In 1826, in an attempt to better his situation, struggling farmer Zaccheus Greeley moved his family west from Vermont.  Zaccheus and his wife, Mary, were accompanied by four of their children: Nathan Barnes, Arminda, Esther and four-year-old Margaret. A fifth child, Horace, age 15, remained behind in Poultney, VT, where he had secured a position as a printer’s apprentice.

The first two days of their month-long journey were spent traveling by horse and wagon to Troy, NY, near Albany, where they booked passage on the Erie Canal, completed only the year before.  When they reached Buffalo, Zaccheus hired a wagon and the family travelled along the “Lake Shore Road” to North East, PA, then south to Wattsburg. For the final eight miles of the journey, they exchanged the horse and wagon for a heavy wooden sled and a team of oxen. There was no road through the woods, and the only indication of the route was blazed on trees. After two days, they reached their property, which had a rough, one-room log house. Zaccheus’ brothers, Benjamin and Leonard, had arrived in the area with their families a few years earlier.

The nearest village and post office was located across the state line in Clymer, and the Greeley family became deeply rooted in the new Clymer community. Both Zacheus and Mary are buried in the Clymer Cemetery, as is their son, Nathan Barnes, Nathan’s two wives and several of his children and grandchildren.

When the Poultney, VT, newspaper went out of business four years later, young Horace Greeley—now a 19-year-old journeyman printer—set off on the 600-mile trip to visit his family in Clymer and find a job.  Tracing nearly the same route as his family had a few years earlier, he rode by wagon to the Champlain Canal, then by canal boat to Troy. A line boat took him to Buffalo via the Erie Canal, followed by a steamboat ride on Lake Erie to the town of Dunkirk. The last 40 miles from Dunkirk to Clymer was on foot. Horace made the trek in one day, via Fredonia and then Mayville, often through densely wooded areas. As he reached Clymer, he found his way up over Spirit Hill at night to his family’s cabin in Wayne Township, PA.

Horace found the family attempting to transform the stubborn wilderness into fruitful fields, while cutting and burning trees to make “black salts,” or potash. The black salts brought in cash to use for store-bought goods. Sheep were killed by wild wolves, thus preventing their use by the family as a source of income.

In February 1831, after a month of cutting and burning trees, Horace found work as a printer at the Erie Gazette in Erie, PA, where he earned $15 per month, plus room and board. He enjoyed his time there but, in August, his position was eliminated. Though he would soon urge immigrants and young men to “go west,” finding himself unemployed again, Horace opted to go east and “set his face toward New York City.” Dividing his Erie earnings with his father, he kept $25 for himself and set out for Brockport, NY, where he searched for an eastbound boat on the Erie Canal.

Horace arrived in New York City on Friday, August 17, 1831, with $10 in his pocket. Tall, slender, pale and plain-looking, the 20-year-old had a basic knowledge of the printer’s art and was willing to take on any type-setting task.  He made a few abortive attempts at publishing before finding success with The New-Yorker, a literary magazine (unrelated to the modern incarnation) he began in 1834 with partner Jonas Winchester. Two years later, he wed a teacher named Mary Young Cheney.

In the late 1830s, Greeley became increasingly involved with Whig politics, which naturally found voice in his publishing efforts.  Following work on the successful presidential campaign of William Henry Harrison, he once again made an effort to establish his own newspaper.  The first edition of his New-York Tribune (the hyphenated “New-York” was common in that era) was published on April 10, 1841, with Greeley promising a “Journal of Politics, Literature and General Intelligence.”  Later that year, his efforts expanded to a national readership with the debut of the New-YorkWeekly Tribune, which was mailed across the country and quickly became popular in the Midwest. Greeley’s paper was setting a new industry standard—and enjoying a wider readership—just as the sectional crisis in America was coming to a head.

Horace Greeley was a supporter of numerous progressive social issues, including the abolition of slavery. When, in 1854, it seemed as though slavery would be extended into U.S. territories through the “Popular Sovereignty” provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, championed by Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Greeley helped send free-staters into “Bleeding Kansas,” a term popularized by the Tribune.  Meanwhile, in Ripon, WI, a new political party was formed in response to the act. The new Republican Party (a name possibly coined by Horace) was opposed to the expansion of slavery. It counted among its early adherents a future New York governor from Jamestown, Reuben Fenton, and a lawyer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. These events would mark turning points for both the United States and Greeley, as the latter guided his paper into support of the Republican Party.

In a relatively short period of time, this young man had left Western New York to become one of the best writing talents and most knowledgeable publishers in the business.  Yet he did not forget the family and region he had left behind.  He often sent funds to his parents, as well as to his nieces and nephews. Greeley’s mother died in Clymer in 1855. His pioneering brother, Nathan Barnes, was now married with four children. Nathan Barnes’ daughter, Mary Arminda, would grow up, marry and become the great-great grandmother of many of Greeley’s descendants in Clymer today. His sister Esther married John Cleveland, grandson of Clymer’s founder Gardner Cleveland, and moved to New York City to work with Horace at the Tribune.  

Not long after his mother’s death, Horace Greeley made another trip back to Western New York.  While in the region, he paused long enough to deliver opening dedication remarks for the 11th annual Erie County Agricultural Fair, held in East Hamburg (now Orchard Park), the opening of which had been altered to accommodate his schedule.

By 1860, the New-York Tribune had become one of the most influential Republican voices in the nation, reaching 200,000 readers.  Greeley’s support guaranteed Abraham Lincoln’s nomination that year as the Republican presidential candidate and assisted in his election that November.  Within three months, seven Southern states seceded from the Union.  The fall of Fort Sumter the following April would bring the total to 11, and usher in four years of civil war.

The assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865 left Vice President Andrew Johnson to struggle with Congress over the path the post-war nation would take.  Johnson would nearly be impeached in 1868, as he continued to struggle with Congress over the issues of Reconstruction. When Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War hero, was elected to the presidency in 1869, Horace Greeley watched from his Tribune office as Grant tried to enforce the Reconstruction measures.  Though he established the U.S. Department of Justice and used Army troops against the Ku Klux Klan, his administration suffered scandals. Greeley felt there were members of Grant’s administration who wanted to punish the South.

For his part, the editor took a more forgiving stance on the post-war South, preferring a line closer to the “with malice toward none, with charity to all” approach outlined by Lincoln in his second inaugural address.  And Greeley had not hesitated to put his money where his opinions were in this case.  He was among a number of other abolitionists and Unionists who, in 1867, contributed to the $100,000 bail bond for former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who had been imprisoned since the war’s end.

In 1872, Greeley joined others in splitting off to form the Liberal Republican Party in opposition to the corruption of Grant’s administration. Reuben Fenton, former New York governor and now a senator from Western New York, joined the ranks as Greeley was chosen as the party’s presidential candidate at their Cincinnati convention. 

Greeley travelled by train, making hundreds of campaign speeches during the summer of 1872, sometimes 20 per day. In Portland, ME, he urged an “early and hearty reconciliation among our countrymen.” In Corry, PA, just six miles from his brother’s homestead on the state line, he lamented: “Nearly eight years have lapsed since the war ended and peace and security ought to have been attained much sooner than this.” Clymer, meanwhile,seemed to be tornbetween Grant and the Republican Party on one hand, and their famous adopted son, Greeley, representing the Liberal Republican Party, on the other.

Following a political rally near his Chappaqua farm on October 12, Greeley ceased to campaign. His wife was very ill and passed away on October 30. President Grant would go on to win a second term in office six days later. Greeley did not even win New York State’s electoral votes. 

At the end of the campaign and after his wife’s death, Horace was in failing health. His condition rapidly deteriorated, and he died one month later, on November 29, 1872, before the Electoral College had even met. His 66 electoral votes were divided among candidates from other minor parties. 

Fenton was a pallbearer at Greeley’s funeral. A respectful Grant rode at the head of the funeral procession. 

Grant’s administration continued to struggle with Reconstruction during his second term (1873-1877), with the federal government attempting to establish civil rights for African Americans. At the same time, the Democratic Party grasped for control of the Southern states. By the end of Grant’s second term, Democrats controlled all the Southern states except Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. 

A political maneuver known as the Compromise of 1877 signaled the end of Reconstruction. When, during the election of 1876, a dispute arose over 20 electoral votes from Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana and Oregon, a special commission ruled that all 20 votes belonged to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. In compromise, the Democrats agreed to accept that decision if Hayes would withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South (which would lead to the rise of Jim Crow laws). Horace’s hopes for an “early and hearty reconciliation among our countrymen” had not seen fruition.

After Greeley’s death, the divide between Republican and Liberal Republican came to Fenton’s home, Jamestown. In 1875, John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist Episcopal bishop and founder of the Chautauqua Institution, invited his friend, President Grant, to visit his new educational center on Lake Chautauqua. Fenton’s mansion was suggested as a venue to host a luncheon for Grant and his party. Fenton was a Liberal Republican who had supported Greeley, so, politically speaking, that could not be.  The luncheon party was moved to the home of banker Alonzo Kent, which is today known as the Robert H. Jackson Center. The Grant party then boated up the lake to visit Chautauqua. 

Today, there is a commemorative “Grant Room” at the Jackson Center in honor of the event.