Marshall University - Chief Justice Yearbook (Huntington, WV)

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(Uolmtcl Joseph ICaitg Colonel Joseph Harvey Long, president of the Huntington Publishing Co., and publisher of The Advertiser, was born May 21, 1863, in Lebanon county, near Jonestown, Pa., where his ancestral line was firmly planted on American soil in the first half of the eighteenth century, his parents being Edward Christian Long and Sarah (Roebuck) Long. His long and eventful career in the printing and publishing business began in Pittsburgh, where his family had migrated, when he was only twelve years old. It was at that tender age that he came into possession of an amateur press and a few fonts of type, both text and script. By this crude and limited equipment, he produced visiting cards which he sold to school children and neighbors. Even in this youthful period, he showed unmistakable signs of mechanical genius and business acumen which later was to stand him in hand and elevate him to the front rank of American newspaper publishers and a man of affairs in his state. This limited beginning finally developed into a legitimate printing business, his plant finally being equipped with a power press and adequate and suitable type. When he was eighteen years old, he sold his Pittsburgh enterprise to the firm of Stevenson Foster and, with his parents, removed to LaGrange, Ohio. There the family established a tableware glass works. Col. Long had invested all he derived from the sale of the Pittsburgh printing establishment in the glass making plant. When that venture failed a year following its founding, he found himself penniless and facing the necessity of beginning anew. He made his way on foot from his Ohio home to Wheeling, where he obtained employment as a printer on the Wheeling Sunday Leader, then operated by Dana Hubbard. Hubbard finally sold the Leader. Then came a period of uncertainty during which Col. Long worked in various newspaper plants in the north. He returned to Wheeling in 1885, and worked for the Taneys on the Register until 1890, when he joined with H. C. Ogden in founding the Wheeling News. He sold to his partner in 1898 and bought the old Huntington Herald, an afternoon newspaper. He sold the Herald in 1895 and bought The Advertiser, which marked the real beginning of a successful and eventful career in journalism. The Advertiser was first issued from a frame building on Ninth street, later moving into a home of its own on Fourth avenue, where the Keith-Albee theater has been built. In 1924 he completed a new home at the comer of Tenth street and Fifth avenue, one of the best equipped and most modern newspaper plants in the country today. In 1927. the interests of The Advertiser and The Herald-Dispatch were merged into one corporate entity, with each paper retaining its own editorial management and policies. For a third of a century Col. Long has stood at the front of affairs in his community and state. He served a term as postmaster during the Wilson administration and in 1925 was appointed to Governor Gore’s special tax commission to study tax conditions in West Virginia. He is a member of the First Congregational church, affiliated with various branches of Masonry and active in the affairs of the Rotary club. In politics he is a democrat and his newspaper has given steadfast loyalty to the party of Jefferson. In June, 1884, he married Miss Cora Hildreth Thompson, of Steubenville, Ohio, to which union have been bom three sons, Luther T., Paul Walker, and Edward Christian Long, all associated with their father in the publishing business. Eight

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 AMSV Y Contents Book One COLLEGE Book Two CLASSES Book Three ACTIVITIES Book Four ATHLETICS Book Five COLLEGE LIFE Seven

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