Life of Enos, Part 14

The Christman Publishing Co. was formed in 1891, with Enos as president and son William as manager. It was under William's direction that The Reporter five years later purchased a Cox Duplex press able to print 4,000 copies an hour. In 1897, two Mergenthaler Linotype machines were put into operation. Each machine cost $8,000 and could set type at more than four times the speed of a human printer. Later that year, Enos turned over ownership of company to his children, William, Elizabeth and Harry.

On May 6, 1899, after a lingering illness, Ellen died. She had born Enos nine children, eight of whom survived. She had been the light of Enos' life for 50 years. Her death was the end of a great love story, but not the end of Enos' love. He would marry and bury another woman, Catherine Stofer, and marry a third time, to Emma Winebrenner, before Enos himself died at age 83 on Jan. 12, 1912.

William Christman would sell The Reporter to the Observer Publishing Co. in 1903 and quit the business 30 years to the day after he quit school to work for his father at the newspaper. But Christmans would continue to work at The Reporter and the Observer-Reporter for generations to come. The lastof the family to work at the paper was photographer Ron Christman, who died in a helicopter crash in 1973 while taking aerial photos for the annual Progress Edition.

Enos Christman, the old prospector, spent the last days of his life in the home he built on the aptly named Prospect Avenue. The old love story came to light many years after his death when his letters and journal were examined. In the introduction to "One Man's Gold: The Letters and Journal of a Forty Niner," niece Florence Morrow Christman in 1930 wrote:

"The tin box had no air of mystery although it had stood for three—quarters of a century in a dark closet under the stairs of an old Pennsylvania house. It was just a tin box - square-topped and high, double-padlocked and rusted. Everyone knew that all it contained were old letters and papers. It had been designed by one who had gone adventuring, to guard the records of his journeyings. But when his voice had become a memory, the old box was drawn from its corner, and again the dreams and the experiences of Enos Christman lived."

So much has happened in the century since Enos Christman died, yet so much of what he made remains: the house on West Prospect Avenue, the gas company, and most of all the newspaper. Many newspapers have come and gone from Washington; only one remains. It has published continuously for 200 years - daily since 1876 - and never missed a publication date.

It's likely that this newspaper would not exist today if it were not for Enos and for Ellen, who convinced him of the broader definition of gold.

THE END

Life of Enos, Part 13

Early settlers in this area dug wells to reach brine water, which provided them salt, a valuable commodity. Natural gas and oil were occasionally found when digging these wells, but it was not until 1882, when the Niagara Drilling Co. struck gas at 2,300 feet near Hickory that the extent of the reserves could be guessed.

That well became known as the Mighty McGugin. The roar of the gas escaping and burning could be heard as far away as Washington, and it would not be successfully capped and put to use for four years.

Inspired by this discovery, Enos Christman and four other Washington businessmen decided to drill a well closer to the city in hopes of using that gas to heat and light their businesses and homes. Some of the men remembered as boys swimming in the Old Kettle Hole in Chartiers Creek. They would often amuse themselves by lighting the gas that bubbled up from the creek bottom. They formed the Peoples Light & Heat Co. and chose a site near there on the Hess farm, west of Jefferson Avenue behind what is now Ann's Feeds, and began drilling in March 1884. They struck a pocket that would prove to be as productive as the McGugin.

Laying pipe moved with incredible speed. By July 1, the first connections were made to businesses in the borough of Washington. By the end of the month, 46 homes, including that of the Christman family, had gas service.

It was the availability of natural gas that attracted industry to Washington, with the first of several large glass factories started here in 1888. The gas strike inspired other drilling and the discovery of large reserves of oil. At one point, 18,575 barrels a day were being pumped from the Washington field.

Washington became a boomtown. Many became millionaires and the population exploded. The Peoples gas company grew and became Manufacturers Light & Heat, which eventually became the Columbia Gas System. And Enos Christman, pretty much forgotten these past 100 years, had much to do with that.

Life of Enos, Part 12

The Chinese and Koreans were using movable type as early as 1200, but Gutenberg introduced it to Europe in 1436. In 1876, type was still being set the same way: by hand, one letter at a time. That's what made printing a daily newspaper such a daunting endeavor.

It was one thing to print a four-page weekly newspaper, and quite another to do it six days a week. A printer was able to set only about 2 columns of type in a day, so producing four 6-column pages required two people working six days a week. A daily paper would require six times the workforce, but Washington was still a small town at the time, and there was no way to find six times as many advertisers or to convince advertisers to spend six times as much.

Enos Christman's business model was risky. Instead of printing his daily on the big sheets of paper to which his readers were accustomed, he would print a daily newspaper half the size, with half the type. It quickly gained the derisive nickname, "The Dinky." This paper was distributed only in the city. A twice-weekly, regular-size newspaper, using the already-set type from the daily, was distributed to outlying areas. In doing so, the paper would gain a huge advantage in timeliness over his weekly rivals.

Launching the daily was an experiment, conducted in total secrecy. The appearance of carriers on the street on Friday, Aug. 4, 1876, was a complete surprise to the public. The paper announced: "We propose delivering it free of charge at every house, office, store and shop in town for a week or 10 days for the purpose of giving the people an opportunity of seeing what the publication will be. If it is continued longer it will be one cent per copy or six cents per week. No one will be forced to take it."

Almost 1,000 copies were distributed each day during the trial. At least 500 paid subscribers were needed to continue the daily, and they got them, though just barely. When Aug. 4, 1877, rolled around, Christman and Moore had accumulated between 800 and 1,000 subscribers and announced that the experiment had proved successful and the daily newspaper would continue.

Two months later, his health failing, William Moore announced the sale of his interest in The Reporter, and on Dec. 30, 1877, he died. Five years later, Enos gained complete ownership of the business and began looking for ways to grow not just the newspaper, but the community.

That growth would be enormous, and it would all start with a few bubbles escaping from the bed of Chartiers Creek.

Life of Enos, Part 11

Publisher William Moore was elected to Congress on the Republican ticket in the fall of 1872. His partner James Kelley would be unable to take over The Reporter in his absence, and so Moore wrote to Enos Christman, who still owned an interest in the paper, and pleaded with him to return to Washington.

The Christmans, after a 15-year hiatus, returned to the growing borough, and Enos took over as editor and manager on April 2, 1873. His son William, then 15, who had been such a help to his father on the farm, and then delivering newspapers in West Chester, attended school on East Beau Street for only three weeks before quitting and going to work for his father. It would be a career that lasted 30 years to the day.

It was Enos' need to find a suitable home in Washington for his large family and his inability to afford one that led to his founding the first building and loan association here. His house at 21 West Prospect Avenue, which still stands, was in 1874 the first to be built by the Washington Building & Loan Association. Before that pioneer institution passed out of existence, it had made possible the building of many homes and businesses in Washington and was an inspiration to the lending institutions that would follow.

Clark Bartlett, who worked as an editor for Christman, wrote in 1925 of his former employer: "The Major was by nature thrifty and conservative, yet courageously progressive when occasion demanded."
That courage would be put to the test when Christman launched Washington's first daily newspaper in 1876. Many of his competitors and business associates thought that venture was foolish and destined to fail.

And they were nearly right.

Life of Enos, Part 10

In May 1861, Enos Christman helped organize Company K of the Fourth Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps, and was elected second lieutenant. He would not come marching home for two years.

In that time, Enos fought in the battles in front of Richmond known as Seven Days, the Second Bull Run, South Mountain and Fredericksburg. He also survived the bloodiest day in U.S. military history - Antietam. He would learn much later that on that day he fought in the same vicinity as his two brothers, William and Jefferson, none of whom was injured. He was promoted to captain, and then to major, and then President Lincoln sent him home to West Chester in May 1863 to serve as provost marshal of the Seventh District until the end of the war.

It seemed that West Chester had a gravitational pull that Enos could not escape, although he kept trying. At war's end, Enos and Ellen took their six children to Somerset County, Md., to try their hand at farming. It was a hard life, made more difficult by drought.

William, Enos' oldest son, recalled in an article in The Reporter in 1908 that he attended school only occasionally, when he was not needed for work on the farm. He spent many an hour riding a horse while his father followed with the plow, working corn, and hauling and chopping cordwood.

Four years later, the Christmans gave up and surrendered to the pull of home, where Enos once again took up the printing trade at The American Republic. The children kept coming and by 1872 numbered eight. It seemed that they were destined to live out their lives in West Chester, until in November a letter arrived from Enos' old partner in Washington, Pa., William Moore. It was a letter that would have a profound effect on the Christman family and would alter the course of local history.

Life of Enos, Part 9

It was cholera that had decimated the passengers on the steamer that brought Enos Christman back from the gold fields. And it was cholera that would cast its shadow on the door of the Christman home on West Chestnut Street in Washington two years later.

Ellen had given birth to her first child, Mary Elizabeth, on Aug. 15, 1853. Just 13 months later, the dreaded disease took the baby's life. She was buried in Washington Cemetery when there were but few graves there. As years went by, other members of the family would join her in that plot. There are no stones or markers there today. She lies beneath a grassy patch in the shade of a giant fir, overlooking the south and east of the city.
Not quite nine months later, the Christmans' second daughter, Sarah, was born in the house where they were then living on West Beau Street.

Enos and George Stouch managed to do well with the Commonwealth, despite the split and turmoil in the Whig party since the election of 1852. Their partnership came to an end, however, when Stouch died of tuberculosis on Dec. 28, 1855.
"He was a gentleman of fine social qualities - of generous impulses and a fine sense of honor," the obituary in The Reporter stated. "He has left a partner and one child with a large train of devoted friends to deplore his early call from the walks of life.
George Stouch was 28 years old.

Enos needed an editor and partner and found a capable one in William Moore, a 1848 graduate of Washington College. But following the 1856 election, the Whigs, once championed by Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln, were reduced to an ineffective third party and dissolved, leaving the Commonwealth without cause or readership. By 1858, about the time the Christmans' son William was born, the Commonwealth merged with The Reporter, and Christman and Moore shared ownership of latter with Robert Strean.
Later in 1858, the Christmans left Washington and returned to West Chester, where Enos went to work as foreman for his old employer, Henry Evans, at The Village Record. Curiously, Enos did not sell his interest in The Reporter, a decision that would have a significant impact on Washington's future.

Ellen gave birth to another daughter, Elizabeth, in 1859, and she was pregnant with Ella in April 1861 when the darkest days in America began, when Enos would be pulled away from her again, not to return for years.

Life of Enos, Part 8

After Enos Christman returned home to West Chester, he repaid his former employer's advance, with interest, and he and Ellen were married on Oct. 20, 1852. They departed immediately for Washington, Pa., where Enos would take up an offer from a former fellow apprentice, George Stouch, to be his partner in a new newspaper, The Commonwealth, espousing the cause of the Whig party.

Not long after their arrival here, Enos received a grievous letter from John L. Haines in Sonora, Calif. "I am writing for the purpose of conveying to you the melancholy news of the death of D.W. Clinton Atkins, your fellow traveler through many trying times during your sojourn in this far-off land," the letter stated. "...on Christmas morning I thought I would go to see him and spend the day. It is impossible to describe my surprise when arriving at his cabin, blocked up with snow, I found him there alone, covered with smallpox and totally blind. He was sitting over his stove with a blanket around him and scarcely any fire. As soon as he became aware of my presence, he burst out crying and said, 'I am glad you have come for I thought I was to die here by myself and my cabin be my grave.' "

Atkins died on Jan. 4, 1853. Enos could not help recalling him when he and Ellen, then about 6 months pregnant, returned to the Philadelphia area for a visit and went down to the port to see the clipper Europe, on which the two young men had begun their adventure.
"What trying times those were for Atkins and myself," Enos wrote in his journal on May 9, 1853. "It is a true saying that health is the greatest of blessings. How easy it was for Clint to walk into trouble. He saw more hardships in three years than in his whole life before, and he breathed his last in a lonely cabin in that far-off land.
"But the thought of the dear burthen on my arm broke into my musings and reminded me that all was well with me. Indeed, my hopes have been gratified and I have realized a fortune."

For Enos and Ellen, their life together had just begun, and all did indeed seem well. It would not stay that way for very long, however.

Life of Enos, Part 7

Enos to Ellen, Oct. 26, 1851 - This morning I concluded to have my likeness taken (above), and I forward it with this to you. I am only sorry that it is not the original that is to go and the likeness to remain...
Ellen to Enos, Dec. 8, 1851 - How shall I express the unexpected joy I felt when I received your kind letter accompanied with your daguerreotype. You could have sent nothing except yourself, that would have been half so acceptable. Although it was a great pleasure to receive it, it made me feel rather sad to see how much thinner you are. But, oh, that awful California is enough to wear flesh and bones away...

Enos Christman was now living comfortably in the adobe building that housed the Sonora Herald, along with Lewis Gunn and his family, who had made the long sea journey to join him. He and Gunn were now partners and owners of the newspaper, and real success seemed not so many years distant. But Ellen's siren call was getting to him. As summer approached in 1852, Enos began making plans to go home.

On June 26, nearly three years to the day from when he left West Chester, Enos left San Francisco on a clipper bound for Panama, leaving behind his friend Atkins to seek his fortune in gold. Enos planned to take the short cut, traveling by horseback across the Isthmus, despite the danger that involved.
After crossing to the east coast of Panama, Enos boarded a steamer bound for New Orleans and New York. The trip would be comparatively quick, but the human cost high. "Tuesday, July 20 - A terrible day on board," he wrote in his journal. "There have been seven or eight deaths and burials, and a large addition to the sick-list." The next day, he wrote: "There are two new cases of sickness, and two deaths today… My clean shirts were stolen."

Cholera claimed 17 lives on the El Dorado before it docked on July 22 in New York Harbor. As Providence would have it, Enos Christman was not one of them.

Life of Enos, Part 6

(The two men standing in the doorway of this photo of the Sonora Herald are unidentified but could well be Lewis Gunn and Enos Christman. The photo is from "Newspaper in the Old West," by Robert F. Karolevitz.)

Around Stockton, there was a lot more money in harvesting hay than in panning for gold. Enos Christman hit the fields, but "Atkins is still too sick to work," he wrote in his journal on June 1, 1850. "But rich or poor as long as he is sick I shall stick by him and it shall never be said of me that I deserted a friend when health and fortune failed."

A few days later, Enos found work "sticking type" at the Stockton Times. The money was good – about $50 a week. The Times also began printing the first newspaper to serve the gold fields - the Sonora Herald - on July 4, and Enos was sent there to sell the papers, at 50 cents each. Eventually, the old Ramage press, which had printed The Californian, the first newspaper in that state, was sent up to Sonora, where Enos operated it along with editor Lewis Gunn. The two would eventually become partners and owners of the Herald.

There was no shortage of news or other jobs to print. The business of elections was brisk, particularly with California becoming a state. And then there were the Indian raids, the rampages of Mexican bandits, frequent murders and the swift justice of vigilance committees and lynch mobs when horse thieves were caught.

The letters, which usually took two months to be delivered, continued to flow between Enos and Ellen Apple, she always pleading for his return, he always maintaining that he would stay as long as necessary to return well enough off to repay his former employer's investment.

Ellen to Enos, July 14, 1850 - ... Dear Enos, you have made every effort to obtain gold. You have failed in the effort. Be not disheartened. Riches taketh wings and flies away but happiness no one can take away from us. I repeat what I have said in all my letters, that it is not every man's luck to make a fortune. If your health has improved and you have a safe return to your dearest friends, to have made the effort will perhaps be a lasting benefit and repay you for all your trouble. I have told you that a living can be made in Chester County and gold will not buy health and happiness...

Enos to Ellen, Oct. 6, 1850 - ... Advise me to stay and try my luck another season, and in a year from now I promise to be with you. Or beneath the waves of the ocean, or my bones bleaching on the plains, if Providence should so will it..."

Life of Enos, Part 5

Enos Christman found San Francisco an exciting place, although outrageously expensive. "Gambling here is an occupation, day and night, Sunday or any other time," he wrote in his journal on Feb. 22, 1850. "The grey-headed father and the beardless boy are seen side by side vying with each other who can win or lose the fastest, and even beautiful women engage in these games with the same earnestness of the sterner sex, betting their last ounce. I have even heard of preachers delivering a good sermon and going directly from the pulpit to the gaming table... Money here goes like dirt. Everything costs a dollar or dollars. What is considered a fortune at home is here mere pocket money. Today I purchased a single potato for 45 cents."

Prospecting for gold was not all that it was cracked up to be, Enos discovered. He and Atkins left San Francisco by steamer up the Sacramento River on March 11 and began an overland trek to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range a week later. "Our long voyage at sea unfitted us for such a tramp and hence we have been almost worn out, but a day or two's rest, we hope, will restore our usual vigor." Enos wrote on March 19. "For the past few days Atkins was apparently improving rapidly, but today he took a relapse and I fear he may have a hard sickness…"
Rest never came. For weeks they traveled slowly through rain and across swollen streams, through land tracked by grizzlies, wolves and hostile Indians and bandits, to the high ground of the gold fields. When they finally reached Mariposa, pickings were slim.

Panning for gold proved to be backbreaking labor, a day's work often yielding not enough gold dust to buy even a loaf of bread. Through the spring, Atkins remained too ill to work. They sold off much of their belongings for food and soon were down to almost nothing.

May 9, 1850 – While going up to camp to get my dinner, I saw the express wagon pass down towards the city. I expected letters by it and immediately after dinner I put all the money I had, seven dollars, in my pocket and went down to the express office and enquired for the letters. Four were handed me at two dollars each, making eight dollars. I paid the seven I had and asked them to trust me for the other until evening, knowing that I had five dollars due me for a day's work last week..."

Enos and Atkins followed other prospectors in a search for betters diggings, or some other way to make money. Their trek took them near Stockton on June 1. It was there, after 11 months of hardship, poverty, illness bad luck and grueling work that the sun finally began to shine on Enos Christman.

Life of Enos, Part 4

Enos Christman, his friend Atkins and most of the other 50 passengers aboard the Europe suffered from seasickness through the first two months of the voyage. After passing the equator on Aug. 31, boredom set in, followed by peril. Following are a few snippets from Christman's journal:

Sept. 9 - There is nothing to be seen from one end to the other but a dreary waste of blue sky above the rolling water below... But notwithstanding all that has been said of its charms, its novelty is now over and it hath no charms any longer for me. It is nearly 10 weeks since we left port. Truly a long time to see nothing but sky and water and our own good ship, and yet it will be a long while again before we reach port...

Sept. 30 - Deep, low mutterings usually ensue after meals, and not without cause, as this is an almost intolerable place as far as table luxuries are concerned. Our bread now contains worms half an inch in length, and is a little musty, and our duff is very badly cooked, not better than mere dough heated. Complaint was made to the Captain and he gave us directions to flog the cook next time it came to us in such a manner. I shall go to bed supperless. I have been much below par and in bed the greater part of the day.

Oct. 21 - A tremendous wave struck the vessel Tuesday morning, covering the deck with several feet of water and rolling some of the passengers from side to side, ducking them most thoroughly. The same wave rolled a volume of water down the hatchway, covering the greater part of our cabin with three to six inches, which floated some of the trunks about and wet some of their contents… Friday morning the startling announcement was made that on account of this continual tossing about by the storms and waves, we had unexpectedly lost about 1,400 gallons of water out of a large square iron tank and as a consequence, the passengers would be allowed but one quart per day for all purposes...

Dec. 19 - Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Sterling's little boy met with a slight fall, and in the evening he was seized with a severe fit... About 11 o'clock this forenoon the child died. This afternoon his body was sewed up in a piece of canvas, with three cannon balls at the feet to make it sink, and then placed on a plank with the American flag around it… and his mortal remains were cast into the ocean.

Jan. 12 - While lying in the harbor in Valparaiso (Chile) we were almost devoured by fleas, but we were not troubled long after we left. Since then a new scourge has been sent to trouble us. For a few weeks past some have been unable to sleep on account of something biting and creeping over them. Upon search they found their bunks to be infested with bedbugs of monstrous growth and great numbers...

Feb. 7 - About nine o'clock the joyful cry of "Land, ho!" was heard and by going aloft to the fore-topsail guard, I was able to see the dim outline of several ridges of land. At the first sight of the land of promise, oh how my heart leaped with joy!

But for Enos and his friend, their greater hardship was only just beginning.

Life of Enos, Part 3

Enos Christmas booked passage on the clipper ship Europe, but its departure from the Philadelphia port was delayed for several days. While waiting, Enos exchanged letters with Ellen and fellow apprentice Peebles Prizer and learned that his good friend DeWitt Clinton Atkins would be joining him on the voyage.

The couple's prolonged parting proved painful. "I had a daguerreotype likeness taken, which will be sent to you with this," Enos wrote Ellen on June 30, 1849. "Take it, and may it ever be a source of comfort to you. Should I have the good luck ever to return, I hope the mutual pledges given by us may be fulfilled, and believe me that I cannot change. My feelings at parting now, you can better imagine than I can describe."

Ellen was candid in her reaction, writing on July 1: "I return many, many thanks for your likeness. You could not have sent me anything which would have been half so valuable. When I look upon it, it will serve to call up pleasant recollections of the past. But I shall need nothing to remind me of you. The likeness is most excellent but what an unspeakable pleasure it would have been to have taken one more look at the original. I must bear the trial and keep it to myself. I must appear cheerful and indifferent while my anxiety for your future comfort is beyond description…"

The Europe departed the harbor on July 4. It would not reach San Francisco for another 221 days. Enos had anticipated stormy seas, seasickness and even regret of his decisions during a voyage of many months, but he could never have imagined what else he and Atkins would endure before their feet once again touched land.

Life of Enos, Part 2

Ellen A. Martin was born in Philadelphia in 1829. Her mother died when she was just a toddler, and so she was sent to West Chester to be raised by the family of her uncle, Capt. William Apple, as one of their own. She was known to all as Ellen Apple.

Enos Christman and Ellen began courting as teenagers, and by the time Enos had completed several years of his apprenticeship, they pledged themselves to one another. Marriage would have to wait, however, until Enos could manage to make a good enough living to support her - not a likely prospect for a small-town printer working for someone else.

It was near the end of his fourth year at the Record when Gold Fever struck Enos. After the discovery of the precious metal at Sutter's Mill, thousands of men dropped everything and headed for California, inebriated with the desire to strike it rich. Enos saw this not just as an opportunity to flee the drudgery of the print shop but as a way to make enough money to enable him to return home financially secure enough to marry Ellen.

Of course, leaving for California was a problem. There was the matter of his bound position at the Record, and the journey there - by sail around the southern tip of South America - would be costly. Where would he get the money for that?

Much to Enos' surprise, Record owner Henry Evans shared his young employee's enthusiasm, released him from his job and advanced him $400 for the voyage, gambling on the prospect that Enos would make a fortune in the gold fields, much to the benefit of his backer.

And so in late June 1849, Enos Christman left West Chester and Ellen to begin what they both knew would be a long and perilous journey. They both realized that he would be gone for years. They could never know, however that this was also the beginning of a great love story.

Life of Enos, Part 1

Life was good for the Christman family in West Chester, a village just a day's journey by carriage west of Philadelphia. George, the grandson of German immigrants, had become a successful miller and millwright, and he and his wife, Sarah, had three sons who would one day follow him in the business. Then in 1843, everything changed.

When George Christman died that year, childhood ended for his eldest son, Enos, not yet 15 years old. While still attending public school, Enos found work as a clerk and did farm chores to help support his widowed mother and younger brothers. That being not enough, a year later he was bound into a five-year apprenticeship at the West Chester Record to learn the printing trade under the supervision of its editor, Henry Evans.

The position was a fortunate opportunity for the Christman family, made possible when apprentice Bayard Taylor left the Record. After publishing a book of poetry, Taylor would go on to wander Europe on foot and to write about his experiences for the New York Tribune, and would wander the globe as a journalist, poet and lecturer of great fame, but that is a story for another day. This is the story of Enos, whose life's journey was launched by the death of his father.

Enos took well to newspaper work and thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow apprentices. He might have been content to finish out his indenture and stay on at the Record as a career, as meager the income might be, if it were not for one significant distraction. Her name was Ellen Apple.