Ed Wilkins and the Kingsley News-Times – Part 1

I’ve mentioned several times that despite not being very far back in history my mother’s grandfather, Ed Wilkins is one of the most mysterious characters in the family tree.  He seems to have shown up out of nowhere as a thirteen year old farm hand in Plymouth County, Iowa in 1980. The early part of Ed’s life is still shrouded in uncertainty, but thanks to a small town newspaper, The Kingsley News-Times, a portion of his life, the years from 1905 to 1912 has come into light.

Ed Wilkins and family lived in Kingsley, Iowa large part of his early adult life.  In 1900, Kingsley had a population of 720 and by 1910 it had a whopping 977 people.  Just as today, people enjoyed getting into each other’s business, but before Facebook and Reality television, they used other means.  In towns as small as Kingsley, those that were lucky enough to have a newspaper, could keep up with the Joneses through certain sections of the weekly paper.  In the case of the News-Times, it came out on Thursday. Many of the events recorded were one-liners that we’d probably confine to our weekly planners. A typical example from April 4, 1907 says, “Ed. Wilkins was a visitor at Omaha a couple of days last week.”

In the period of time from 1905 to 1912, there were several dozen references to Ed. While a good half of these were ads for products he was selling in his store and many were the kinds of pedestrian observations noted above, taken together these form an outline of some of the formative events in his life during those years which basically extend from the time that he became the sole business owner of his farm implements store until the time he was established in Northville, South Dakota and no longer a resident of Kingsley.

While most of the individual references to Ed are pretty bare bones, there are a few instances that flesh him out a bit more as a person and gives some feeling for what his life was like.  For instance, Ed ran a large ad in the paper for “The Great Western Manure Spreader, ”  and one of my favorite stories from the newspaper is the following from January 14, 1907:

A book has been published entitled “Practical Experience with Barnyard Manures.”  It is actually worth $100.00 to any farmer who has 100 pounds of manure to spread per year.  The distributing agent for this book is Ed. Wilkins where the book may be had for free.

We earnestly request every subscriber to this paper to call on them at once and get one of these books and follow out the good advice given therein.

I love the title of the book. I guess the Northen’s having been spreading manure for a lot longer than I’d realized.

There are a number of other articles, that give some insights into Ed Wilkins’ life.  Here are a few more examples.

June 25, 2008:  Last Thursday  while putting up hay D. Koegan had the misfortune to have his hand caught  in the pulley to the hay rope crushing it so badly that it was necessary to have the thumb amputated.  Ed Wilkins and Wm. Koegan took him to Lemars in the automobile where we understand Dr. Reeves performed this operation.  This will lay Mr. Koegan up for the rest of the season at least.

June 16, 1910: Ed. Wilkins and his family left this week for Northville, South Dakota where they will remain until the harvest.  Mr. Wilkins is a candidate for the office of County Supervisor  on the democratic  ticket and desires to inform his friends through this newspaper that he will be in Kingsley in ample time to participate in the fall election.  He has been in South Dakota considerable this season putting in his crops on the farm. The place not being rented he did not want it to remain idle so decided to crop it himself.

And the very last newspaper post that mentions Ed, Dec. 11, 1911 (The Victor, mentioned in the article is my grandfather):  Many of our citizens will indulge this Christmas in the luxuries of turkey and cranberry sauce made possible by the fact that Ed Wilkins shipped from his farm in South Dakota a lot of fine young turkeys which were raised by his sons Victor and Raymond this season.  In the past the national fowl has been conspicuous by its absence in Kingsley and these birds will be quite a treat to many.

 One of the interesting things about reading these short articles is that they also give a flavor of what life was like at the time that might not register when thinking about it out of context. One example is the advent of the automobile. Prior to 1908, a typical post about Ed Wilkins ran, “Ed Wilkins transacted business at Sioux City last Friday.”  On March 26, 1908, an item ran that said, “J. A. Shade and Ed. Wilkins went to Sioux City on business Wednesday. They made the trip in Mr. Shade’s automobile.”  The following August, we read that, “Ed Wilkins is now the proud possessor of a fine new forty-horse Rambler touring car.”  Subsequent  entries about trips, such as “Ed Wilkins made a trip to Correctionville last Saturday night in his automobile” unfailingly mention his automobile.  It seems clear that, as an up and coming businessman, having  car was a real status symbol.  Ed, who seemed to be friends with the newspaper’s editor, J. H. Beardsley, no doubt made it a point to make sure his success was out there where everyone could see it.  The form of social media may have changed, but people – not so much. Interestingly, in all the references to automobiles, the word “car” is never used.

More about Ed. Wilkin’s life in “Part 2.”