|
George M. Beck is the publisher of the Arkadelphia Herald, a progressive
newspaper which is now in its fourth year. Though only in his thirty
fifth year, Mr. Beck commands the good opinions of those around him, and
since personal respect is the key to success in every department of
life, journalistic no less than legal or official, he has that assurance
of success beyond peradventure. His birth occurred in Warren county,
Ga., on the 9th of October 1855, he being a son of Robert R. and Lucy A.
Beck, natives respectively of North Carolina and Georgia. He received
his first and only school training at the Academy at Warrenton, near the
place of his birth, and in the early part of 1870 he began an
apprenticeship at the printing trade on the Warrenton Clipper, a weekly
newspaper then edited and printed by Maj. Charles E. McGregor, but he
served there only a few months, owing to the removal of his parents from
Warren to Richmond County, Sixteen miles south of Augusta, where the
father, who was a well to do
cotton planter, engaged in farming. Misfortune and financial disaster
over took him about 1872 - 73, and from these reverses he never
recovered. In 1873 George M. removed from Richmond County to
Adairsville, in Bartow County, thence to Calhoun, in Gordon County, in
1874 or 1875, where he again assumed the labors of a printer's
apprentice. His first newspaper experience as editor and publisher was
held at Ellijay, in Gilmer County, Ga., but in this he soon came to
grief. He assumed control of the Courier, a weekly newspaper which had
conducted on a non - partisan or independent plan, and in his eagerness
to do party service, and moved by a natural aversion to political
neutrality, Mr. beck nailed the Democratic colors to the mast - head in
his first issue. The result was that on the morning following the
second edition of the paper under his management, he found the office
doors locked and barred against him, by the authority of the stock
company owning the Courier plant, a majority of whom were Republicans.
Mr. Beck then took to the "case" again as a journeyman printer, working
in Rome, Ga., Selma and Montgomery, Ala., and Vicksburg, Miss. In 1879,
in connection with J. Crutch Smith as printer, he bought the Post
newspaper and founded in its stead the Journal, at Arkansas City, Ark.
After publishing this weekly for less than two years the plant was
purchased by J.W. Dickinson Sr. Mr. Beck than spent short periods in
Memphis, Helena, and Little Rock, and in January 1881 he came to
Arkadelphia and engaged with Clark & Sanders as a journeyman in the
office of their publication, the Southern Standard. In the following
December he purchased the interest of J. R. Sanders, and was here after
associated with Adam Clark as editor and publisher of that paper, until
about April 1888. In April 1889, he and John B. Browne purchased the
plant and the business of the Arkadelphia News, which was soon changed
to the Arkadelphia Herald, in the publication of which he is now engaged
alone. He is one of the ablest young editors
of the state, and is fearless in espousing the causes of justice and
right and the principles of the Democrat party, of which he has been a
member since he attained his majority. February 19, 1885, he was
married to Miss Jennie Browne, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Josephine
H. Browne of Arkadelphia, and by her is the father of two interesting
children---a girl and a boy. |