Newspaper clippings about Mike Sanford Boggess
Editor of The Kemp News

Paul Crume's Column in the
Dallas News (100th year in Dallas)

"The most interesting newspaper in Texas to us is not published in Dallas or Houston or Fort Worth.  It is printed in Kemp, (pop. 879) Kaufman County.  This judgment would astound certain sophisticated press critics.  The Kemp News is handset in an old-fashioned type that often smudges in printing.  It runs ads on the front page wherever it darn well pleases, preferring to center them in the middle and let them branch out at the top and bottom.  The Kemp News, however, has an editor, an original, a man with a gift for homely and refreshing phrase.  A year or more ago, The Kemp town baseball team thrashed a Dallas amateur club.  After giving the score, Editor M. S. Boggess summed up the game:  "Those old city boys who live on beer and Post Toasties are no match for country boys that grow up on black-eyed peas and buttermilk."  Of a Kemp High team that beat out Forney in a basketball tournament, he wrote "---despite the fact that Tommie Hutcheson was out with a case of the mumps, they went after the huskies of Forney like a biting shoat and beat them handily."  We have never been in Kemp.  We know nobody there and have never seen the editor.  Nevertheless, through his personality, we have become acquainted with world of Kemp and its former residents.  Editor Boggess' stock in trade is the short personal, but usually with a twist that gives it universal appeal.  After chronicling the facts about a former resident who had returned for a visit he observed; "John is a fine boy, but he'll never be the man his father was."  Another; "Terrell Carlisle, wife and children of Andrews, Texas visited here Tuesday.  He called to add his name to our subscription list and we asked him if his country needed rain.  He replied: "It did five or six years ago."  From a recent issue:  "We have been informed that the Metropolitan Opera Company will be at the State Fair Auditorium on May 8, 9, and 10.  We published this notice for those of you who are interested, but so far as we are personally concerned we would walk further to get away from it than to it."  Of an old friend, recovering from a serious illness the editor reported,  "We noticed that he was pacing like a 2 year old colt, but when he is really at himself, he is a single-footer."  Editor Boggess is also a man of stern principle, and it is reflected in his editorial comment.  Furthermore, he doesn't waste words.  You have to handspike the darn stuff.  Of church dancing, he once observed, "Who in the world can keep his mind on Jesus Christ while dancing with a woman in a strapless evening gown?"  Of Social Security, he wrote last week: "It might be a good thing to make everyone have this insurance if they live long enough to get any benefit, but brother you have to be sixty-five before you can draw down any of the swag and most people are singing bass over the river before they get that old.  That's just one of the fool laws that was enacted under the last two presidents."  Reading him, we often wonder whether modern news papering with its slicked-up Homburg-type dresses and its gay-spat surveys on what readers want or don't, hasn't missed the boat somewhere.  Maybe so, maybe not.  Anyhow, you take your darn New York Times and its stories of diplomats sparring, etc., down there at the other end of the table.  We intend to read about some of you real people.

The Dallas Morning News
July 18, 1941
Column "Texans and Texas Towns"

Kemp, Texas----- Wherever in Texas the subject of old-time newspapers is brought up, someone is sure to mention the name of Mike S. Boggess, who came down here from Kaufman in 1912 and bought the local paper.  He's been Kemp's well-loved "editor man" for nearly thirty years and there is a rush to the publication office every press day to get a copy and see what Mike Boggess has to say.  This is one of the few remaining handset newspapers in Texas, but what it lacks in mechanical equipment has been amply made up for by the owner's industry, and the money that a typesetting machine would have cost has gone into the raising of a fine family.  Mr. Boggess says the S. in his official signature stands for Scotch, something you have to be to successfully operate a country weekly.

The Kaufman Herald
J. W. Melton column:

Bicentennial Note:  Mike Boggess, one of the country's most out-spoken newspaper editors, ran the Kemp News for many years.  Mr. Boggess died shortly after we came to Kaufman and we were not privileged to meet him---something we have always regretted.  If Mike Boggess' Kemp News carried nothing else of interest, his straight forward editorials were always looked forward to by eager readers.  He wrote and expressed opinions on any and everything... sometimes you agreed with him and sometimes you disagreed with him--but to Editor Boggess it made no difference.  Here are some of Mike's short editorials appearing in the May 6, 1932, issue of the Kemp News:  "The main reason some of the big boys at Washington do not want the Patman bill passed which would give the soldiers what is due them, is that they would be knocked out of the 4 1/2 % they are drawing from the certificates.  A bunch of the American Legion ought to take these big grafters out and ride them on a rail."  "We think the reason the depression is so bad is that the money of the nation is in the hands of just a few fellows who have cornered it one way or another."

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM A COLLEGE THESIS ON KAUFMAN COUNTY NEWSPAPERS BY A MR. HART FOUND IN THE KAUFMAN COUNTY LIBRARY GENEALOGY SECTION:

"Like Jim Phillips of Hunt County, M. S. Boggess of The Kemp News is dean of the newspaper men of Kaufman County who are now active in the profession.  Mike Sanford Boggess was born at Kaufman, March 23, 1878, while his farmer-stockman father, Bennett Boggess, was sheriff of the county.  The child's maternal grandfather, Mike Rogers, was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher.  His paternal grandfather was Giles Boggess, who was killed at the Battle of New Orleans.  Mike Boggess worked on a farm near Kaufman as a boy until the family moved back to town.  For two years, then he worked at the Kaufman Oil Mill, and at 17 started his newspaper career by going to work for Monroe Drew on The Kaufman Herald.  Mr. Boggess says that he worked on the Herald three years for $10.00 a month.  He next worked on the old Kaufman Sun for Goolsby and Cole, for three or four years, and then passed a rural route examination which enabled him to change the nature of his work.  He carried the mail using a horse and buggy for seven and a half years without missing a day.  His next newspaper experience was on The Kaufman Daily Post, owned by Harry Galbraith and J. D. Boykin.  Boggess worked nights and mornings on this paper.  Boykin brought out Galbraith's interest in the paper, and then sold the Post to two men from Ennis, whose names Boggess cannot remember, and of whom there is no record in the Ayer directories.  These men sold the Post to Mike Boggess, and when R. H. Richardson bought the Sun from Sam Braswell, the two newspapers were combined to form the Kaufman Sun, daily and weekly.  The combination did not last long.  Boggess who has never known the taste of liquor, says that he sold out to Richardson on account of differences on the question of drinking.  He continued with the paper for two weeks, and in 1912, bought the Kemp News, of which he has been the editor and publisher ever since.  He married Miss Virgie Walker in 1900.  She was the daughter of Temple Walker of Terrell, for years the editor of the Terrell Star, and at the time of his death, County Treasurer of Kaufman County.  To Mr. and Mrs. Boggess have been given five children, four of whom survive.  Temple Walker Boggess, the eldest, died April 22, 1935.  He was a fine young fellow, had not been married long, and was rightly the pride of his father and mother.  His death has proven a terrible shock to the parents especially.  The other children are:  William D. Boggess, M. S. Boggess, Jr., Miss Virginia Boggess and Miss Nell Boggess.  Mike Boggess says that the Boggess family was once as numerous in Kaufman as the Nash family is today.  However, his own brothers and sisters are so scattered over Texas that it is easy to see why Kaufman no longer has a Boggess in its telephone directory.  His half-brother, R. C. Boggess, lives at Clinton, Oklahoma; Mrs. Charles Kennedy, a sister lives at Greenville, Texas; another sister, Mrs. H. B. Hicks, resides at Dallas; his brothers, Bennett, W. F. , and Rough Adams Boggess, live at Ft. Worth, Del Rio, and Henderson, Texas, respectively.  Mike Boggess is a colorful and courageous editor, who says what he thinks in his editorial columns, in a forceful way, and he does not always think the way the masses do.  He is not to be stampeded by fads and periodic waves of hysteria.  He says he has smoked one cigar and six cigarettes in all his life.  As remarked before, he has never tasted any kind of liquor, and he has never used coffee.  Hunting with dogs, golfing, and fishing, are his hobbies.  He is especially devoted to his children, and his affection for them is particularly reciprocated by them.  Although his paper is a hand-set one, his office is one of the neatest to be found anywhere.  His stones are always kept clean, his forms are neat, all metal and wood furniture is in place and even the cylinder press almost shines.  He often has help of young ladies or boys in setting type, but he does most of the work himself, and is considered a thorough craftsman.   His work and his hobbies keep him rather busy, and this coupled with the time he gives to his family, prevents him from attending as many of the press gatherings as his friends would like. All newspaper men who know Mike Boggess like and respect him.

The history of the Kemp News has proven to be the hardest to trace of all the extant papers of Hunt or Kaufman counties due principally to the total lack of files and the confused memories of the men who have owned it.  M. S. Boggess, the present editor, is of the opinion that the News was first established by Monroe Drew as the Kemp Voice, but he is probably confusing the origin of his paper with Drew's purchase of the Kemp Herald in March 1889.  And since O. B. Colquit says that Drew moved the Herald from Kemp to Kaufman, it is highly improbable that Monroe Drew was ever connected with the predecessor of the Kemp News.  The Ayer directories are unusually lacking in information concerning any Kemp papers until 1900, when one is listed for the first time.  It is The Voice of Kemp, and although it disappears from the listings after 1907, and the directory for 1908 lists The Kaufman County News for the first time, there is probably little connection.  R. T. Craig, present editor of the Athens Review, says that in 1902 he published, or rather, printed The Kaufman County News for a while for Dr. W. E. Bradley, and then although he was only 18, he bought the paper on credit, and almost immediately changed its name to The Kemp News, and the paper bears that name until this day.  He also says that "an Englishman conducted the paper prior to the Bradleys."  The Ayer directory for 1908, however, would indicate that the real founder of The Kemp News was J. D. Boykin, who has made a living by trading in newspapers for many years, and at present runs a little job shop in Kaufman.  The News is listed as having been established in 1907.  Craig says he sold to R. H. Richardson after eight or ten months, and that Richardson remained at the helm of the paper for several years.   (Richardson now lives at Harmon, Oklahoma).  Two years later Craig went back and bought a half interest with Richardson, but he says he stayed but a few months, then sold his half back to Richardson.  Mr. Boggess says that B. B. Drake followed Richardson as owner, a contention borne out by the Ayer listings in the 1913 directory, and that he bought Drake out, December 19, 1912.  The paper burned out in 1922, and while there are no files, as such, Mr. Boggess has saved some outstanding papers dating from that time.

(Here one of the ridiculous discrepancies in the Ayer directories forces itself on the attention,  for although we know Boggess bought the paper in 1912, the name of B. B. Drake continues to be listed as editor and publisher every year from 1913 through 1924, a period in which Boggess was always the owner.  It was probably all caused, however, by Boggess being careless in reporting the change in ownership.)

*****(Mike Boggess always felt that his handshake was as good as a written contract.  He and Mr. Jeff Still swapped buildings in Kemp in the 1920's and there was never a transfer of title.  This event was not uncovered until both Mr. Still and Mike Boggess had passed on.)

Like the newspaper plants of Hunt County, those of Kaufman County are diverse in equipment, and although not quite as numerous as the plants in the younger, more populous county, Kaufman County presents something of the same kind of picture.  There are three hand-set newspapers in Kaufman County compared to the one (The Lone Oak News) in Hunt County.  The Kemp News is printed on a six-column quarto Cottrell cylinder press, and the usual assortment of small machinery (like staplers, cutters, etc.) and type case racks and stones, this is all of the equipment it possesses.

At the present time, The Kemp News is using four pages of "ready-print" and four pages of home-print.  Considering the fact that the paper is "hand-struck" one realizes it is remarkably full of news, and Mr. Boggess' ever-present editorial page is easily the most sparkling and interesting of any in the county.  The News uses six column, 13 em, pages, with the front page heavy with advertising.  (The First National Bank for years has had the top four center columns of the front page for its regular advertisement.)  Single line label heads are used, and used sparingly at that.  Mr. Boggess does not scorn to give island positions to his advertisers, and his system of make-up seems to be to give every advertiser the best position possible, let the news fall where it may.