F. L. VANDEGRIFT

FREDERICK L. VANDEGRIFT began his newspaper career in Atchison, where for short periods he worked on the several local dailies. While John A. Martin, the owner of the Champion, was governor of Kansas, Mr. Vandegrift, although a Democrat, and the paper Republican, was its city editor. Noble L. Prentis was editor, Governor Martin contributing occasionally, and by the combined efforts of the three the paper was of greater popular interest than ever before or since. It was quoted widespread in the state, and especially was of great influence north of the Kaw and Smoky Hill rivers. Afterward Mr. Vandegrift and Mr. Prentis were associated in newspaper work again; this time on the Kansas City Star, beginning in the autumn of 1891. In 1900 Mr. Prentis died, and Mr. Vandegrift was selected to deliver an address in eulogy of his friend before the Knife and Fork Club, of which he (Mr. Prentis) had been one of the founders.

In the winter of 1893-'94 Mr. Vandegrift became Kansas correspondent of the Star, continuing in that capacity until the spring of 1905. During this period he did his best newspaper work, achieving distinction by his reports of legislatures and state conventions and his weekly Sunday reviews of political events. He particularly had the instinct for political news. His acquaintance in the state was so widespread, and his knowledge of men and motives so keen, that instinctively he knew the logic of the news, and his estimates and conclusions rarely if ever missed the truth. Added to this, a careful education in his youth had prepared him for the work, and, possessing imagination and wit, he was able to turn out reports and letters which never lacked interest. He never betrayed a confidence, and so was admitted freely to the secrets of all political parties. He never lied, never evaded, and thereby his written word was worth full weight. For some years he wrote the "Kansas Notes" of the Star, succeeding the late Alexander Butts, who initiated that department in the paper. Mr. Vandegrift made these paragraphs especially interesting, because he did not join a mutual admiration society. In the course of his newspaper work Mr. Vandegrift has recorded much of the history and legend of Kansas. One of his contributions of this character is a compendium filling a page of the Star on the occasion of the state's fiftieth anniversary.

Mr. Vandegrift's early education was received from a famous Latin school for boys at Keokuk, Iowa. He afterward graduated from Cincinnati College, whose seat is in the county of which he is a native. At present Mr. Vandegrift is the editor of a colonization magazine published by the Santa Fe Railway, but he lives in the hope of returning to the more strenuous duties of a daily newspaper, for which he peculiarly is fitted. His home is in Kansas City, Mo., but his heart is in Kansas. Mr. Vandegrift for some years has been a director of the Kansas State Historical Society.

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