Driggs, William W., Jr.

The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.

William W. Driggs, Jr.,is a capable young newspaper man and is now editor of the Bern Gazette in Nemaha county. The Gazette is one of the live papers of that county, and was established in 1898 by M. E. Ford.

The editor of the paper was born in Hannibal, Missouri, December 25, 1891. His father is William W. Driggs, Sr., and together they make the firm Driggs & Driggs, publishers of the Bern Gazette. The senior Driggs was born March 25, 1856, in Pennsylvania. At the age of fifteen he learned telegraphy and began working soon afterward as a railroad telegrapher in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri, and served as general passenger and ticket agent for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railway when that line was in the bands of a receiver. He subsequently lived at Omaha, Nebraska, and for several years was secretary of the building and loan association there.

Coming to Kansas in 1895, he entered the service of the Rock Island Railroad Company and was its agent at Berwick, later at McFarland, and for seven years at Phillipsburg, Kansas. In 1905 he removed to Bern and in March of that year engaged in the hotel business. After two years he resumed employment with the Rock Island Road, on which Bern is a station, and then in 1908 bonght the Bern Gazette. He had been actively identified with that journal ever since, and latterly in association with his son. Mr. Driggs in July, 1908, was appointed postmaster of Bern and still holds that office. He is a republican, a member of the Presbyterian Church and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

He married Martha Plotts, who was born in New Jersey in 1856, and William W., Jr., is the youngest of their five children. Mildred, the oldest, is the wife of H. C. Bickford, a general merchant at Phillipsburg, Kansas. Maude married J. G. Schliemann, who is now engaged in the insurance business at Hennessey, Oklahoma. Mr. Schliemann was formerly a Baptist minister and at the time of the Spanish-Arnerican war served as chaplain of the famous Twentieth Kansas Regiment in the Philippines. The colonel of that regiment was the late Fred Funston. Rev. Mr. Schliemann and wife went to the Philippines together. The daughter Mabel is still at home with her parents. Miriam married A. C. Baker, sales manager for the National Biscuit Company at St. Joseph, Missouri.

William W. Driggs, Jr., received his early education in the public schools of Phillipsburg, Kansas, and in the high school at Bern. At eighteen he gave up his studies and began an apprenticeship in the printing office of his father and soon got the run of newspaper work and for several years had been active editor of the Gazette. In 1917 the firm of Driggs & Driggs was formed.

Mr. Driggs is also city clerk of Bern. He is a republican, is affiliated with Bern Camp No. 3830 of the Modern Woodmen of America, and is very active in the Presbyterian Church, being director of the choir and president of the First District Kansas Christian Endeavor Union, comprising Nemaha, Brown, Doniphan and Atchison counties.

Mr. Driggs married in June, 1915, at Bern, Miss Hazel Minger, daughter of J. A. and Sophia (Korber) Minger. Her parents reside at Bern, where Mr. Minger is in the hardware business.

Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans

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