Volume 10 , Issue 1

Pioneer Lynn G. White - Alva Daily & Weekly Review

Here is a little tidbit about the republican newspaper, that we call today the Alva Review-Courier that I found on pg. 1525, A Standard History of Oklahoma, by Thoburn. Lynn G. White was editor and publisher of the Alva Daily and Weekly Review, in Alva, Woods County, Oklahoma. Mr. White had shown the technical, executive ability, the progressive policies and the civic loyalty that had not only made him distinctively successful in his chosen field of enterprise but had also given him secure vantage ground as one of the representative newspaper men of Oklahoma.

Mr. White was born on a farm in Oneida County, New York, on August 11, 1873, the son of Duane D. and Jennie M. (Mattison) White, both natives of the old Empire State, where Jennie was born April 6, 1844, and Duane D. White was born April 13, 1843. Their parents having been born in New York, where the families were founded in an early day.

Duane D. White devoted his entire active career to the great, fundamental industry of agriculture, and in 1879 he moved with his family to Harper County, Kansas, where he obtained a tract of government land, in what is now Attica Township. He assisted in the organization of the county and both he and his wife endured the full tension of the strenuous pioneer life in the Sunflower State, with the incidental privations and hardships entailed by crop failures due to drouths and the ravages of grasshoppers. Duane eventually reclaimed one of the fine farms of Harper County and became one of the substantial and influential citizens of that section of Kansas.

In 1911 he released himself from the arduous labors, heavy responsibilities that had long attended him and since that year he had lived in gracious retirement at Alva, Oklahoma. Duane D. White married Miss Lillian Douglas, who likewise was a native of the State of New York, and they had a pleasant home in the City of Alva, where they had resided since 1911.

Lynn G. White was a lad of about six years at the time of the family moved to Kansas, and there he was reared to adult age under the conditions and influences of the pioneer farm, the while he made good use of the advantages afforded in the public schools of Harper County and those of the high school at Wellington, Sumner County, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1891.

For 7 years thereafter Lynn G. White continued his effective services as a popular teacher in the public schools of Harper and Barber counties, and he retained his residence in the Sunflower State (Kansas) until 1904, when he established his home at Alva, Woods County, Oklahoma Territory. Here he purchased the plant and business of the weekly republican paper known as the Alva Review, and in 1908 he absorbed the Alva Courier and continued the publication of the combined papers under the title of the Alva Review-Courier.

In 1911 he gave further evidence of his success, progressiveness by assuming control also of the Alva Daily News, and the year 1914 found him similarly taking over the Morning Times. The publication of the Daily Review had been continued by him since 1914 and his success had indicated not only the working out of the rule of the "survival of the fittest" but had also proved him a man of much initiative and resourcefulness in business -- a strong force in the domain of practical journalism. It is needless to say that both the Daily and Weekly editions of the Review had excellent circulation and received a substantial advertising support. It should not be forgotten that both were made effective exponents of the cause of the republican party, to which Mr. White himself paid unequivocal allegiance, his paper being the official organ of Woods County and of the City of Alva.

Between the years of 1880-1881, when Lynn White was a mere boy, he came over from Kansas into the Indian Territory and employed himself in the collecting of buffalo bones, which found ready demand for commercial purposes, and that incidentally he traversed in this enterprise the ground on which is now situated the enterprising and vital little city (Alva) in which he called his home.

At Attica, Kansas, on February 10, 1894, was solemnized the marriage of Lynn G. White to Miss Josephine Warren, who was born in Greene County, Missouri, on May 10, 1875, a daughter of James H. Warren, who likewise was born in Missouri and who became a pioneer settler in Harper County, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. White had one child, Duane Kidder, who was born at Attica Kansas, on December 25, 1894.
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