Edwin Cowles was an American journalist. He was the publisher of The Cleveland Leader, a major daily newspaper.
Background
Edwin Cowles was born on September 19, 1825 in Austinburg, Ohio, United States. A Cowles, originally Coles or Cole, had come to Massachusetts in 1835, and a year later had joined the pioneer band that the Reverend Thomas Hooker led from Cambridge to Connecticut. A descendant, Dr. Edwin Weed Cowles, settled at Austinburg, Ohio, among Connecticut neighbors who had been lured into the W. When Edwin, the son of Dr. Edwin Weed and Almira (Foote) Cowles, was seven years of age, the family took up its abode in Cleveland.
Education
Edwin’s education was limited to a few years in the local schools and one at the Grand River Institute in Austinburg.
Career
At the age of fourteen, Cowles entered a printer’s office. Five years later (1844) he and T. H. Smead became partners in the printing business. In 1853, the partnership with Smead was dissolved and another formed with Joseph Medill and John C. Vaughn (Medill, Cowles & Company). The new organization published the Forest City Democrat, a Free-Soil Whig newspaper. In 1854, the name was changed to the Cleveland Leader. A year later Cowles became sole owner and shortly afterward editor as well. His enterprise rapidly grew to include both a morning and an evening daily newspaper.
Working all his life under a handicap of deafness that would have baffled a weaker personality, he was an editor of remarkable courage, unchangeable convictions, and relentless dogmatisms, and such qualities made his pen a power in northern Ohio for a generation. In his later years he aided his sons, Eugene and Alfred, in the development of new methods in electric smelting. The aluminum, carborundum, calcium carbide, and acetylene industries grew out of their work. A company was formed for the manufacture of such products and Edwin Cowles, who supplied most of the capital, was its president. His interests in this company kept him in Europe much of the last two years of his life.
Achievements
Politics
Cowles's connection with political history was intimate. He was one of the founders of the Republican party. At the beginning of the Civil War he became an insistent advocate of coercion of the Southern states and immediate emancipation of the slaves. In 1861, Lincoln appointed him postmaster in Cleveland, an office he held five years. In 1876 and 1884, he was a delegate to the National Republican Convention. On the second occasion he was vice-president of the convention. He was a regular party man, loyal to Grant, and throughout his life a believer in Blaine. Finding that Blaine could not be nominated in 1876 and 1880, he threw his influence behind Ohio’s favorite sons, Hayes and Garfield.
Connections
Cowles was married in 1849 to Elizabeth C. Hutchinson of Cayuga, New York. He had 3 sons and 2 daughters.