A Seventh of July Farewell

By Mary Carter
EAGLE TIMES CORRESPONDENT

CLAREMONT — During a recent interview with Along The River’s Alex Herzog, Eagle Times Publisher Richard Girard shared that the newspaper’s history could be found in the About Us section online. Our information prompted immediate curiosity. A reader wished to know more about John Warland, the paper’s first editor, who died in a Massachusetts asylum. This is what we discovered.

John Henry Warland was born in Cambridge, Mass., in April, 1807.

Studying theology, Warland graduated Harvard in 1827, but was never ordained. Instead, he moved to Claremont, becoming editor of the newly formed National Eagle. A possible connection was that Warland’s father-in-law was an editor. The first National Eagle office was at the corner of Tremont and Broad and Cornish’s Samuel Chase served as the printer.

The paper, which premiered on November 1, 1834, was highly political in nature. Beneath the claws of the banner’s eagle, it read: “Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable.” Warland would later change it to read: “In this paper, the laws, resolves and treaties of the United States are published by authority.”

Just before Christmas in 1837, Warland represented Claremont at “The Young Men’s Convention” held at Paper Mill Village, now Alstead. A few weeks later, Warland was present at Senatorial Convention No. 10, which met at the Tremont House in Claremont.

Warland read aloud the first seventeen resolves made that day, most of which were outcries against the treasury and President Martin Van Buren. Warland’s final resolution was the unanimous approval to nominate James Wilson II of Keene, a former Speaker of the New Hampshire House and member of the Whig Party, for governor. Incumbent Governor Isaac Hill, a Democrat from Concord, defeated Wilson with 52% of the vote.

Tragedy would strike when Warland’s wife died after a two-month illness in May of 1841. Marianne Carter Warland was only 28. It was said that her loss was a heavy blow from which Warland never recovered.

A year forward, practically to the day, Warland announced: “It is known to a portion of his readers that for some months past, the undersigned has contemplated a withdrawal from the editorial chair of the National Eagle.”

Warland claimed that, as the paper’s premiere editor, he held it with “parental regard.” However, with “substantial and discouraging subscription losses” and a wave of political views turning against him, Warland felt it best to go. He claimed he would do so, “without an utterance of his true feelings” while alluding to them for yet another full, old-style newspaper column.

Warland would admit to drawing on his own opinions in his writings. A Thomas Jefferson quote, “Something must be pardoned to the Spirit of Liberty,” was his defense.

In conclusion, Warland wished that his true friends would live to see a “political regeneration” of New Hampshire.

The paper would now be under the auspices of his partner, Joseph Weber.

Weber posted his own comments below those of Warland’s, vowing that the paper would no longer resort to “personal attacks.” He questioned readers in pleading capital letters if his solo venture would be supported.

Weber’s first edition was simply headlined as National Eagle. The majestic bird and its political quotations were gone.

Later that year, it was reported that Warland was writing campaign speeches and songs.

His sentimental “Answers to the Old Arm Chair” echoed his grief at his wife’s passing. “She is gone, she is gone, but it still stands there,” he wrote. Warland was left with three young children to raise. He never remarried.

The Friday, June 30, 1843, edition of The National Eagle published two legal actions against Warland. The provisions store C.M. Bingham & Co was seeking $125 from a promissory note signed by Warland in February of 1841. Nicholas Farwell and Henry Patten, carpenters in Claremont under the trade name Farwell and Co, sought $48.21. Both sets of claimants wanted Warland’s New Hampshire property attached as a lien.

Warland had left Claremont, becoming editor of the Manchester American.

In 1846, Warland served in the Mexican American War. His reports during this time are preserved in Tom Reilly’s 2010 book “War with Mexico!” Warland’s poetical works were published in an 1847 anthology entitled “The Plume.”

Following the war, Warland served as editor of the Lowell Courier. He is remembered there as a feisty writer with no fear of libel suits. In 1853, Warland associated himself with the Boston Atlas.

Warland lost his 21-year-old son, Robert, to typhoid that following summer. It was around then that Warland experienced the first throes of the mental illness that would engulf the last twenty years of his life.

Warland died at the State Lunatic Hospital in Taunton, Mass., on July 20, 1872.

He left behind a surviving son, William, who was co-owner of the yacht, Hotspur. Moored in Boston, the 208-foot-long Hotspur was noted as one of the finest specimens of marine architecture. His daughter was married to James H. Wyeth of Cambridge.

Warland was buried in his family’s Cambridge plot alongside his wife.

In the fall of 1884, Warland’s name reappeared on the front page of the National Eagle. Not a political word was uttered. Instead, his poem, Voice of the Brook, was featured. The once dismissed Warland was noted as “the best” of the fifty editors who had been associated with the paper since its conception in 1834.

Then editor H.C. Fay had, as a “rough boy,” apprenticed with Weber and Warland. Fay summed Warland up as “a kind man who could be as terrible and as aggressive as his opponents would care to know.”