A Note on My Harding Research

The information I posted during 2020 mostly covered Warren Harding's front-porch campaign from his home on Mt. Vernon Avenue in Marion, Ohio. The campaign officially started on July 31, 1920, and ended on September 25. The plan was to post daily on events that occurred exactly 100 years ago that day, but I shared other information as well. You'll have to read bottom-to-top if you want to follow the campaign from Day 1.

I used the open web for some of my research but also information accessible by using my library card or my subscription to www.newspapers.com. The most useful resource was the Marion Star, which was owned by the Hardings at the time of the campaign. I also browsed online copies of other newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Star, and the Dayton Daily News, which, in 1920, was owned by Harding's Democratic opponent, Governor James M. Cox. I also posted information from other newspapers that covered Harding's trips away from Marion during the campaign.

Another great resource I used was Dale E. Cottrill's The Conciliator, a 1969 biography of the president that expanded an earlier bibliography of Harding's speeches. An online version is available at the Internet Archive, but I used a hard copy borrowed from the State Library of Ohio.

Readers should not construe anything posted here as a political statement on my part. I just like Harding as a historical topic.

7/23/2020

A Third Harding Book

The next Harding book I have re-read is the newest: Warren G. Harding & the Marion Daily Star: How Newspapering Shaped a President. The author, Sheryl Smart Hall, worked at the Star and is currently the site manager at the Harding Home and Harding Memorial. The book was published by the History Press in 2014.


I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Other Harding biographers focus on politics and scandals and treat his newspaper career as a "footnote," as Hall points out. This book takes the footnote and develops an intriguing story of how a small-town Ohio publisher used his newspaper to boost that small town and then himself as a state and national politician. Hall provides a history of the paper prior to and after Harding's ownership. Harding bought the paper in 1884 and sold it in 1923 with the intention of remaining a stockholder and editorial writer in his retirement. He died six weeks after the sale was announced. At his funeral in Marion that August, Star employees walked directly behind the hearse.

The cover photograph, taken in summer 1920 and distributed widely to promote Harding's small-town bona fides, continues to show up in image searches today; Hall also includes images from the Ohio History Connection and harder-to-find photographs, most of which are from the collection of Randy and Sandy Winland or the Harding Home. 

Harding's shortcomings as a president are well-documented; his success in newspapering deserves attention as well, which is why this book is essential and should be included in your Harding collection. (I can't be the only amateur historian who maintains one.)
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