Historical Account of Surveying - 2

Hopefully this isn't too slow with the images. To read them better, you can zoom in by scrolling the mouse wheel while holding down the "ctrl" key. I didn't see any copyright on this publication or the story.

Courtesy of Frontier Times (The True West), January, 1972 issue.
Written by John Morgan Cotton

About the author,
JOHN MORGAN COTTON 1851 - 1927

The gentleman whose name heads this personal history is the popular editor and manager of the Ainsworth Star-Journal, the oldest paper published in Brown county, Nebraska. This paper is a reliable news medium, and has a wide circulation all over Brown and the adjoining counties. The Ainsworth Star-Journal is the successor of the Western News, established in 1880, The Journal, The Star, The Idea, The Home Rule and The Herald.

Mr. Cotton is a native of Indiana, born in 1853, of Irish descent. His grandparents were born in Virginia. His father, Isaac Cotton, was a farmer, and his mother was a daughter of John Morgan, a captain in the war of 1812. He is the elder of three children, and was raised in Iowa, where the family settled about 1855, locating on a farm in Story county. He received his early education in the common schools, and then attended the college at Ames, Iowa. In 1872 he was appointed a civil engineer on the Santa Fe railroad, and followed this work for some years. He then resigned that position and began teaching school. He was admitted to the bar in Nebraska, in 1875, and has the distinction of being the first person to be admitted to the supreme court on examination in that state. He is a graduate of the University Law School in Kansas, and subsequently practiced in Kansas for five years. After having had about two months' experience in the printing business he located at Louisville, Kansas, in 1880, and became editor of the Louisville Reporter. The former editor of that paper had been arrested and charged with a serious crime two months after Mr. Cotton had settled in Louisville, and he was asked to take charge of the paper, and also to defend the editor in the suit which was brought against him. After a hard fought legal battle Mr. Cotton secured his client's acquittal in spite of the fact that public sentiment was strongly against the man. In fact, although he was proven not guilty,. the feeling against him was so bitter that he was at once compelled to leave town. This, of course, left our subject as editor and manager of the Reporter. After some years in newspaper work he was on the road traveling for different lines of business, all over Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Manitoba, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wyoming, Colorado and in some sections of Wisconsin and Michigan. He was engaged in the newspaper business in Lincoln for three years, also in Omaha for a time, and in 1903 located in Owatonna, where he acted as editor of the daily and weekly Journal for over two years. In the year 1905 he purchased the paper of which he is now editor and manager.

Mr. Cotton was married in 1900 to Miss Nannie Remy, a native of Indiana, a daughter of Dr. G. O. Remy, of Ainsworth.

Mr. Cotton has been very successful in his newspaper work, and is highly respected by the entire community for his active public spirit, and his paper is the exponent of all that tends to the advancement of the locality in which it is printed.