NOBLE L. PRENTIS

NOBLE LOVELY PRENTIS was born April 8, 1839, in a log cabin three miles from Mount Sterling, Brown county, Illinois. He died July 6, 1900, at the home of his daughter, at La Harpe, in the same state, within a few miles of the place of his birth. His parents were from Vermont, and were descended from English settlers who came to America in 1630 and 1641, respectively. His grandfather Prentis served in the Revolutionary army, and two of his uncles gave their lives—one at Bunker Hill and one at Saratoga. Several of his mother's family were enrolled in that war from the state of Connecticut. His father and mother died at Warsaw, IL., of the cholera, in the epidemic of 1849, leaving him an orphan at the age of ten. He went to live with an uncle in Vermont. At the age of eighteen he went to Connecticut, and was apprenticed to the printer's trade. He came West and worked for awhile in a newspaper office at Carthage, IL. At the beginning of the Civil War he enlisted as a private in the Sixteenth Illinois, serving until the close of the war. He was mustered out after putting in four years. He published .a newspaper at Alexandria, Mo. May 13, 1866, he was married to Miss Maria C. Strong, by whom he had two daughters. She died in Atchison in 1880. He edited a paper in Carthage, IL. Capt. Henry King induced him to come to Topeka in 1869 and assist him on the Record. He next worked on the Commonwealth, and next on the Lawrence Journal. From 1873 to 1875 he edited the Junction City Union; then he returned to the Topeka Commonwealth, and about 1877 he began work on the Atchison Champion. He remained with the Champion through Colonel Martin's term as governor, and in 1888 took charge of the Newton Republican. In 1890 he accepted a position on the editorial staff of the Kansas City Star, which he held until his death. In 1877 he visited Europe, and his observations he published in book form, entitled "A Kansan Abroad," which went through two editions. Other books published by him were "Southern Letters," "Southwestern Letters," and "Kansas Miscellanies." In the last year of his life he wrote a "History of Kansas" for use in the public schools, which is to-day a textbook. In 1883 he married Mrs. Carrie E. Anderson, of Topeka, who survives him. She was a delightful companion and helpmate, and their home life was most charming. A settler in Kansas of an early day, and a woman of strong mind and cultivated literary tastes, she sympathized with him in all his ambitions and labors, adding strength to his life.

We will add to the above what one of his friends said in loving remembrance of him:
"Now this man was without a college or even a high-school education, and never saw the inside of a "temple of learning" as a pupil except for a few winter terms when he attended a district school in an old unpainted building in the muddy lane of an Illinois prairie before the Civil War. There he mastered the "three R's" far enough to become a good reader, a manipulator of the hieroglyphics which in those days passed for writing, and over to fractions in 'rithmetic. Then he served from beginning to end of the Civil War, and held his rank—that of a private soldier— throughout. And here occurs an occasion to refer to another trait of his character. Prentis was offered a commission and was urged by his company and the colonel of his regiment to accept, but refused on the ground that he was "unworthy of the honor." He did compromise on "company reader"—an office unknown in any other part of the army, I believe, but which he filled with great acceptability, as I have been assured by several members of his company. Is it any wonder that a man so embarrassed by modesty could not be elected to an office in Kansas, where every man and woman is a politician? After the war he came to Kansas and became a newspaper writer, and his career had begun. It was a rocky road and not always plain. Thousands of the brainiest young men of the country were seeking homes in the New West, and competition for place and power was sharp in Kansas. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. Out of the noble school of intellectual stalwarts thus added to the roll of honor of Kansas I select Noble L. Prentis as the greatest among them. Why? Because of what he did with what he had. Poor, almost penniless, friendless and alone, he came among strangers in a strange country, and, with no resources except the rich endowment of his brain and heart, made his way to the front in every requirement of good citizenship and every attainment of literary and scholastic honors, and maintained this standing to the end of his life. This is not my estimate alone, but will be concurred in by every one who knew him well."

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