Dickinson Co., KS AHGP-Portrait and
Biographical Record of Dickinson, Saline, McPherson and
Marion Counties-A. M. Crary
Portrait and Biographical
Record of Dickinson, Saline, McPherson and Marion
Counties
Chapman Brothers, Chicago, 1893
A. M. CRARY, editor and publisher of the
Herington Times, was born in St. Lawrence
County, N. Y., where he resided until
just before the war, when he emigrated
Westward, locating in Whiteside County, Ill.
Prompted by patriotic impulses, when the war
broke out he responded to the call for troops, enlisting
as a private of Company C, Seventy-Fifth
Illinois Infantry, in which he served until September,
1863, when he was transferred to the Signal
Corps of the regular army, and was on duty at
Gen. Sherman's headquarters during the memorable
Atlanta campaign. At the close of the war,
he received an honorable discharge at Nashville,
Tenn., and returned to Illinois.
Mr. Crary continued to reside in that State,
where he followed the profession of teaching most
of the time, until the spring of 1871, when became
with his family to Kansas, and settled on a homestead
in Ridge Township, Dickinson County. In
the fall of 1874 he was elected to the office of
County Superintendent of Public Instruction for
Dickinson County, which office he held until 1883,
when he again returned to his farm, engaging in its
cultivation for three years. Preferring a different
life, however, he at length made arrangements to
enter the newspaper business.
It was in the spring of 1886 that Mr. Crary established
the Hope Dispatch, which he published
until July, 1889, when he sold out and went to
Herington. In this place he commenced the publication
of the Herington Times, a Republican
journal, which he still owns and edits, it having
had a continuous and successful career since. The
Times was the third paper started in Herington.
The first was the Tribune, published by Thomas
Gallagher in 1886. The office was leased in 1887
to Frank Sage, and
Mr. Gallagher commenced the
publication of the Head Light, which disappeared,
however, before the year was out. In 1889 the
publication of the Times was begun, and afterward
the Vindicator, edited by L. P. Kemper. This
periodical was short-lived, being sold to the Times
when it was only six mouths old. Soon after this
the Tribune ceased publication, and the field was
left entirely to the Times, but in the summer of
1891 the Herington Signal, an Alliance paper, was
brought into existence, and both the Times and
the Signal are now being published, together with
the Herington Journal, a monthly periodical,
which is published in the interest of the Golden
Belt wheat-growing district of Central Kansas.
(c) 2009 Sheryl McClure for
Dickinson County KS AHGP