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PORTAGE PATHWAYS; 29-letter Kent mayor had his hands full

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November 1, 2009

By Roger J. Di Paolo

Record-Courier Editor

Napoleon Jerome Alexander Minich can lay claim to having the longest name of anyone elected mayor of Kent.

 

The mayor with a name longer than the alphabet — 29 letters, if you’re counting — also found himself confronted by daunting prospects as he prepared to take office 100 years ago.

For one thing, Kent had not one, but two, sets of officials claiming to be the legitimate Village Council.

Posing a far greater challenge for the new mayor and whichever council was seated was the economic well-being of the community, which was devastated by the fire that destroyed Seneca Chain Co., its second largest employer, on Dec. 10, 1909, putting 250 men and boys out of work.

To say that Mayor Minich had his hands full would be an understatement.

N.J.A. Minich came to politics via journalism, which might be why his full name rarely, if ever, appeared in print. It wasn’t unusual back in the days when newspapers were printed using lead type — set by hand, line by line, letter by letter — for newsmakers to be referred to by their initials. Reducing a 29-letter name to nine letters saved time and space.

Born Oct. 2, 1849, in Lancaster County, Pa., he was the grandson and great-grandson of newspaper publishers. He entered the printing trade in his hometown when he was 18 and remained there until 1872, when he went to Akron and took a job as a journeyman printer at the Daily Beacon. Two years later, he founded the Akron Daily Argus, which he operated until 1876, when he came to Kent.

Unlike Ravenna, where newspapers seemed to flourish, Kent had seen a number of short-lived publications come and go. Among those was the Commercial Bulletin, which had suspended publication five weeks before Minich purchased it. He operated it under a series of names reflecting its publication date and delivery time — the Saturday Morning Bulletin and the Saturday Bulletin — before finally settling on the Kent Bulletin.

The newspaper business in Kent was a rough-and-tumble affair in which the owners’ agenda took precedent over objectivity or nonpartisanship. Minich used the Bulletin to promote a municipal water system, much to the dismay of the Kent family, which opposed it. The Kents got their viewpoint across by founding their own paper, the Kent Courier, one of the predecessors of the Record-Courier. 

Minich operated the Bulletin for 27 years, which at the time was longer than any other publisher. After selling the paper in 1902, he became a representative of Continental Casualty Co. of Chicago.

Active in community affairs, Minich served on the Kent health board and was one of the founding trustees of the community’s public library. He also was involved in Masonic affairs and a loyal Republican.

Chosen by the GOP to run for mayor in 1909, Minich won the office by 19 votes, edging out Orlo “Scott” Rockwell, a former two-term mayor and postmaster who had edited the Kent News, a onetime rival of the Bulletin. By one account, Minich benefited from a split in the Democratic Party that provided him with his narrow margin of victory.

The Seneca Chain blaze, which occurred two weeks before Christmas, brought Kent leaders of all political persuasions together to help the firm rebuild. When Seneca Chain officials said they would rebuild only if the community raised $100,000 to finance the project, the Kent Board of Trade was organized to lead that effort.

Mayor Minich was on hand for the organizational session of the Board of Trade, which took place January 1910 in the Village Council chambers under the direction of Martin L. Davey and other civic leaders.

The Board of Trade, forerunner of the Kent Area Chamber of Commerce, also took the lead in garnering support for locating a state normal college in Kent. Minich was in his second term as mayor when what is now Kent State University welcomed its first students in May 1913.

As for the dual council dilemma that faced Kent at the dawn of 1910: The outgoing Village Council contended that its elected successors had no legitimate claim to office because one of the candidates had been placed on the ballot illegally. Both slates claimed office, and the conflict dragged on for more than a month before a circuit court ruling that affirmed he new council. 

N.J.A. Minich won re-election in 1911 but found himself facing a formidable battle two years later in his bid for a third term when the mayor’s race became a clash of generations.

Martin L. Davey was less than half the age of the 64-year-old mayor, whom he accused of “four years of inaction” in a campaign that he cast as a choice between “standstill government” and progress. The 25-year-old Democrat won a resounding mandate in the 1913 election, his first political victory in a career that eventually saw him in the governor’s office.

N.J.A. Minich was 78 years old when he died at his home on Columbus Street at DePeyster Street — the brightly painted landmark now owned by Mike and Jane Smith — on Feb. 12, 1928. He was buried in Standing Rock Cemetery in Kent.

The mayor elected 100 years ago this week, on Nov. 2, 1909, was eulogized by the Kent Courier as “one of the early citizens of Kent who did much to change (its) complexion ... from a drowsy river town to one of commercial importance.”

His 29-letter name remains in the record books. 

 




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