Gaines was the proprietor, and later was made city editor of that paper. He held a like position with the Salina Republican, but in 1904 went to Monett, Missouri, where he purchased the Monett Star, a paper with which he was connected for ten years. In 1914, at the solicitation of C. E. Cowdery, proprietor, he came to Neodesha to accept the position of managing editor of the Neodesha Daily Sun, which printed its first issue September 21, 1898. The Daily Derrick was the first daily paper published at Neodesha. On May 14, 1896, that paper was started with Robert Akin and Mrs. Lizzie Jones as the publishers. Mr. Akin, a very bright young man, a good printer and a hard worker, had for a number of years been foreman of the Neodesha Register, published by J. Kansas Morgan, who about that time was also publishing the Bailroad Begister, a paper for railroad men. This he moved to Topeka about 1893 or 1894 and went to that city himself, leaving Mr. Akin to conduct the Register. The railroad paper eventually failed and Mr. Morgan came back, but, while Mr. Akin was retained on the Register he had had a taste of the “front” work on a paper, and decided to start a job printing office. About that time the oil fields in the vicinity of Neodesha commenced to boom and Mr. Akin and Mrs. Jones started the Daily Derrick, as above noted. It was a four-column folio, just the size of the High School Booster, with patent insides, and for a time flourished. Then the Register started a daily and a warm fight was started between the two which continued until some time during the summer of 1898, when Mr. Akin sold his subscription list, about 150 subscribers, to the Wilson Clounty Sun for $12. The plant was moved to Cherryvale. The Sun continued to publish the Derrick the same size, but with home print, until September 21, 1898, when it was changed to the Neodesha Daily Sun and enlarged to a five-column folio, with patent insides. Soon after the Daily Sun was founded, at the solicitation of Mr. Morgan and by agreement, both daily editions of the Sun and Register were discontinued. For about two years Neodesha was without a daily paper, and then, in November, 1900, the Daily Sun and Daily Register started simultaneously and the Sun had not missed an issue since. On November 10, 1905, at the suggestion of some of the business men that two dailies and two weeklies were too many, Panl Wiley then being publisher of the Register, the Daily Register and Weekly Sun were discontinued. C. E. Cowdery, continued with the Sun, during both its daily and weekly existence from April, 1894, until his death on February 15, 1917, and the paper is now being published by his estate, with Mr. Beebe as editor and manager.
Mr. Beebe is one of the skilled men of his craft. He is presenting the readers of the paper with a neat, well-printed and well-edited publication, clean and reliable, and accurate and conservative in the handling of news. Its added subscription list of recent years makes it a valuable advertising medium, and it is receiving the support of the most representative people of the field in which it operates. As a live and progressive citizen Mr. Beebe takes part in civic matters and at the present time is the hardworking and energetic secretary of the Neodesha Commercial Club. He is a republican, belongs to the Christian Church, and is a member of Monett Lodge of Elks. He is unmarried.