JACOB WENK.
COL. J. W. H. REISINGER.
SAMUEL P. BRIGHAM
R. F. Blair, who had taken the Echo in 1861, disposed of it in 1863 to J. W. Smullin, by whom the materials were removed to Oil City. Walter L. Porter’s Rising Sun, W. R. Johns’ Messenger, Needle & Crowley’s Register, P. McDowell’s News, Col. Sam. Young’s Telegraph, Hulings & Moriarty’s Times and Gouchler Brothers’ Critic in turn flitted across the Emlenton horizon. E. H. Cubbison exploited the Home News in 1885 and it is still holding the fort.
Getting back from the war safe and sound, Conver pitched his tent at Tionesta in 1866 and generated the Forest Press. Its peculiar motto—“The first and only paper printed in Forest county and about the only paper of the kind printed anywhere”—indicated the novel stripe of this unique weekly. The crowning feature was its department of “Splinters,” which included the weird creations of the owner’s vivid fancy. The Press, after running smoothly a dozen years, did not long survive its eccentric, gifted proprietor, who answered the final roll-call in the spring of 1878, meeting death unflinchingly. He wrote a short will and asked Samuel D. Irwin, his trusted adviser, to prepare his obituary, “sense first, nonsense afterwards.” The Bee, which Col. Reisinger hived in 1867, sipped honey a season and flew away. J. B. Muse’s Vindicator and Jacob Wenk’s Republican occupy the field. Mrs. Conver left Tionesta and died in the west. Hosts of old friends who knew and understood Peter O. Conver will be glad to see his characteristic portrait, from a photograph treasured by Judge Proper, and “a nosegay of culled flowers” from his inimitable Press, “rugged as a jog over a stubble-field:”
PETER O. CONVER.