J. Heron Foster

J. Heron Foster

James Heron Foster (18 April 1822 – 21 April 1868) was a journalist and politician of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the founding editor of three Pittsburgh newspapers, most notably the Pittsburgh Dispatch.

Biography

Foster was the youngest son of Alexander W. Foster, for many years a prominent attorney in Western Pennsylvania. Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on 18 April 1822, he became a resident of Pittsburgh in the spring of 1831.[1]

As a youth Foster worked as an apprentice in the printing business, and at the age of only nineteen years became the initial editor of the Morning Chronicle in company with publisher Richard G. Berford.[2] Subsequently he co-founded and edited the Spirit of the Age, and in 1846 commenced publication of the Dispatch, the paper with which he was connected for the rest of his life.[3][4]

A staunch opponent of slavery, Foster was nominated by a Free Soil Party convention in late 1852 for Mayor of Pittsburgh,[5] for which office he ran unsuccessfully against the two main-party candidates. By 1855 he had aligned himself with the Know Nothings;[6] historian Michael F. Holt called him "the city's leading Know Nothing editor."[7] Foster later served two consecutive terms in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as a Republican.[1][8][9]

Foster was an officer in the Civil War, eventually filling the post of district Provost Marshal.[3]

He was the father of suffragist Rachel Foster Avery.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Obituary—Col. J. Heron Foster". The Daily Post (Pittsburgh). 22 April 1868. p. 2.
  2. ↑ Henrici, Max (15 September 1941). "One Hundred Years in a Roaring Cavalcade of News". Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (Centennial ed.). Anniversary section, p. 2.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Death of J. Heron Foster". The Pittsburgh Gazette. 22 April 1868. p. 4.
  4. ↑ "Death of J. Heron Foster". The Pittsburgh Commercial. 22 April 1868. p. 1.
  5. ↑ "News of the Morning". New-York Daily Times. 7 December 1852.
  6. ↑ Holt, Michael F. (1969). Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848–1860. Yale University Press. pp. 140, 152, 164–165, 181.
  7. ↑ Holt, Michael F. (1999). The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. Oxford University Press. p. 887. ISBN 978-0-19-505544-3.
  8. ↑ "Political News: Pennsylvania Legislature". The Huntingdon Journal. 4 November 1857. p. 1.
  9. ↑ "Allegheny County Returns". Pittsburgh Morning Post. 14 October 1858. p. 3.