Albuquerque Daily Journal, New Mexico

The Daily Journal at Albuquerque was founded by Daniel Taylor, Thomas Hughes and Mr. Messenger, in connection with a job office. W. S. Burke as head of the newly organized Albuquerque Publishing Company bought them out in the fall of 1881. They began its publication in 1882. W. S. Burke has been with the paper ever since J. C. Albright, who began publishing the Santa Fe Democrat January 1, 1882, brought his Democrat down from Santa Fe and, buying the Journal, merged it with the Democrat, the Albuquerque Democrat. It continued thus to 1894 or 1895, when A. A. Grant bought the entire outfit and continued it as the Journal Democrat for two or three years. Since 1897 or 1898 the paper has been known as the Journal. In politics always Republican except when Albright had control.

W. S. Burke, editor, was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, November 2, 1835. He never attended school. He learned the printers' trade in the Intelligencer office in Wheeling, West Virginia, 1853, and one and one-half years later moved to Iowa. He afterward went to Council Bluffs, where he had a job in the Nonpareil office, and finished his trade in 1856. Buying the Nonpareil office in 1863, he ran it to 1868, when he moved to Leaven worth, Kansas, and bought the Bulletin. One and one-half years later he sold it to D. R. Anthony and remained as editor of the Times-Anthony's paper, until 1880, when he came to New Mexico. In 1881 he bought the Albuquerque Journal, and the rest of his record is in the history of the Journal.

Mr. Burke served in the Civil war, raised a company for the Seventeenth Iowa Infantry, Colonel J. W. Rankin, and served in Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia. He was first superintendent of schools for Bernalillo County and founded the system in Bernalillo County, then including Albuquerque and Old Albuquerque.

NM AHGP | Newspapers of New Mexico

Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, VolumeI, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.