A PIONEER EDITRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6829, 6 October 1883, Page 3 (Supplement)

A PIONEER EDITRESS.

In a tiny, cozy little cottage in Yazoo City lives the first real newspaper woman in America. Wisteria vines olimb over the windows and low doorways, and magnolia trees cast graceful shadows over the wide worn porches. Here in this quiet houße live 3 Mrs. Harriet N. Prewett, the oldest newspaper in America. In 18-tS Mrs; Prewett was left a widow, the most important of her possessions being three little children and a weekly newspaper, The Yazoo City Whig, afterward The Banner. For more than fourteen years Mrs. Prewett was editor, proprietor, news editor, agent, bookkeeper, and mailing clerk for her plucky little paper. She also kept house, saw that things were tidy at home, and did the sewing and patching and mending and knitting for her three Her editorials were strong and fearless, and exercised strong influence in Mississippi politics. Mrs. Prewett held out as long as she could against the extreme measure of secession ; bat when she did haul down her union flag she became one of the boldest; bravest defenders of the southern cause. At one time Mrs. Prewett had an editorial tilt with Mrs. Swisshelm, who was then running a paper in Massachusetts, regarding the respective merits of their babies. Mr 3. Prewett's wa3 the first paper in the country to announce the name of Millard Fillmore for the presidency. This brave, hard-working woman used to take her sewing to the office with her, and when interrupted by the proverbial fiends that .haunted newspaper offices, even before the war, she would lay aside her pen and sew or knit while talking, so as not to lose anytime. Finally, this grand woman's strength gave way, and she became a helpless invalid. For twenty years she has been tied hand and foot to an invalid's chair, whence, with" an eye as keen and a mind as bright as it was when editress of a dashing, influential paper, Bhe looks out on the world in which she has already accomplished her life's work. In her own room, walls and ceiling are deftly covered with the pictures cut from the illustrated papers—ten years in the history of the pictorial publications of this country are traced upon its walls. Mrs. Prewett is a bright, cultivated woman. In her day she was one of the most beautiful women in the south, and was EOUght for her womanly graces as well as for her brilliant intellect. To-day she is a graceful writer, and occasionally dainty poems, like whitewiuged birds, flutter out into the newspaper world from her little home in the peaceful Yazoo Valley. .