Frances Marion Posegate

Frances Marion Posegate (1838–1917), American Civil War soldier, journalist, and mayor of St. Joseph, Missouri, 1882-1884.

Frances, or Frank, Posegate was born in Lafayette, Indiana in Tippecanoe County on October 11, 1837. He was raised in "Little Dixie" in the Missouri and Iowa frontier. His family lived along the Missouri River in Liberty and Boonville, Missouri. Frank's father, Isaac Posegate, was born in Virginia and raised in Fairfield Township, Highland County Ohio. Although his family was Quaker and pacifist, Isaac named his two sons, Francis Marion and Winfield Scott after generals. The Posegate family moved to Fort Des Moines, Iowa for a time, where Frank worked for Lamson Sherman, the brother of General Sherman, as a carrier and printers "devil" for the Iowa Star. When Frank was 13, the family moved to St. Joseph, Missouri. Isaac found work there as a gunsmith.

In St. Joseph, Posegate started working in the printing business, at the office of the Adventurer. He continued in this line of work, eventually opening the first job printing office in St. Joseph with James A. Millan in 1856. After a year and a half, Posegate sold his part of the business so he could publish a newspaper, The West, first published on May 1, 1858.

The paper was published in a town on the border of Missouri and Kansas, where Posegate's extreme nationalist political views were not well received. Posegate's partners in The West were Washington Jones and Edward Y. Shield.

The West became a daily paper in 1859. Posegate was firmly in support of the Union on the topic of secession, but was also against abolitionist views of another paper, the Free Democrat. Posegate bought out his partners and became the sole owner of The West in February 1860. He sold the paper a short time later, in August of that year, to James Tracey & Co. The printing appliances were sold to Colonel C.B. Wilkinson, who started a Republican paper, the St. Joseph Morning Herald.

After the sale of The West, Posegate moved to Memphis and worked as a printer. He was employed at the Eagle and Enquirer. However, his Unionist views were controversial in the south and Posegate moved back to Ohio a few days before the presidential election. Posegate eventually returned to St. Joseph, in 1867, and took over management of the Herald. For the first two years, Posegate was business manager for Wilkinson & Bittinger, and then bought John L. Bittinger's share of the company and became a partner. A year later, in 1869, Wilkinson & Posegate sold the paper to Hallowell & Bittinger.

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