Wilbur F. Storey

Wilbur Fisk Storey (December 19, 1819 – October 27, 1884) was an American journalist and newspaper publisher who was instrumental in the growth of the Detroit Free Press and the Chicago Times. During the American Civil War, Storey pursued a "Copperhead" political line of vehement opposition to Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort.

Biography Early years

Wilbur Fisk Storey was born December 19, 1819, in Salisbury, Vermont. He spent his childhood years on his father's farm, attending local common-schools during the winter months.

The family subsequently moved to Middlebury, Vermont, where Storey was apprenticed to a printer at the age of 12. His energy, enterprise, and fearless expression of his views on every subject gave the paper notoriety. He was independent in an extreme way, boasting that he had no friends and wanted none, and apparently doing his utmost to create enemies. His whole mind was bent on giving the news, though his idea of what constituted news frequently struck some as morbid and indecorous. His efforts yielded him a large fortune.

Storey had supported Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential election.

Storey was a manager, and generally left the writing to others.

Death and legacy

About 1877 his health began to fail, and he went abroad. In the summer of 1878 he had a paralytic stroke, and was brought home. Storey seems to have suffered from dementia in the aftermath, and in 1884 a conservator of his estate was appointed by the courts.

Storey died at his home in Chicago on October 27, 1884, and was buried at Rosehill Cemetery.

The editorialist of the Republican Mattoon Gazette colorfully memorialized the passing of the publisher of his paper's political rival:

Having lived the life of an Ishmaelite [outcast]...there are almost none who mourn at his death; yet it is a fact he has left a mark upon the journalism of the country as deep as any newspaper manager in America. Master of his own fortunes and an empty pocket at 12 years he wrestled long with fate before he gained a competence, although at his death he was worth a million. In his conduct of the Times during his most successful years his professional zeal swallowed every other consideration. He was without conscience, without any sense of propriety, had no regard for morality, decency, or the good name of any living creature in his desire to give "the news." Six years before his death his mind gave way, and for many months he had been an imbecile, whose conception was too feeble to comprehend the audacity of those who had already begun a quarrel over the property accumulated by his own individual effort before he was borne away to his unhonored grave.