HISTORY HAPPENINGS: The rise and fall of J.G. Davenport

One of the more curious characters in Cedar Rapids’ early history was an enterprising young businessman who bought into a newspaper and parlayed his media influence to become postmaster.

Incompetence or dishonesty — or perhaps both — were ultimately responsible for his downfall.

Joseph G. Davenport was 25 years old when he arrived in Cedar Rapids in 1857. He was born in New York and came to Iowa by way of Michigan. He was a printer and found significant work right away, printing the city’s first bonds. The 1860 U.S Census reported he had a wife, Elizabeth, who was 2 years younger.

Cedar Rapids was incorporated in 1849. By 1856, the state census recorded 2,612 families living in Linn County and a population of 14,702, with 403 families (2,300 people) living in what was designated as “Rapids.”

The city was often referred to as Rapids City or Rapids Township. Marion was the largest city in the county at the time, boasting 507 families (2,837 people). Cedar Rapids formally reincorporated in 1856 as an influx of Czech immigrants began fueling a population boom that wouldn’t level off until it hit 110,000 in the 1970s.

Read all about it

As Davenport’s printing business took off in the burgeoning city, he bought an interest in the city’s first newspaper, The Cedar Valley Times, which had been owned by city patriarch Judge George Greene a few years before.

The paper was called The Progressive Era when it launched in 1851. It leaned Democratic in its earliest days and was influential in local matters. Greene’s cousin, Elizabeth Calder Rock, a notable figure in the early days of Linn County, edited the paper shortly before Davenport’s arrival.

Newspapers were an increasingly vital source of information as the political landscape changed just before the Civil War.

Slave-owning Southerners considered themselves Democrats and the party’s adversary, the Whig party, was becoming less relevant. Northern Protestants, farmers and businessmen were promoting a unified opposition to slave ownership and this resounded nicely with Iowans looking to secure their state’s identity as pro-Union. Iowa’s Republican Party leadership organized in 1856 and The Cedar Valley Times shifted from a Democratic- to a Republican-leaning paper.

Influencer

Davenport became heavily involved with the Republican Party.

By the end of the 1850s, he was involved with efforts to organize newspapers in the state to share content and standardize advertising practices. He traveled to Chicago regularly and won the favor of the Chicago Tribune editor, who printed front-page mentions of advertising opportunities in the Cedar Valley Times for Chicago business owners looking to expand to new markets.

The Cedar Valley Times was the most successful paper in the region just before and during the Civil War. But despite his rise as a publisher of importance, Davenport wasn’t earning the reputation of a newsman’s newsman.

Iowa journalism historian Frederick J. Lazell wrote that Davenport “had not the ability to write a three-line notice of a church supper, let alone an editorial.” It was Davenport’s political and business savvy that fueled the paper, which was printed weekly on a seven-column (and later nine-column), four-page broadsheet.

Newspapers were mostly vehicles for boosterism in the early days, touting rah-rah content for political parties, local industries and especially the publishers’ own business ventures and pet projects.

By 1861, expanding wire service networks were bringing news from afar closer to home faster than ever. The Cedar Valley Times was well-positioned to relay timely accounts of southern states seceding from the Union and the events at Fort Sumter that launched the Civil War.

Postmaster

Davenport’s efforts to scale his weekly paper to a daily or a three-times-weekly paper were unsuccessful, but his stock in the community had gone up, especially among Republicans.

He parlayed this clout into a successful election and appointment as the postmaster of Cedar Rapids. A county historian later would speculate it was the first time the position was granted in accordance with a person’s “particular class or profession” rather than their experience.

The post office was mismanaged under Davenport. Money mailed across town ended up missing. Neighboring post offices that loaned stamps to the Cedar Rapids post office had a hard time getting repaid.

Davenport was eventually removed and an investigation followed, revealing the office was short $1,500 — or more than $50,000 in today’s dollars.

Historical accounts of Davenport’s downfall vary — some reference his “financial troubles” as postmaster while one dubs him “the most bare-faced falsifier and swindler that has infested the city since the time of (Osgood) Shepard & Co. in the early day.”

Davenport headed west after he was ousted from his post. He died of tuberculous in San Jose, Calif., in 1866 at the age of 33.

Joe Coffey, a freelance writer and content marketer in Cedar Rapids, writes this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: coffeygrande@gmail.com