Many papers in Oklahoma have the name ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat.’ I grew up reading the Watonga Republican and Hobart Democrat- Chief, but it did not occur to me these are affiliated with a political party until I read something in the book in the Watonga Library called “ The Story of Oklahoma Newspapers.”
In the book, chapter 8 is “ Mrs. Tom B. Ferguson: Pioneer Woman Editor.” In this chapter, the author explains why the Fergusons came to Watonga.
Ferguson had won a piece of land about seven miles from Oklahoma City in the 1889 land run that opened central Oklahoma to settlers. He sold that property and returned to Sedan, Kansas where he had been the editor of the paper owned by his deceased father-in-law. He vowed, though, to return to the new territory of Oklahoma. “That chance came when the Watonga Republicans asked him to come there and establish a weekly paper.”
According to the cited chapter, “The Fergusons were traveling to Watonga about six months after the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapaho country to non-Indian settlement. They had been invited to establish the Watonga Republican after four members of the local Republican Party decided that town’s only newspaper, the Watonga Rustler, which supported the Democratic and Populist parties, needed competition. The four men persuaded Ferguson to establish a party organ in the pioneer Oklahoma Territory village and even paid for the cost of transportation for the establishment of the paper.”
The vitriol between the Republican and the Rustler was remarkable. Concerning editor Dennis J. Martz, Ferguson wrote: “The poor, sickening, disgusting, crazy, perjured, ghoulish ghost of what once might have been a cheap imitation of man, known to the people of Blaine County as the editor (?) of the ill-reputed Watonga Rustler, last week opened its nauseating odor and imposed its lunacy upon a public which had long since repudiated it in disgust” One of Benton Ferguson’s (grandson of T.B. and Elva) drawings published in this chapter is the Watonga Republican which often found itself involved in a libel lawsuit. It makes me appreciate the efforts of our current Watonga Republican editor to be even handed.