A while back Katherine Kerby got a phone call from a retired British soldier living in Canada. He was doing genealogical research on his cousin Susan, who he said, “had been lost to the wilds of Mississippi.”
In Katherine the researcher had found the mother lode of information about their mutual relative, Susan Casement Maer, an extraordinary woman whose story is inextricably linked with the history of Columbus.
As do many stories, this one begins with a road trip. In 1848 or ’49 Samuel Maer and two companions left Columbus for California, lured there as were many others by the Gold Rush. Failing to strike it rich — Sam’s father, Abram, was a man of means, so presumably he had other options — Samuel set sail from California to Australia.
There he found his fortune in the form of Susan Carew Casement, the beautiful Australian-born daughter of an English diplomat serving in Australia. Samuel and Susan married, had a son, Octavious, and after two years Down Under, left Australia with their infant child for America. They traveled by way of England where they visited Susan’s relatives and Samuel acquired a Bible his great, great, granddaughter, Katherine owns.
They then sailed to Columbus where they set up housekeeping and had three more children, Melbourne, Claudia Australia and Percy, who would be my grandfather’s entree into the newspaper business.
Samuel’s father, Abram, who had a doctorate in theology, had come to Columbus in 1832 as a Christian missionary.
Finding illiteracy widespread, Abram abandoned his original plan. After all, one could not study the Bible if he could not read. Abram became an educator.
By 1835, Abram was principal of Franklin Academy. He was instrumental in the founding of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the Mississippi Female College, which was located on a hill northeast of Franklin Academy.
Samuel died in 1874 leaving Susan widowed in her mid-30s with four children. How Susan became the owner of a newspaper is unclear, but best evidence suggests that in 1881, she bought the Columbus Democrat, one of the two local newspapers, and changed its name to the Columbus Dispatch.
She sold the family home, and on the site of the Mitchell McNutt law offices across from the courthouse, she built a lean-to to accommodate the printing press and apartments for her and her children.
In the style of her native England, the apartments stood close to the street with a courtyard behind. That structure is incorporated into the present-day law offices there.
In that time and place, a woman newspaper publisher was unthinkable; working women either taught school or ran boarding houses. According to several accounts, the names of women didn’t even appear in local newspapers until the final decade of the 19th century. Being a foreigner, Susan might have been accorded more tolerance.
As more evidence of her audacity, Susan Maer took her daughter on a visit to England and she, Claudia Australia Maer, played the piano at the palace for Queen Victoria.
Susan Maer’s tombstone at Friendship Cemetery indicates she died in 1906. Her youngest son, Percy would end up owning the paper and moving it to the Divelbliss Building at the 400 block of Main Street.
In 1910 Percy hired my grandfather Birney Imes Sr. Upon his death 10 years later (Percy Maer died at his desk), my grandfather bought the competing Columbus Commercial and a year or two later The Dispatch from Maer’s widow. In March of 1922, he merged the two papers.
In those days The Commercial Dispatch was published on Sundays and Wednesdays. Subscriptions were $3/year. In 1925 the paper moved to its present location and on April 4, 1926, The Dispatch became a daily with subscriptions at $6/year.
There was no air conditioning and The Dispatch building was described in one account as a “dark, rather nonchalant affair typical of small-town newspapers.”
Though the lighting is better now and there is air conditioning, that description pretty much works for today’s Dispatch. No doubt Susan Maer would be delighted to know, quite a number of women play essential roles in the production of this newspaper.
Sources: Old Homes and Scenes of Lowndes County by Sarah D. Hutchinson, Manuscript located in Local History Archives, Columbus Lowndes Public Library; “Two Fifteen” a self-published booklet by Bill Threadgill and Libba Johnson; “Abram Maer,” a paper written for The Pioneer Society of Lowndes County by Katherine Kerby
Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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