CLARKSVILLE — I played hooky with a friend recently and headed north to Clarksville, near the Texas-Oklahoma border, hurtling down the asphalt in the chili-pepper red convertible Mini Cooper we co-own. The air was dry and cool, the sky blindingly blue, the road inviting. So we took off for a 96-mile drive into Red River country.
A friend for several months has invited us up to see his mother's antique emporium and museum on the square in this historic town. We finally took him up on the offer, mainly for the pleasant country ride along highways bisecting hay pastures, where cows gathered along the fence as if someone had called a meeting. There's something about driving a ragtop on a lovely spring day that readjusts one's attitude northward, which I badly needed.
Besides, I wanted to commune with the spirit of Col. Charles DeMorse, founder of the Clarksville Northern Standard in 1840. I figure we ink-stained wretches determined to draw a line in the sand against the doomsayers and fight for the survival of newspapers — and I'm one of them — ought to call upon our worthy predecessors for advice, even the ghostly ones.
DeMorse was most definitely a survivor, back when running a newspaper was a far dicier affair than it is now. Like me, he was a transplanted Yankee. Unlike me, he was a warrior who left Massachusetts to join a battalion ginnied up to fight for Texas in the revolution against Santa Anna's Mexico.
After the war, he worked a while in Mirabeau B. Lamar's administration, but when his patron left office he had to go job hunting. Thus, he ended up starting a newspaper in Clarksville, which by 1840 was one of the major entry points into Texas, the other being San Augustine, in deep East Texas.
I was introduced to the colonel a quarter-century ago when casting about for a master's thesis to finish my degree from the University of Texas. At the time I was running a weekly in San Augustine after finishing my course work at UT but not my thesis. I learned about the Red-Lander, another influential paper during the same time frame.
The editor of the Red-Lander, A.W. Canfield, and DeMorse conducted a spirited though long-distance feud for a time in the 1840s. Canfield's successor and his in-town competitor had a far more intimate tussle a few years later that ended in the first editorial killing in Texas, but that's another story. So DeMorse and I go back a ways.
Our friend readily took us over to the colonel's house, which is still standing, though it needs considerable work. The exterior is in good shape, and it has a good roof — two items vital to restoration. The interior is largely unchanged from when DeMorse lived there and plied his trade for an amazing 47 years in a printing office next door. A granite historical marker outside notes his appellation as the "Father of Texas Journalism." I'm not so sure that title fits, but there's no doubt DeMorse was a force in newspapering here for a long time, back when newspapers lived and died as often as goats.
We explored the house, admired the wide-planked floors, the windows that opened like doors to provide a breeze, the fireplaces upstairs and down. I imagined the colonel sitting upstairs, writing an editorial to counter what my thesis subject, A.W. Canfield, had written.
Canfield was a Sam Houston groupie. DeMorse despised the man known to the Indians as "Big Drunk." I'm with Canfield on this one. Luckily, the two fussing editors lived too far away for gunfire to be a realistic option. Both fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Canfield died at the Battle of Mansfield. DeMorse came home and edited his newspaper for another 20 years or so.
DeMorse died in this house I'm exploring, up in the upstairs bedroom. My friend says the story goes that DeMorse by then was too fat to haul down the stairs. They lowered his body by rope out the window. I don't know if it's true, but it's a darned good yarn. I'm sticking with that version.
Gary Borders is publisher of the Longview News-Journal. His e-mail address is gborders@coxlnj.com.
