My Genealogy Hound

ERNEST W. REW, editor and proprietor of the Hampshire County Journal, is a native of England, born April 30, 1864, in Northampton. His father, now living retired from business pursuits in London, England, was born at Tiverton, Devonshire, about the time of the birth of the Prince of Wales, and was long engaged in the wholesale silk trade. He married for his first wife Josephine Bell, who died at the early age of twenty-two years, in 1868, leaving three sons and one daughter, Ernest W. being the eldest child. He subsequently married a widowed sister of his first wife, and she died in 1891, leaving two children by her first marriage.

Although young in years Ernest W. Rew has had a varied and eventful career. Leaving college at the age of fifteen years, he was apprenticed for three years to a wholesale grocer in Malvern, England, and after serving his time he remained still another year in Malvern. Going thence to Hereford he was engaged in trade a year, and was afterward for the same length of time in the wholesale grocery business in London. Not satisfied with mercantile life, Mr. Rew next sought and obtained a place in the Royal Horse Artillery, which by the advice of his father he gave up, and passed a year or so at his father’s home in Cheltenham, whence he went to France, where he travelled for a while. In the autumn of 1883 Mr. Rew enlisted at Brighton, England, in the Royal Dragoon Guards, and was in active service three and one-half years, in the course of that time taking part in quelling the Belfast riot. Having been bought off by his father for nineteen pounds, he returned to London, and in January, 1888, sailed for New York City, having a hope of obtaining work on a New York paper.

Failing in his purpose and running rather low in his funds, he next answered an advertisement for a stud groom on a large stock farm; and he there remained with a Mr. Akers until the following spring, when he again endeavored to secure a position in New York as a journalist and again failed. Finding the city overcrowded with idlers of all classes, Mr. Rew struck out into Connecticut, travelling on foot, and working at anything he could find to do to pay his way, whether it was chopping wood, digging potatoes, or husking corn, at which he was quite an expert. In one town he worked a few days for Mr. Herman Sellick, a member of the Board of Selectmen, who told him as he went away if he did not find a permanent employment to come back and spend the winter and do the chores about the place for his board and tobacco. He walked forty miles one day, being very vigorous, but did not secure the coveted position. Returning, therefore, to Farmer Sellick, he spent a pleasant winter, keeping busily employed about the farm. He also received money from home, and, becoming decently clothed, he joined the New Canaan choir, to which he had been invited, and in the spring was engaged by Mr. Sellick to work on the farm during the summer.

But one hot day in July, while digging a ditch, he was offered a position as companion and reader to a wealthy blind man, who was going to a sanitarium for his health. After a year in the sanitarium Mr. Rew again sought journalistic work in the city, and through a friend obtained work on Judd’s paper, but was soon obliged to leave the office on account of malaria. Going thence with Emerson Judd to Greenwich, Mass., in hopes that the invigorating upland breezes would restore his health, he heard that the management of the Hampshire Weekly Gazette was about to start a daily paper, and came at once to Northampton to secure a position, in which he was successful, finding plenty of congenial work. Three years later he left that office to take charge of the Springfield Union, remaining there about a year, during which time he was a correspondent of the Boston Globe and the Boston Journal, besides which he contributed a weekly letter to the Hampshire County Journal, writing under the pen name of “Malvern.” In May, 1894, Mr. Rew left the Springfield Union; and the next month he purchased from Wade & Daniels the paper which he has since managed so ably. This paper was established about thirty years ago by D. W. and H. H. Bond, and has been among the leading journals of the county, and under the judicious management of its present proprietor has lost none of its former prestige, its circulation having been increased. Mr. Rew is an enthusiastic and thorough master of his business, and in his aim to publish one of the brightest and best journals of this section of the State he has been eminently successful.

On September 8, 1892, Mr. Rew was united in marriage with Miss Katherine Lord Clark, of Willimantic, Conn., daughter of David H. and Annie L. (Turner) Clark. Her father died in Denver, whither he had gone for his health, in 1887, at the age of fifty years. His widow, who is still living in Willimantic, has three children, Mrs. Rew and two sons, one in Willimantic and the other in Danielsonville. Mrs. Rew is an accomplished musician, and is well known in this vicinity and in New York as a phenomenal whistler, being able to imitate almost any member of the feathered tribe, her rendition of the notes of the mocking-bird being most natural and charming.