Individual Notes
Note for: Ada F. Terry, 1856 - 1938
Index
Burial: Place: Prairie Twp. Cemetery, Holmesville, Ohio
Individual Notes
Note for: William L. Kidd, 1853 - 1932
Index
Burial: Place: Prairie Twp. Cemetery, Holmesville, Ohio
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Note for: Moses Frazee, -
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Note for: Abraham Frazee, -
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Individual Notes
Note for: Knowles Calvin Weiss, 6 SEP 1887 - 22 OCT 1977
Index
Burial: Date: 26 OCT 1977
Place: Rose Hills Memorial Park, Whittier, California
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OCCU Publisher of the Downey Live Wire/Printing Shop
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Newspaper article from THE LIVE WIRE, dated Thursday, 6 July 1967
OLD PRESS GOES SOUTH TO CONTINUE ITS WORK
by Olive Thompson
The 50-year-old Comet-Goss press that has printed millions of copies
of The Downey Live Wire and Leader soon will be on a ship bound for La
Paz, Bolivia.
Currently being disassembled and crated, the tons of steel and
cast-iron parts will be trucked to San Pedro within a week or two, and
loaded onto the Grace Line's Santa Regina.
The press will end its ocean voyage at Matarani, Peru, where is will
be unloaded and travel by railroad over the Andes Mountains to Bolivia's
11,800 foot high La Paz.
There the press will be reassembled in the shop of Jornado, La Paz's
daily newspaper currently in an expansion program.
A NEW LAND
Soon the Comet-Goss will be printing items in the soft Spanish
language for many of La Paz's 320,000 plus residents.
Instead of relaying news about Apollo spacecrafts, "Land of the
Free" and Downey Avenue facelifting, the press will be used daily to
print news of trade in alpaca wool, cinchona bark, gold, silver, cooper,
tin, tungsten and bismuth.
The governmental news it carries may be a little stormier than that
relayed by The Live Wire and Leader during the first 10 years of Downey's
cityhood. But there, as it was here, the press will be used to
communicate events significant in its reader's lives.
Sale to Jornado owners of the press and other equipment formerly
owned by Downey Printing and Publishing Company was consummated by Al
Lopez of Downey through the U.S. Aid to Bolivia Mission and U.S. Agency
for Industrial Development.
Lopez is honorary president of the Graphic Art Association of
Bolivia he helped organize about 10 months ago and hopes to have a
graphic arts school in operation under University of Bolivia supervisor
within a few months. Southern California printers are donating equipment
for the school.
AUGUST, 1940
The sturdy Comet-Goss press going to Bolivia originally printed
newspapers in Van Nuys, coming to Downey in August, 1940, when it was
bought by K.C. Weiss and the late Fannie E. Weiss, Live Wire
co-publishers.
The first issue of The Live Wire printed on the press was dated
August 8, 1940. On its front page it carried items of thieves entering
the chicken coops at Mrs. Ada B. Adams' ranch and getting away with 14
red fryer roosters and 13 hens, of Bill Lansdale leaving with Capt.
Dwight Long on a ketch for sail to Seattle, and Hiram Lucas owning a
highly prized four-legged white leghorn
chicken.
The issue also carried the news that Vultee Aircraft Inc., had made
arrangements to acquire the Stinson Division of Aviation Manufacturing
Corporation and expected to double its Downey employment force of 4,000.
Since that time the press, without fail printed The Live Wire weekly
for Downey readers for more than 25 years and printed the weekly Downey
Leader more than 15 years.
NEW SPEED
There were a few minor break-downs during that time but repairs were
made and the paper always got out.
In later years the press slowed down a little and complained a
little louder but it was far from being ready to quit when The Live Wire
and Leader became part of the Call-Enterprise family of newspapers.
The printing end of the paper production was moved to a faster press
in the papers' central plant in Bellflower, with editorial offices
remaining at 8323 Firestone, Downey. The November 29, 1965, paper was
the last Downey issue to come off the Goss-Comet. Lopez is supervising
dismantling of the press and other equipment. Francis Wissler, on the
staff of The Live Wire more than 14 years and in the printing profession
35 years, has obtained the job printing business. He and K.C. Weiss and
shop employees will continue that business at the same location under the
name of Downey Graphic Arts Inc.
The press move does not affect the Live Wire-Leader's editorial
operation at 8323 Firestone under the direction of Bill Liles.
As soon as the press goes out, Wissler will fill up and surface over
the Comet-Goss pit.
K.C. Weiss who saw the press come into The Live Wire shop will see
it go out.
Newspaper article from LIVE WIRE, dated Thursday, 21 December 1967
AN END TO ALMOST 20 YEARS' SERVICE
K. C. Weiss of Downey has attended his last selective service
meeting as a member of Board 115.
His retirement following 19 years of voluntary service was in
compliance with new federal legislation setting age and service-length
limits.
A veteran newspaper publisher, Weiss had served Board 115 since
September, 1948, his certificate of appointment signed by President Harry
S. Truman.
The board covers Whittier, Norwalk and parts of Bellflower an La
Mirada and maintains a list of approximately 6,000 registrants.
Before 1950 the board met in Long Beach and Montibello, moving is
offices to Downey in July, 1950.
Weiss was praised upon his retirement for his "conscientious,
dedicated, understanding service during peace time and the Korean and
Vietnam conflicts." A selective service spokesman pointed out that
during his more than 19 years of service, Weiss has been absent from
fewer than a half-dozen meetings.
A successor is expected to be named early in 1968.
Newspaper article from THE LEADER, 2 October 1968
"TWO NEWSPAPERS COMBINE OFFICES ON DOWNEY AVENUE"
The office for staff members of the Downey Live Wire and Downey
Herald American is located at 11000 Downey Avenue. The phone number is
925-7465.
The Downey Live Wire's former office at 8323 Firestone Boulevard is
no longer being used for that purpose. However, Downey Graphic Arts, a
commercial printing plant, remains housed at 8323 Firestone Boulevard.
Advertising and editorial staff members of the newspapers are now using
the Downey Avenue office.
The two newspapers last week began pooling their efforts to produce
one larger, more complete paper.
HISTORY OF NEWSPAPERS SUPPLEMENT - HH 05-15-1975
LIVE WIRE TELLS HISTORY
On the first page of the Live Wire, one of Downey's first
newspapers, is the dateline February 1, 1924, Volume 1, Number 1 and a
statement by the editors and publishers announcing the intention of
publishing a weekly newspaper.
"We printed eight pages at a time on a Goss press in those days,"
said Knowles C. Weiss, founder, printer and editor of the Downey Live
Wire newspaper. "My wife, Fanny was associate editor on the staff box."
HISTORY
Early Downey history abounds in the back issues of the Live Wire and
the later established Downey Leader. Stretched across the front page of
the May 29, 1924, Live Wire are stories announcing that a meeting for the
Ku Klux Klan drew a large crowd; the American Legion held a smoker and
the Rotary Club charter night was billed as a big event. Weiss, a
charter member of Downey Rotary, had the page reproduced for the 50th
anniversary. The issue was doubly significant to Weiss as it also
announced a dinner given by
his wife and Mrs. H.H. Caton. Other stories declare that Downey may be a
transit center; sewage in the river is endangering lives; and school
bonds were approved with a vote of 89 to 8.
ORIGIN
Weiss says he started the paper due to a misunderstanding.
"My wife and I came to Downey in 1921, and as we both knew printing
we went to work for J. Ed Van Matre, owner of the Downey Champion, and
postmaster at the time." He said that after running the Champion from
October of 1921 until 1923, he one day asked Van Matre's banker about
the possibility of purchasing a part of the newspaper.
"Van Matre misunderstood the intent of my inquiry. He thought I was
trying to buy the whole business against his will by purchasing his bank
loan.
"He fired my wife that day; and myself the day after," said Weiss,
explaining that when Van Matre found out the truth, he had asked them to
return, but a bank loan for the establishment of another Downey
newspaper, the Live Wire, had already been approved.
FEELINGS
"There was no hard feelings between the families and when Van Matre
died, his wife Marie used her influence to get me appointed postmaster,"
said Weiss.
Leafing through the yellowed pages, certain headlines stand out:
"Captain Josh J. Foss, flying ace, only American to equal
Rickenbacker's 26 kills"; "Downey to purchase fire truck on Monday"
Picture accompanying article reads ... VOLUME I, NUMBER 1 - Knowles
C. Weiss, founder, printer and editor of the Downey Live Wire, shows the
front page of the first Live Wire, forerunner of the Herald American,
dated February 1, 1924.
Newspaper article from SOUTHEAST NEWS, dated Thursday, 6 September
1977
THAT STUFF ABOUT PRINTER'S INK -- IT'S REAL TO K.C.,
by John Boyd, Staff Writer
Pioneer Downey newspaper publisher Knowles Calvin Weiss is marking
his 86th birthday today -- as usual bent over proofs and galleys of type
in a print shop where his former newspaper was put to bed each week for
41 years.
This afternoon, however, some 40 or more of his fellow Rotary Club
members and friends are converging on the old Live Wire offices at 8325
Firestone Boulevard to throw a "surprise party for K.C."
Born a Hoosier in the little town of Warsaw, Indiana, Weiss and his
family went to Florida in 1898 when he was 11 years old. The news was
centered on the Spanish American War when he was apprenticed -- and
became a printer only three months later. And when his boss became
postmaster of Blountstown, Florida, "K.C." went right along as assistant
postmaster while still a teenager.
From Florida, he went to Kentucky and later to Beloit, Kansas, where
he met Fannie Bender and married her in 1908. Almost from the beginning,
they made a publishing team that ended only with her death in January,
1968.
They went to Colby, Kansas, and later to Superior, Kansas, where
Weiss opened the town's first newspaper in 1911. That's when Fannie --
who had never seen a press before, learned the printing trade. She used
to feed paper stock into a hand operated press there.
They went as a publishing team to Silver City, New Mexico, and then
Windsor, Colorado, during World War I, and when K.C. decided to try to go
into officer's training for the Army, Fannie took their daughters, (Norma
Wachtel and the late Dorothea Milling) to Glendale, California to
establish work while her husband was in the ar.
But. K.C.'s papers weren't cleared until November 12, 1918 -- one
day after the Armitice -- so his Army career never materialized and
Fannie returned to Colorado. For a time, they ran a paper at Burns,
Wyoming, but Fannie yearned to come back to California and in 1921 they
both came west to a job in Rialto.
"We arrived in June, and it was the coldest June I've ever
experienced," Weiss recalls, "so we didn't stay long." They came to
Downey that same year and went to work for J.Ed Van Matre putting out the
Downey Champion for 3 years until they parted from Van Matre in a
misunderstanding. As K.C. recalls, Van Matre had thought he was trying
to buy up a note in order to get a part ownership in the company, and
fired both Fannie and K.C. Van Matre learned he was wrong and tried to
hire them back, but in the meantime a group of business men headed by
Ernest Hass, banker Arthur Earby, and others, invited the Weisses to
found another paper.
Mr. and Mrs. Weiss accepted and opened the Downy Live Wire in 1924
one of the lead stories in their first issue on May 29, 1924, was about
the charting of the Downy Rotary Club the night before. Weiss was on of
the 17 charter members and never missed a meeting for 38 years until he
was retired as an honorary member for life in 1962. He was president of
the club for two years running -- in 1935 and 1946.
Weiss also was once Downey postmaster, back in the days when the
post was a political appointment. "I was appointed by Herbert Hoover in
1929, and was 'unappointed,' by Franklin Roosevelt four years later," he
recalls. Weiss ware two hats in those days, continuing to run his paper
after the post office closed for the day. He remembers he was standing
in the post office doorway waiting for the mail truck to arrive so he
could close up when the 1933 earthquake hit at 6 p.m.
In those times of long ago., K.C. used to gather his news stories,
then bring his notes to his linotype machine and write the news directly
in type without putting then down on paper first. "It saved time," he
said.
The picture accompanying the article shows Knowles in his work place
and states "KNOWLES C. WEISS ... pioneer Downey newspaper publisher
celebrates his 86th birthday today -- while still on the job ...
Newspaper article from DAILY SIGNAL, dated Tuesday, 25 October 1977
K. C. WEISS, PIONEER NEWSPAPERMAN, DIES
Pioneer Downey newspaperman Knowles C. Weiss died Saturday in Downey
Community Hospital. He was 90 years old.
Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow at the First
Christian Church with the Reverend John Chase officiating. Burial will
be at Rose Hill Memorial Park. Visitation will be until 9 p.m. today at
the Miller-Mies-McComb Mortuary Chapel.
Born in Warsaw, Indiana in 1887, Mr. Weiss had been active in the
printing and newspaper profession since he was 11, beginning his
life-long work in Florida and ending it in the Downey Graphic Arts shop a
month ago when he entered the hospital.
Mr. Weiss and his wife, Fannie, came to Downey in 1921. For three
years they worked for the late J. Ed Van Matre on the Downey Champion,
then started their own newspaper, the Downey Live Wire, which they
published more than 40 years.
Mr. Weiss, known as K.C. to hundreds of local residents was former
president of the Chamber of Commerce, served ont he Selective Service
Board 20 years and was a leader in incorporation efforts that culminated
in cityhood in 1956.
He watched and recorded the growth of the orange-grove community of
a few thousand residents into a residential-commercial industrial city of
more than 90,000.
During President Hoover's administration, Mr. Weiss served as
Downey's Postmaster while continuing his newspaper publishing. He was
active in the Downey Pioneer Association.
The last living charter member of Downey Rotary Club, Mr. Weiss had
been a member 53 years, served as president in 1935-36 and four years ago
was named a Paul Harris Fellow, the highest International Rotary honor.
For the past 44 years, he had edited the service club's weekly
bulletin, the Hub-Bub.
Mrs. Weiss was buried in the family plot at Rose Hills Cemetery in
1966.
Mr. Weiss is survived by his daughter, Norma Wachtel of Whittier;
four grandchildren, Kenton Wachtel, Houston, Texas; Donna Frazier,
Tokyo; Susan Dasch, Oak Harbor, Washington; and Karen Nieland, Whittier.
1920 Census Polling Precinct No. 35 of Election District No. 10, Burns
Town, Laramie County, Wyoming, ED 52, sheet 2B
KCWEISS.
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Note for: John Winans Frazee, 16 OCT 1788 - 27 OCT 1806
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Burial: Place: Westfield, Union Co., New Jersey
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Note for: John Mather, 26 JAN 1751 -
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Baptism: Date: 27 JAN 1751
Place: Anstruther Easter, Fife, Scotland
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Note for: Noe Clarkson, -
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Note for: Jonathan Terry, Chr. 19 JAN 1763 - 3 JUN 1820
Index
Christening: Date: 19 JAN 1763
Place: Westfield, Union Co., New Jersey
Individual Notes
Note for: Alva Samuel McClary, 6 NOV 1883 - 10 MAY 1951
Index
Burial: Place: The Melrose Abbey, Anaheim, California
Individual Notes
Note for: Amber Dolores Weiss, 13 AUG 1898 - 28 MAR 1984
Index
Burial: Place: Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Cypress, California