Edes family had long legacy in publishing

A year ago, when the New England Society of Newspaper Editors decided to present the Yankee Quill journalism award posthumously to Benjamin Edes, Boston printer and one of the Sons of Liberty, the association wasn’t able to locate any of Benjamin’s descendants.

On Nov. 10, Benjamin Long Edes Tolman of Sydney, Australia, went to the NENEA dinner in Boston to accept the award for his ancestor.

Edes is a name of long standing in Piscataquis County, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how the various branches might be related to Benjamin, who with John Gill founded the Boston Gazette and Country Journal in 1754. There have been Edes families in Sangerville, Guilford and Greenville, for example.

In Maine, we’re more familiar with the name of one of Benjamin’s sons, Peter Edes, born 1756 and died 1840, known for the Kennebeck Intelligencer, and then for the Bangor Weekly Register for two years beginning in 1815.

Peter’s nephew, George Valentine Edes, was the co-founder of the Somerset Journal and in 1838 founded the Piscataquis Herald, which became the Piscataquis Farmer and then the Piscataquis Observer, still operating in Dover-Foxcroft. (Dover had been its own town in 1838.)

George was the sole owner of the newspaper for more than 30 years, then formed a partnership with son Samuel D. Edes. Another son, George, founded a paper in South Dakota.

According to an article in Sprague’s Journal in 1921, the Edes family was instrumental in the founding of six New England newspapers and the establishment of four pioneer printing offices in Maine.

A fascinating piece on the history of the Piscataquis Observer is found in Alan Robert Miller’s “The History of Current Maine Newspapers.”

Samuel Edes and Fred Barrows sold the paper in 1888 to a corporation comprising Edes, S.O. Brown, Dr. William Buch, W.T. Elliott, Liston P. Evans, Dr. C.C. Hall, C.B. Kittredge, W.E. Parsons, J.B. Peaks, Dr. E.A. Thompson and C.H. Woodbury.

Evans, a druggist with his own store, left that profession to become editor and publisher of the Observer in 1895. He was active in the paper for more than 40 years. Son Ora L. Evans joined him in 1916 and later ran the paper for 20 years more after his father retired.

For decades, the Observer was run out of the Flatiron Building on Main Street, a building now operated as a museum by the Dover-Foxcroft Historical Society.

My grandmother, Edith Roberts Steeves, worked as a linotype operator for the Observer in the late 1920s. Both she and Ora Evans had birthdays on May 22, and they used to exchange cards for many years. In a scrapbook she kept is a note Ora wrote thanking her for a birthday greeting and commenting, “Those Roberts young’uns were always smart as whips!”

Back to the Edes family. It’s said that it was Peter Edes, at age 17, who in 1773 replenished the china punch bowl at the family’s home as a group of Bostonians prepared for the Boston Tea Party. The punch bowl, which stayed in the Edes family for nearly a century, is now at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where Tolman went to see it recently.

For more on Peter Edes, visit www.bairnet.org/histgenealogy/Edes/default.htm

3348. HODGKINS-WHITCOMB-MASON. Would like to make connection with family of Mary Winslow Hodgkins, born 1879, Southwest Harbor, Mount Desert Island, daughter of Harvey B. Hodgkins, born 1849, Southwest Harbor, and wife of Lavina (Mason) Hodgkins, born 1853. Harvey’s mother was Mary A. Hodgkins. Mary Winslow Hodgkins of Tremont married Joseph Whitcomb, from Waldo, Aug. 1, 1900, and moved to Syracuse, N.Y. Would love to share information. Donna and David Whitcomb, 571 Harris Hill Road, Hannibal, N.Y. 13074; oldcrow9@frontiernet.net

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