Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Eber D. Howe

This biography is taken from History of Geauga and Lake counties; Williams Brothers, 1878.

Transcribed and submitted by Becky Falin, 1996.

Eber D. Howe was born of the genuine Connecticut Yankee stock, in the little town of Clifton Park, Saratoga county, on the 9th day of June, 1798, and is still living, as hale at the age of eighty as most men who are his juniors by a score of years. He was the fifth in a family of six, the two youngest of whom, besides himself, only survive. At the age of six years the subject of this sketch removed to Orid, a little town in the central part of New York State, and it was there that the next seven years of his childhood were passed. At the age of thirteen he removed with his father into the dominion of George III, and located eight miles from Niagara Falls. While residing here Mr. Howe saw much of the stirring times occasioned by the war of 1812, in which he afterwards had considerable experience as a volunteer in the New York State regiment commanded by Colonel Swift. His recollections of this period of our national history are vivid and interesting. At the close of the war, emulating the example of Benjamin Franklin, young Howe apprenticed himself to the publishers of a newspaper, - the Buffalo Gazette, - receiving forty dollars for his first year's services. In 1816 he went forty miles farther west, to Chautauqua (now Fredonia), to assist in the printing of a paper started by poet James Gates Percival; but after a seven months sojourn there returned to Buffalo. A little later the young printer went to Erie, and there set up most of the type for the first issue of the Gazette. In the winter of 1818-19 he went to Cleveland, then a village of two or three hundred inhabitants, making the journey from Fredonia upon horseback. Here he soon conceived the idea of establishing a new paper, and, after some delay, did go, in connection with his old friend Willes, who had the year before started the Erie Gazette. This was the origin of the Cleveland Herald, a paper which was conveyed to its readers every week by Mr. Howe, who, mounted upon a horse with a satchel of Heralds under his arm, rode to Painesville and back again to Cleveland. The Painesville Telegraph was started on the 16th of July, 1822, by Mr. Howe, who had removed from Cleveland a few months before. Mr. Howe conducted the Telegraph until 1835, at which time he passed it into the hands of his younger brother, Asahel Howe. Mr. Howe has reared a large family, and has lived long enough to see the fourth generation of his descendants. He has two living children, seven grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. He is the author of a book entitled "History of Mormonism," setting forth its fallacies, depicting in their true light the character of the principal founders of Mormonism, and tracing to its true source the origin of the Mormon Bible. He is also the author of the "Recollections of a Pioneer Printer," to which we are indebted for many items of interest that appear in this volume.