Medill, Joseph

Born: 1823-04-06 New Brunswick

Died: 1899-03-16 San Antonio, Texas

Joseph Medill moved to Stark County, Ohio, when he was nine and later studied law in Canton. He earned admittance to the bar in 1846 and started a practice in New Philadelphia. A Whig, Medill took an increasing interest in local journalism and became co-owner of the Coshocton Democratic Whig in 1849, renaming it the Republican. He moved to Cleveland and purchased the Daily Forest City in 1852. That same year, he married Katharine Patrick, with whom he had three children. Medill also became heavily involved in creating a new party to replace the Whigs and held a meeting in his Cleveland office to that effect in 1854. He is credited with coining the name "Republican" for the new party and became one of its greatest advocates as managing editor of the Chicago Tribune in 1855. He purchased the paper with Charles H. Ray that year and Ray served as editor-in-chief until 1863, when Medill took over. He was one of the masterminds of Abraham Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign and a key advocate of holding the Republican National Convention in Chicago that year. During the Civil War, Medill largely supported the Lincoln administration although he urged an emancipationist war policy. Medill lost control of the Tribune in 1865, when other investors purchased it.

Joseph P. McKerns, "Medill, Joseph," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15:236-37; Megan McKinney, The Magnificent Medills: America's Royal Family of Journalism During a Century of Turbulent Splendor (New York: HarperCollins, 2011); Lloyd Wendt, Chicago Tribune: The Rise of a Great American Newspaper (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1979).