Crosby Stuart Noyes was born on February 16, 1825 in Minot, Maine, United States. He was the son of Nicholas and Rachel (Hill) Noyes and descended from Nicholas Noyes who came from England in 1633 and later settled at Newbury, Massachussets. Though frail of body, after a day's work in the fields Crosby Noyes would make a ten-mile trip on foot to borrow books from a neighbor. He spent much of his boyhood in Lewiston, Maine, where he made and mended harness and worked in a cotton-mill to earn money with which to gain an education. From early boyhood he wrote and published.
Career
At fifteen Noyes issued a diminutive four-page weekly, the Minot Notion, written by hand and devoted to the "promotion of science, literature and the fine arts. " Not much later he wrote a dialect sketch relating the unhappy experiences of "A Yankee in a Cotton Factory, " first printed in the Yankee Blade of Boston. Some of his juvenile productions were reprinted in The Harp of a Thousand Strings (1858), pieces by American humorists. In December 1847, in quest of a milder climate and a more promising opening in the field of journalism, he went to Washington, D. C. , arriving with less than two dollars in his pocket.
His first employment was in a bookstore and as route agent for a newspaper; he also ushered in a theater. Soon he found employment on the weekly Washington News and began to send news and descriptive letters and character sketches to the Lewiston Evening Journal, the Yankee Blade, the Spirit of the Times (New York), and the Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia), receiving an average of one dollar per column.
In 1855 he traveled in Europe, following Bayard Taylor's example in Views Afoot and describing his experiences in a series of letters which were published in the Portland Transcript.
On his return late in 1855 he became a reporter on the Washington Evening Star, a four-page paper established in 1852. He covered sporting events, political meetings, debates in Congress, church affairs.
During the Civil War he enjoyed acquaintance with Lincoln and Stanton and official announcements were frequently made through the Star, as a trustworthy newspaper.
After the war Washington's population decreased so greatly that the owner of the Star decided to sell it. Noyes had become assistant editor and was practically manager, also. Offered, in 1867, a forty-eight-hour option to buy the paper at the seemingly extravagant price of $100, 000, he promptly organized a company, of which Alexander R. Shepherd was a member, bought the Star, and became its editor-in-chief. He decided to devote the paper to local welfare and succeeded also, according to a fellow editor, in making it "the most influential newspaper in Washington which shapes more legislation than any other paper in the United States". He advocated equitable municipal finances, enlargement of park areas, reclamation of the Potomac flats, and other projects that paved the way for the development of the capital city. He kept the Star independent in politics, praising or rebuking policies and acts, not parties. He was a conservative, not from cowardice, but from reserve, and so was the more effective when he went into action. He loathed coarseness, obscenity, and "yellow journalism, " and his policy succeeded in winning devoted local esteem for the Star and in making it one of the most conspicuously prosperous of American newspapers. In 1904 he read a paper on "The Journalistic Outlook" before the World's Press Parliament at St. Louis and in June 1907, a particularly able and vigorous paper, "Journalism Since Jamestown, " before the National Editorial Association at the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition. He traveled widely, visiting practically all civilized and some semi-civilized countries, and sent a stream of letters to the Star. He gathered an extensive collection of Japanese prints, original drawings, and illustrated books which he presented in 1906 to the Library of Congress. He endowed a chair in Bowdoin College. He served as an alderman of Washington for two terms, from 1863, but after that foreswore public office, except on boards of charitable institutions. The respect and affectionate regard accorded him alike by humble citizens and by statesmen were attested by the outpouring at the memorial meeting held in the National Theater, Washington, April 5, 1908.
Achievements
Personality
Noyes was tall and slender in build, and modest almost to the point of shyness.
Connections
In 1856 Noyes married Elizabeth S. Williams of Maine. Of their sons, Theodore W. Noyes succeeded his father as editor of the Star, and Frank B. Noyes became president of the Evening Star Newspaper Company and in 1900 of the Associated Press.