Peek at newspaper printing history

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CANFIELD — Ralph Fowler left the Mahoning Dispatch, a weekly newspaper his family had run since 1877, for the last time in 1968.

He was getting up in years, and the Dispatch, with its old printing equipment, was pretty much obsolete by then.

He turned over his building, the little house-like structure next to the Canfield Township Hall on the Green, to the Canfield Historical Society.

Inside the building, he left his vitamins, his pint bottle of Boston port and a medicine chest full of old bottles.

He left his tools on the tables and some of his old books in a bookcase in the corner. The old adding machine still has paper in it.

The personal effects are scattered through the building among what amounts to a treasure trove of old presses and printing equipment that is likely unmatched anywhere, says Gerry Grace, a retired printer from Ellsworth Township.

Grace is working with the historical society to get the Dispatch up to speed as a working museum.

It looks in there as if Fowler, all duded up as usual in a tie, a trench coat and a fedora, is coming back any minute to get the Linotype going for the next issue. But he’s been dead for many years.

Grace, who’s blowing the dust off Fowler’s last days in the building, is going to run the Linotype now. He has Sam Burkley, a fellow historical society member, as his “apprentice.”

“When my apprenticeship is over, I’ll be 110,” Burkley said.

They’re going to do their best to get the Linotype working smoothly.

For complete story, see Monday’s Vindicator or www.vindy.com.