Lydia Starr McPherson
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (November 2023) |
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Lydia Ann Starr Hunter McPherson (pen name, Urania; August 11, 1827 – December 3, 1903) was an American newspaper editor. She founded the first newspapers in Oklahoma and Texas published by a woman.
Early life and family[edit]
Lydia Ann Starr was born in Warnock, Ohio, the daughter of William F. Starr and Sarah Lucas Starr.[1] When she was 12, the family moved to Iowa, and at the age of 17, she became a teacher in a local school.[1]
Around 1848, she married David Hunter, with whom she had five children.[1] She was widowed after a short marriage.
Career[edit]
Around 1874, she moved to Caddo, in what was then Indiana Territory and is now Oklahoma and began working as an editor on the Oklahoma Star.[1] She also wrote for the paper under the pen name "Urania".[2] In December 1874, she married Granville McPherson, then the newspaper's chief editor.[1] Around 1876, the couple split, and sometime between 1878 and 1880, Granville moved to Texas and remarried.[1][3]
McPherson remained in Caddo, where she founded a new newspaper, the Caddo International News, making her the first woman publisher of a newspaper in Oklahoma. Two of her sons did the printing for her.[1]
In 1877, McPherson moved across the Red River to Whitesboro, Texas, where she founded a weekly newspaper, the Whitesboro Democrat.[1] It was the first newspaper in Texas published by a woman.[1] It subsequently moved to Sherman, Texas and became a daily under the name Sherman Democrat in 1879.[1][2][4]
In 1881, she became one of the first three women to join the State Press Association of Texas and was elected corresponding secretary.[1][5] She served as a delegate to the World's Press Association convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1886.[1]
In 1886, she was appointed postmaster of Sherman, a position she held for four years.[1]
McPherson wrote for other periodicals as well as her own newspapers, contributing to Cosmopolitan magazine and Youth's Companion, among others.[2] In 1892, she published a collection of her own verse entitled Reullura.[1]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Willard, Frances Elizabeth. A woman of the century: Fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life. Moulton, 1893, p. 490.
- ^ a b c "McPherson, Lydia Starr". Texas State Historical Association, June 15, 2010.
- ^ "Re: Granville McPherson's marriage in 1874". Ancestry.com Message Boards, Dec. 6, 2004.
- ^ "Timeline of Texas Women's History". Women in Texas History. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
- ^ "Lydia Starr McPherson, Journalist". Texas Highways n.d.
External links[edit]
- Reullura on Google Books
- 1827 births
- 1903 deaths
- 19th-century American newspaper founders
- 19th-century American newspaper editors
- American women newspaper editors
- 19th-century American women writers
- 19th-century American poets
- Writers from Ohio
- People from Belmont County, Ohio
- People from Bryan County, Oklahoma
- People from Whitesboro, Texas
- People from Sherman, Texas
- American women non-fiction writers
- 19th-century American businesswomen
- 19th-century American businesspeople
- 19th-century pseudonymous writers
- Pseudonymous women writers